Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.07 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 Q. Yes. He is suggesting that it is two separate conversations. What he is suggesting, and I think you may agree with him, is that it is only the last part of the Goebbels diary entry, from the middle of second paragraph on page 9, that is in fact a report of the table talk because there there is a degree of congruence. The words are not identical but there is a great deal of similarity in the subject matter between what Goebbels wrote in that short passage and what we find in the table talk on pages 10 and 11. A. These two records are created in totally different ways, of course. Henry Picker would sit at a side table with a . P-55 note pad, writing down things as they were said on which he would then base his subsequent dictation. Dr Goebbels would wait until the following morning, the first hour in his working day, to summon his stenographer, and he would dictate a diary on the previous days events. Q. But the point might be this, might it not, Mr Irving? Dr Goebbels will have recorded a whole day's events, as you say, over many pages. A. Yes, but, if there were two or three separate conversations, it is quite possible that he would have coalesced them. Q. You see, what I am suggesting is that the first part, down to the middle of the second paragraph on page 9, starting "How little the Jews can assimilate themselves", the first part which ends "Therefore, one must liquidate the Jewish danger, cost what it will", I think in German , "Deshalb, muss man die jedische Gefall-Liquidierung Koste es was es wollen". That is not table talk. A. I cannot find it. Q. If you want to have a little time? A. No. I think I can cope with it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I hesitate to say this and it is my fault. I am afraid you have lost me. I am not following the point that is being made which is presumably eventually a criticism of 465? A. I will do it more precisely. . P-56 A. It is a problem that authors frequently have. When material comes in late, you attach far more significance to it than it really deserves. MR RAMPTON: You must leave judgments about significance to me and his Lordship, Mr Irving. You will make your own, no doubt. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, it is my fault, I am sure, but I am just not quite following what we are on at the moment. MR RAMPTON: I have tried to take it quickly because this sort of exercise is tedious. What happens in the end of course is that, if you do it too quickly, it gets into a muddle. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Fill me in. MR RAMPTON: On page 9 there is a sentence which begins, "How little the Jews can assimilate themselves to Western european life in reality can be seen from the fact", and so on, and there is a good deal ---- A. Halfway down the second paragraph. Q. Halfway down the second paragraph on page 9. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have that. MR RAMPTON: They get put into a ghetto, they become very quickly ghetto-ised again, then there is talk about Siberia and then about central Africa. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: That is reflected in the table talk on page 10, starting with the words in the third line "The whole prudity of the Jewish people really finds expression" and . P-57 so on and so forth. Then there is a reference to the ghetto, and then on the next page there is a reference to Siberia, and on the next page the reference to Africa, and probably one can stop there so far as the Goebbels' diary entry is concerned. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That much I follow. What is the significance? MR RAMPTON: The significance is this. What I am putting to Mr Irving is that the earlier part of the Goebbels' diary entry, certainly down to the end of the first paragraph on page 9, has nothing to do with the table talk at all, but represents a private conversation between Hitler and Goebbels. A. Well, that is an adventurous presumption, I think. If you look at the Weidenfeld edition of the table talk, there is yet again a totally different version of that table talk, and Professor Evans has ignored that completely. Q. I am not worrying about that. A. It worries me. It should worry. It should have worried Professor Evans too, the fact that there are three different versions of the same thing. Q. Mr Irving, please, can we stick to the point? If you read the first two paragraphs on pages 8 and 9, what you see is something a very great deal blunter about the fate of the Jews from both sides to the conversation, if it be Goebbels and Hitler, than you ever find in the table . P-58 talks. A. (Pause for reading) You mean the argument about the need to keep the equilibrium? Q. And the suggestion, perhaps more than a suggestion, the proposal, that it is probably going to be necessary to kill all the people in the prisons as well, because the sentence about the prisoners starts with the little German word "auch". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are you, Mr Rampton? A. I cannot see any plan to kill people in the prisons. MR RAMPTON: Page 8, my Lord, in indent in small type, there is some talk about the Jews. "Thus I plead once again for a more radical Jewish policy", this is middle of the page, "whereby I am just pushing at an open door with the Fuhrer". This has been quoted by a number of people but without the context. "The Fuhrer is of the opinion that the danger will become greater for us personally the more critical the war situation becomes. We find ourselves in a similar situation to that of the second half of 1932 where bashing and stabbing were the order of the day and one had to take all possible security measures to escape from such a development in one piece. The extermination of criminals", and there is no ambiguity about this, "is also a necessity of state policy", but the German sentence which you find on page 9, when he goes on to say: "Auch die ausmerzung ist ein stattspolitische notwendigkeit", . P-59 necessity. What I am suggesting is that Goebbels and Hitler had a fairly frank conversation about the fate of the Jews and indeed of the prisoners but, when you get to the table, the larger audience. That all goes up into the air into airy talk about central Africa and Siberia. A. May I just comment that to translate "ausmerzung" as uniquely as "extermination" is either showing the bankruptcy of Professor Evans' vocabulary. Ausmerzung has a very wide range of meanings. It is very similar to "ausschlossung". It is rubbing out, wiping out, disposing of. Q. You can argue with Professor Evans about that, Mr Irving. A. I certainly shall. