Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day019.04 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR IRVING: To use one of Mr Rampton's favourite phrases, I would say "so what"? Quite clearly, if these Adjutants have sat for many hours talking to me, I have used all the information they have given me, and some of it has been in favour and some of it has not. What I have not done, and this is my question now to the witness, did I make appropriate use of the information that I obtained from these various witnesses, in your opinion? A. It depends what you mean by "appropriate". Q. Did I make appropriate use? In other words, did I rely on them solely, shall we say, for important episodes of history when I could not find any documentary substantiation? . P-29 A. Well, they form an important part of your case that Hitler did not know about the extermination of the Jews, at least before the autumn of 1943, because what you argue about the Adjutants is that they all say that Hitler never actually discussed the extermination of the Jews with them, and in the sense that, if you look at their statements carefully, and I detail some of these later on in the report, you will see that they do not infer from the fact that this was not discussed as they claim, the fact that Hitler did not know about it. That is your inference. Indeed, a number of them explicitly stated that they were pretty sure that Hitler did know. Q. There is a typical example of that, Albert Speer. Did Albert Speer say to me it was never discussed in front of him, but did he then go on to say that in his opinion Hitler must have known, roughly? A. As I recall, yes. Q. Is that not an illogical kind of position for an intelligent man like Speer to adopt, that it was never discussed but somebody must have known? If it was never discussed, how could he guess? A. As I recall, Speer argued at some length, and there is a degree of self-exculpation here, I think, in Speer, that Hitler simply did not want this to be talked about in his inner circle. Q. My final question on this particular angle is this. When . P-30 you have read, as you or your researchers have, my interview notes on all these ladies and gentleman on Hitler's private staff, did I conceal anything detrimental that they told me? In other words, the Walter Frentz episode, the shootings at Minsk, Hitler's remark to Krista Schroeder, "now I have had a shower and I feel as clean as a new born babe", did I conceal that or did I properly use it in my books? A. You did not conceal either of those two things, no. Q. So what I found I used? A. Not in every case. There is an example in detail later on which we can discuss. Q. Can you tell us what that example is from memory? A. Not from memory, I am afraid. Q. Yes. Perhaps we can wait until we get to it. There is one further question. Has any other writer apart from me got as close to these members of Hitler's private staff? A. No, I think that is quite right. Q. So, if I had not done it, then a body of information would have been lost for the world of academics and scholars? A. We have discussed this before. I do not dispute the fact that you have obtained a great deal of material, not just interview material but also documentary material, which other historians have not obtained. Q. Were any of these Adjutants interrogated at Nuremberg? A. There is an awful lot of them, there is about 25 of them. . P-31 I am sure you know more than I do about their interrogations at Nuremberg. Some of them of course were put on trial or were witnesses in subsequent trials. Q. Very few of them. A. Karl Wolff is the obvious one. Q. Is it not right that Karl Wolff was not put on trial until the 60s because a secret deal had been reached between him and the Americans? A. I do not know about the secret deal but he was not put on trial until 1964, I think. Q. Have you not heard of Operation Crossword in which Karl Wolff was engaged in Italy at the end of the war, his negotiations with the OSS? A. You would have to provide me with documentary evidence for a deal, I think. Q. I am going to go on to page 38, my Lord. Now we are dealing with the Hitler's diaries forgeries, paragraph 246. A. Yes. Q. Do you accept that once again I came into early possession of unusual materials? In this case they turned out to be fake. A. Yes. Were these the materials which you purchased in October 1982 and were intending to sell to McMillans? Q. What is your evidence for the word "purchased"? A. This is in audio cassette 75, where you said you bought . P-32 them from the forger and then you recognized them as forgeries after examining them. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can I interrupt and make this enquiry of you, really? . I realize that Professor Evans refers to the Hitler diaries in his report. I am just wondering what relevance they have to the issues in this action. Can you help me? I am sorry to interrupt you but are obviously starting on a fresh point. MR IRVING: If I am familiar with Professor Evans' arguments of having flipflopped, changed my position on them, and ipso facto being unserious, is that right, Professor Evans? A. I do not use the word "unserious", but I derive from Robert Harris's book, which seems to me to be a reliable book, written I think partly in co-operation with you, certainly with use of materials you supplied to him, the fact that having declared that the diaries, quite rightly, were forgeries, you then subsequently declared that they were genuine. If you tell me that that is not true, of course I would have to accept it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us see where we are going with this. This is not, I do not think, any part of the pleaded case. Mr Rampton, that is right, is it not? MR RAMPTON: That is right, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are in the difficult position, Mr Irving, because here is the principal expert witness for the Defendants making this criticism of you and it is a . P-33 serious criticism, but it is not one that in the end plays any part in the Defendants case. MR IRVING: I read your Lordship's mind as being that you will pay no attention to this. In that case I will move on. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will not. MR IRVING: In the next paragraph 247 you mention Gerhardt Weinberg. A. Yes. Q. Is he one of the historians whose views you accept? A. On what? Q. Is he an eminent historian? He is not a Holocaust denier, is he? A. He is an eminent historian. Q. In fact, he is now retired and his chair is occupied by Christopher Browning, is it not? A. That is the case, yes. Q. I am going to be looking at Professor Jackeln, my Lord, Professor Aberhard Jackeln, who is a historian whose name will come up I think more than once over the next few days. He played a part in the Hitler diaries. I am not going to look at the Hitler diaries as such but I am going to ask questions which I think have relevance to establishing the reliability of Professor Jackeln. Is it right that Professor Aberhard Jackeln very early on came into possession of one of the diaries, the 1935 Hitler diary? . P-34 A. From what I remember of Mr Harris's book, which is the source of my information, yes. That is to say, I do not rely on Professor Jackeln in my report. Q. Really I am trying through you to find out what we know about Professor Jackeln as far as reliability goes, as far as his credentials go. A. Yes. It does not really play a role in my report. That is to say, I am not writing about Professor Jackeln's reliability. Q. Did you write that Jackeln authenticated some of the Hitler materials? A. I did not, no. It is my understanding from Mr Harris's book that he had doubts about him. Of course I am aware of the fact that Professor Jackeln did include some forged material in a book that he edited of Hitler's writings. Q. You are not familiar with the fact that he authenticated the 1935 Hitler diary on behalf of a Stuttgart millionaire? A. I am not, but if that is in Mr Harris's book ---- Q. You mentioned the other materials. He believed that a very large number of poems and handwritings apparently by Hitler were genuine, is that correct? MR JUSTICE GRAY: We seem to be back on the Hitler diaries. I thought we had agreed ---- MR IRVING: No we are now off that. We are now on Jackeln, very firmly on Jackeln, my Lord. . P-35 A. That is correct. Q. Did he publish these in a semi-official volume called Hitler's Entire Manuscripts? A. Indeed he did. Q. Did it take him a substantial length of time to confess that these were from the same source, the forger Konrad Kujau? A. If you tell me it did, then yes. He certainly in the end I think recognized that they were forgeries. Q. In fact he wrote a report, did he not, in the Journal of Contemporary History in which he admitted that 4 per cent of that volume was fake, only 4 per cent? Is that correct? A. Well, I do not recall it but I will accept your word for it. Q. In your little bundle of documents which I gave you this morning, would you just turn rapidly to page 41, which is a photograph of a train? A. Yes. Q. The large endless train of wagons with people stuffed in like cattle, is it not? A. They do not appear to be ---- Q. Several hundred people to each coal wagon? A. I would not say like cattle. They do not appear to be grossly overcrowded. They are full. Q. Are you aware Professor Jackeln used this photograph as an . P-36 illustration for Rumanian Jews being shipped to the gas chambers at Auschwitz? A. I am not. Q. On a television programme. Can you confirm that that is fact Hamburg railway Station after the war? A. Very difficult to say. Q. If I tell that the rubber stamp on the back of the original photograph says Hamburg -- it is in the Hamburg Railway Station archives now, in their picture archives. A. Right. Q. What would your opinion be of a historian who uses photographs in that manner, photographs of a postwar scene, and says that it is a photograph of Jews being shipped off to Auschwitz? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am a bit bewildered by this, Mr Irving. You said "so what?" to me not very long, "so what?" to you. Why does whether Professor Jackeln mistook Hamburg Railway Station for a convoy taking Romanian Jews to a concentration camp matter? It is your reliability, not Professor Jackeln's that is in question. MR IRVING: If Jackeln's words are going to be used against me, as they will be, in expert reports, then I am entitled, in my view, to put to the court the qualifications that Professor Jackeln has. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again, you are in the difficulty that Professor Evans has relied on other historians in his . P-37 report, but in the end it must be Professor Evans' view, whether I accept it or not, that counts. MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not actually going to stop you, but I really do not think at the moment, until we get to a point where Professor Evans says, "Jackeln says this, ergo it must be right", that this is really helpful. There is an awful lot of material to be covered in Professor Evans' report, but we have not really begun to grapple with it yet. A. Let me answer the question. Of course, what I think of him depends in this instance on whether he knew that that was a picture of Germans in Hamburg on a shopping trip to the Ruhr in 1946 and then deliberately presented it, and falsely presented it, as Rumanian Jews being shipped off to Auschwitz, or whether it was a genuine mistake. You yourself have said in the course of this trial that historians make many errors, and that one wants to correct them, and one attempts to do so. You pointed out an error in your own 1991 edition of Hitler's War, the absence of your name on the title page, so we all make mistakes. There is a distinction which I drew on Thursday, which I would hold to, between, as it were, genuine mistakes and errors, which unfortunately historians are all prone to, on the one hand, and deliberate falsification on the other. . P-38
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