Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day017.06 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR IRVING: I have not come across them in this witness report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Paragraph 4.2.1, I thought it was. A. I may have mentioned them briefly. MR IRVING: I would have remembered them if -- I think they must be in the Longerich report, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: It is in Longerich. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is certainly there, but this is another guideline, is it not, at 4.21? A. 4.2.1, the Heydrich order of July 2rd, which we discussed yesterday, is his summary to the higher SS and police leaders of his oral instructions to the Einsatzgruppen leaders on June 17th, five days before the invasion. This is when he includes among those to be shot will be Jews in state and party positions. MR IRVING: This is the document your Lordship wanted translated yesterday. MR JUSTICE GRAY: These are guidelines at that stage? A. Yes. This is the guidelines of early July -- in fact, the guidelines of late June, prior to the invasion, because he is summarising what was already given to the Einsatzgruppen on the eve of the invasion. MR IRVING: This is Heydrich, of course, who is two or three rungs down the hierarchy, is he not? A. Very close to Himmler. Q. Yes. The question, witness, which I asked you just before that little discursive, are you familiar with the military . P-47 planning documents or working papers that led to these three documents we were just talking about, the guidelines, not these ones, but the May 19th guidelines? A. I have, I think, briefly seen in the Hans Adolf Jacobsen study his account of the emergence of the Commissart order and the Krasvnik(?) article on the emergence of the military jurisdiction order. I have not worked on those in the archives, but I have seen other historians' studies of those two particular cases. Q. Are you familiar with the private diary of General Franz Halder, the Chief of the German Army General Staff? A. Yes, I have read parts of that. Q. Would you agree that in that private diary, which was written by him in shorthand (so it was of a very confidential nature) it emerges that the German Army were the source of the inspiration for those documents, in other words, it did not come from Hitler down to the Army; it went from the German Army effectively up to Hitler or up to the German High Command, they wanted ---- A. I cannot say that that was my impression from Halder, but I would have to disagree in the sense that we have Hitler/Jodl conversation in early March, in which Jodl then comes back to the Generals and says, "Hitler wants us to do something in terms of the" ---- Q. The Commissarts? A. --- "Commissarts" and the negotiations over the shaping of . P-48 the military jurisdiction order comes I think from a similar instigation from above, that the Army is not to be involved in disciplining the behaviour of troops against the civilian population which previously would have been primed under martial law. Q. Would you identify Jodl to the court, please? A. Jodl is, if I get it right, the Chief of Staff of the High Command. Q. Was he Chief of the Operations Staff at the German High Command. A. High Command, not the Army, the Arm Forces High Command, the global one. Q. And if Hitler, as Supreme Commander, was having this discussion with the Chief of Staff of the German High Command, then it must have been a discussion of a military nature rather than ideological nature? A. Not if he wants the Army to take part in and not to be a problem concerning this war of destruction. If the military is to take part in a wider kind of war, not to conceive of this war is a war like they fought against the French, and that they are to remove themselves from or to give to their own officers a new understanding that certain kinds of behaviour, the troops will no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of military court martial and will not be criminalized. Now, this has to go to the Army. But that certainly cannot be said to be ---- . P-49 Q. But this is the military discipline? A. Yes, but it is an issue of military discipline that is completely related to the notion of this wider war of destruction. It is not compartmentalized to military operations but to the ideological war. Q. Is it not likely, in fact, that Hitler would have these discussions with the German High Command on the military side of the problem and he would have similar discussions with Himmler on the ideological side of the problem, and these documents only refer, therefore, to the military side of the problem. A. I disagree totally. That certainly is the postwar plea of the German Generals of self-exculpation, but I think the documents we see is that he makes very clear to the Generals that this a multi-dimensional war, and that he does not compartmentalize. He wants the Army to revise its multiple court martial code. He wants the Army to take part in the finding of the Commissarts and either shooting them or turning them over to the SS, that he does not compartmentalize this war. Q. We so far have not mentioned one very important conference that took place around this time after Barbarossa, which is the conference of July 16th 1941. You are familiar with this? MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is a document, can we go -- I am quite keen to pick up these points and not deal with . P-50 them ---- MR IRVING: It certainly be referenced by Longerich. It is not referenced by this witness in his report, but it is one with which he is quite familiar, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not make it any easier, but if we can identify and locate these documents. MR IRVING: I was going to ask one question on this conference really which is -- are you familiar with the conference to which I am referring? MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is for my benefit rather than yours or Professor Browning's. MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the conference to which I am referring? A. This is July 16th conference? Q. July 16th. Hitler, Rosenberg, Martin Bormann wrote a memorandum on it? A. Lammers, I believe, was present. Q. Lammers was present, Himmler was present? A. No, Himmler is not present. Himmler met with Hitler on 15th and left for Lublin. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am going to ask you to pause. I think I really must have the document, if only a reference to it. A. It is a Nuremberg document. I think it is L... MR RAMPTON: I can help. Page 57. Longerich 1, paragraph 15.7. . P-51 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr Irving, but I have to try to digest all this and it is easier. MR IRVING: Problem is, my Lord, that both the witness and I have all this in our heads. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but it is quite important that you get it into my head too. MR IRVING: It is not an easy task. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to hear you say that. MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship wants to see the German? MR IRVING: My Lord, the reason I said this is because it has taken me 35 years to get it into my head, the whole history MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: It has only taken me nine months! It is 4.2, if your Lordship would like to see another splodgy German document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be that now you have given me the reference here, I can follow it up. Is it paragraph 15? MR RAMPTON: Paragraph 15.7. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then it is in the transcript at least so I can go back to it. Yes, Mr Irving, follow that up if you want to. MR IRVING: All that I want to say is, I mean, I have no idea where this question and answer is now going to lead. It may harm, it may help me. This was a very important, top level conference deciding areas of responsibility in the . P-52 Eastern territories; is that right? A. Immediately after that conference, the next, they issued the Fuhrer decrees delineating the responsibilities of Himmler and Rosenberg, the SS and the civil administration for the occupied territories, Soviet territories. Q. And this, effectively, gave Himmler absolutely police control over all these regions, is that correct, the executive control? A. It put the SS in a very dominant position. Q. In the rear areas? A. Actually, I think it gave him powers -- at least Einsatzgruppen already had powers to operate all the way up to the front, and this established in a sense that that would become permanent as the SS positions are changed from mobile units to a permanent police structure on occupied territory. Q. I think that, Professor, you once mentioned that the Jewish problem was mentioned in this conference, but that is not correct, is it? A. I do not think he does mention that. He does talk about "shooting anyone who looks askance at us and isn't it good that Stalin has called for a guerilla war because it gives us the pretext", I believe is the word, "to shoot anyone that we want?". I do not believe that I have said that ---- Q. That is a very interesting phrase. What was the phrase he . P-53 used? "It gives us the pretext to shoot"---- A. "To shoot anyone who so much as looks askance at us" I believe is the ... Q. "Schief schaut" MR JUSTICE GRAY: The German is there on page 57 if you want to look at the footnote. MR IRVING: Effectively, "Anybody who stands in our way or looks like he might stand in our way"? A. Well, it does not even say "stand in our way", "looks askance at us", I believe, is a much wider shooting licence than "stands in our way". MR JUSTICE GRAY: What does "nur schief schaut" mean? MR IRVING: "Looks askance", literally. A. "Gives us a twisted look" or "looks askance at us". MR IRVING: Anybody whose face does not fit would be another way of saying it? It is a pretty broad kind of directive. A. It is an open shooting licence. Q. Yes, but there is no reference to the Jewish problem at all? A. Not a specific reference, no. Q. Yes. Just that Himmler has now given, effectively, carte blanche? A. Yes. Q. We will deal with that, I think, in more detail, my Lord, when we come to Longerich? . P-54 A. You were still asking me my view of the decision- making process. Do you wish me to continue? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: If you have had after thoughts, yes. My view (and I would wish you to correct it) is that the German Army provided the impetus for these orders, and that this is evidenced in the papers of the German High Command where the position papers are, effectively, written by German Army officers and also from the diary of General Franz Halder. In other words, that the initiative did not come from Hitler? A. I would disagree. I would say that the open invitation for these proposals comes from Hitler and, in terms of guidelines and policies, it is the response of the SS and the military and the economic planners to turn into reality this vague vision of a war of destruction in an ideological crusade against the Soviet Union. Q. When you say you disagree, is this just a gut feeling or do you have any specific document you want to reference? A. I think we have both the Jodl/Hitler meeting and Jodl's response, and we have the meeting of March 30th with the Generals in which he again makes clear to them his desire to have a war of destruction, a war that is not fought by the ground rules of a conventional war. Q. The latter meeting is, of course, recorded in detail in the diary of General Halder, is it not? . P-55 A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again it would help me, rather than just having this ---- MR IRVING: Interesting discussion. MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- debate between the two of you if ---- A. That would be 15.3, page 56, of Longerich, again where he emphasises the dual nature of the war, the struggle of two world views against one another. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The Jodl/Hitler meeting, can you pinpoint that for me? A. March 3rd. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, in terms of where I find a reference. A. 15.1. MR RAMPTON: Page 55, my Lord.
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