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, am I wrong in thinking, if this is important, I do not know, that the first paragraph of this extract from the diary entry is dealing with the particular problem in Berlin and the dilemma whether you keep the Jews there, because they are better working in armaments factory than having in potentially criminal elements from the East, or wherever. Then it seems to go on to the rather wider question what will happen to people in prison if the war situation gets much worse. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that fair? MR RAMPTON: Yes. What I am suggesting is that the use of the word "also" or "auch" may be tending to suggest that the . P-60 more radical solution of which Dr Goebbels spoke was the same as that which was going to befall the criminals. After all, if it had by this time already been decided, as undoubtedly it had, that the German Jews were going to be deported, and lot of Berlin Jews had already gone by May 1942, it could hardly be, could it, Mr Irving, that Joseph Goebbels would have been pleading for a more radical policy in that regard? That is right, is it not? A. I am just totally baffled that you are hanging your entire case on one little German word "auch" and, if I was in that position, I think I would deserve to be hanged, drawn and quartered. You have been bedazzled by this recent acquisition rather like a new toy. You are trying to make something out of it, but I am afraid that it escapes me and I think may very well have escaped the court. What point are you trying to make out of it? What is significant in the quotation is that Hitler is saying once again, "There is no point sending them to Siberia because that will just toughen them. Let us send them to Africa. That is a more reasonable solution." Once again, he is not talking about killing. Q. In May 1942 send them to Africa? A. I am just repeating what is in the documents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what the document says. MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is what the document says but it was not a realistic possibility. . P-61 A. Hitler was hoping to win the war, I remind you of that fact. He was an optimist. He was an incurable optimist. People, when they get in that position, hope to win, the same as the defendants in this action. They do not necessarily paint a worse case scenario. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, just so that I try and understand the point that we have been spending a little time on, and looking at it in terms of where you say the manipulation or the distortion occurs in volume 2 of Hitler's War 1991, you would criticise Mr Irving's sentence which reads: "But he evidently never discussed these realities with Hitler". MR RAMPTON: Yes, indeed. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the point, is it? MR RAMPTON: Yes. A. I am not going to respond to that, my Lord, because I think that that is not a fair conclusion from this material. I think the real allegation is that Mr Rampton would have liked that I ladled acres of sludge into my manuscript, rather the way Professor Evans has, which would have sunken without trace. MR RAMPTON: There it is. Now finally on table talks for the moment at least, your favourite one, Mr Irving, which I think is 24th July 1942. A. Only favourite because in a sense it brings this particular phase to a end. It is the bottom line. Q. It does what? . P-62 A. It brings this particular table talk phase to an end and after that there is nothing more useful to be dug out of them one way or another. Q. The relevant part of it is very short, and I do not know whether or not there is any way one can get more out of it, but it is on page 422 of Professor Evans' report. A. Interestingly, yet again, this is a passage which is in the Picker version of the table talk, but not in the original Heinich Heim version, so it may well be something that can be attached to that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be that Picker was there and Heim was not? A. Heim also wrote a version of the table talk that day, my Lord, in the first person, so it is possible that Picker added to the original from his own notes. MR RAMPTON: Let us look at 466 in your 1991 edition of Hitler's War, to start with? A. It is the first paragraph, about lines 6 and 7. Q. "As late as July 24th", this is the last part of the first paragraph, "Hitler was still referring at table to his plan to transport the Jews to Madagascar, by now already in British hands, or some other Jewish national home after the war was over." Yes? Is that, do you think, a fair rendering of that part of the table talk? A. I am sorry, did you read the table talk? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. . P-63 MR RAMPTON: I think we are maybe at cross purposes. That is a fair rendering of the table for that day, is it, what you wrote there? A. The table talk says, "After the war was over, he would rigorously take the standpoint", this is Hitler, "that he would smash after city to pieces if the Jews did not come out and emigrate to Madagascar or some other Jewish national state". Q. Then it finishes up, I do not know how far down ---- A. My reference I can quote "As late as July 24th", this is now me in my book, "Hitler was still referring at table to his plan to transport the Jews to Madagascar by now already in British hands or to some other Jewish national home after the war was over". Q. Where in the table talk does the last piece in evidence come? A. Which last piece? MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Therefore significant". MR RAMPTON: When it was reported to him that Lithuania was also Jew free today, that was, therefore, significant? A. Well, first of all, we do not know what those three little dots stand for in the case of Professor Evans. Those little dots sometimes stand for two or three paragraphs or even pages of text. Q. Of course they can. Are you not familiar with this table talk? . P-64 A. I have not got it with me.
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