Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day028.19
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   MR IRVING:  He is also a publisher.
   MR RAMPTON:  He may also be a publisher but that is by the way
        for present purposes.  Dr Spranger I think is lawyer both
        for Mr Irving and for Christian Worch.
   MR IRVING:  My Lord, will you let me re-cross on this?

.          P-176



   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is a new document and I will, yes.
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes.  Is there any significance in the date, do
        you think, Professor Funke, of 30th January?
   A.   In the circumstances of the court issue, of course, it is
        a day when Adolf Hitler got into power in 1933.
   MR IRVING:  I do not see the date.  Where is the date?
   MR RAMPTON:  The 30th January 1991.
   MR IRVING:  The letter is dated?
   MR RAMPTON:  Yes, 30th January 1991.  The temperature, in which
        we may be interested, was 28 degrees centigrade or
        Celsius, perhaps that does not matter.  We have left that
        off the translation.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, you have not, you have just put it on the
        next line.
   MR RAMPTON:  Sorry.  I do not know what the message was to
        which this was a reply, but plainly, you may think,
        Dr Funke, it is what one might call a scenario draft,
        whatever you call it, for a speech, because what the third
        line says in English is, or an article it might be, I do
        not know:  "The topic will be Germany's new role as great
        power", is that right?
   A.   Right.
   Q.   If you want to follow in German, please do, beginning:
        "I come late but honestly.  Furthermore, I intend" --
        this is not supposed to be literary, so Mr Irving may not
        like it -- "Furthermore, I intend initially to point to my

.          P-177



        prophecy of 3.10.89!"   Why, in your view, Dr Funke, the
        exclamation mark behind the date?
   A.   Because a year later there was a formal unification act at
        3rd October '90.  Maybe this is the reason.
   Q.   Am I right that Adolf Hitler made a speech in the
        Reichstag, a rather famous speech, on 30th January 1939?
   A.   Oh, yes.
   Q.   And did he in that speech repeat what he had said on the
        3rd October 1989 -- I mean ----
   A.   Oh, yes.
   Q.   No, let us start again.  In 1938?
   MR IRVING:  I hope it gets better than this.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  No, Mr Irving.
   MR RAMPTON:  Well, I think it does, if I may say so.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Well, I hope so.
   MR RAMPTON:  Start again.  There was a famous speech by Adolf
        Hitler on 30th January 1939 in the Reichstag?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Did he in that speech repeat something he had said on 3rd
        October 1938?
   A.   He referred to if there is a war then this will cause much
        damage to the Jews.
   Q.   Is it unfair in the light of these dates to see Mr Irving
        standing in one of those smart Nazi uniforms while he
        makes this prophecy?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think we will move on.

.          P-178



   MR RAMPTON:  I will go on.  I want to be serious now.
   MR IRVING:  In view of the fact that I have hurried through my
        own cross-examination in order to make space for
        re-examination, I am beginning to regret it.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Let us move on anyway.
   MR RAMPTON:  "Made at a press conference in Berlin, namely that
        Germany would be reunited within 12 months", and that is a
        prophecy which came true.  "My reputation as prophet being
        confirmed, I will allow myself some prognoses for the
        coming five, ten, fifteen years.  Within these I see the
        possibility of a conversion of the Austrian economy to
        German marks, a political drawing together of the German
        speaking peoples of Europa" or Europe?
   A.   Europe.
   Q.   "The emergence of a German economic community with an
        incredible potential for the German mark within the next
        ten years, with the possibility of gradually outplaying
        the EEC.  Germany would use this economic power in order
        to help the backward countries in the East of Europe,
        therefore expand a kind of German empire", "imperium"
        I think is the word?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "In the East.  The German economic hegemony would then, in
        the course of ten to twenty years, extend to Poland, the
        Ukraine, White Russia and the original German sphere of
        interest the Baltic States.  Within the framework of a

.          P-179



        just settlement with Warsaw, in which the partial
        repayment of the Polish debts should play a not
        insignificant role, it would result in a return of the
        German Eastern territories, only sparsely settled by Poles
        anyway.  In the framework of a partnership with the Russia
        people, but mind you not the criminal Soviet
        government" -- January 1991? Well, never mind. "It would
        also result in a blossoming of the Russian economy and a
        return of Kalingrad and Northeast Prussia to Germany.  In
        this context the events in Latvia play a role that can
        barely be overestimated".
                  Assume, if you will, Dr Funke for the moment
        that that was going to form the topic of an article or a
        speech amongst one of these right-wing groups in Germany,
        how do you calculate its likely popularity?
   A.   I mean because of the subtle strategical tone in this
        piece, it may be perceived as a kind of authoritative
        speech to this audience, because what is done in this
        piece is to take the economic strategies, the economic
        widening of the influence of the German mark area, to get
        to a political resettling of borders and this is the point
        that people of that kind of camp are interested in, you
        know, to re-arrange the borders in Eastern and near
        Eastern, central East Europe, and using conflicts between
        the ethnics, different ethnics with respect to the German
        ethnic interests or resettling aspects.  So this is to the

.          P-180



        core of those activism of right-wingers in the early 90s.
   Q.   Then I will in the light of that answer show you, if
        I may, the Halle transcript.  I am afraid here we have not
        had time to transcribe the German, but we have translated
        it directly off the tape on to the page, which clever
        people can do.
   MR IRVING:  Is this my transcript or your transcript?
   MR RAMPTON:  No, this is one we did last night directly from
        the tape.  I have already said.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Where are we going to put this, Mr Rampton?
   MR RAMPTON:  It maybe could go no the Worch section of RWE 2
        which is section 11 I think.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  If somebody can provide the page?
   MR RAMPTON:  26A and B.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  26A, yes.
   MR RAMPTON:  I would like you, Dr Funke, it is was done very
        quickly, I know, we have not got the German, but I would
        like you to look at the bottom of the page seven lines up,
        at the end of line he says:  "I as an Englishman", have
        you got that?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   "I as an Englishman must say I am really jealous of what
        will happen to Germany in the next five or ten or fifteen
        years", remember those figures?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Then in brackets applause?

.          P-181



   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Does the applause in this context for these sorts of
        words, does the applause surprise you or not?
   A.   Does it?
   Q.   Does the applause surprise you or not?
   A.   No.
   Q.   "In the next ten years you will get back the
        (unintelligible word) Eastern areas which today
        (unintelligible phrase).  You will probably gain the
        financial, the economic hegemony over all the previously
        lost countries of the former Soviet empire.  The
        Germans ... apparent cut, there you have to be careful
        because then the foreign countries, then the western
        powers, will do everything to prevent this happening, even
        when today the Federal Chancellor Kohl speaks about
        apparent cut, the future of England can only be secured in
        common friendship with the new Germany.  In this sense
        I stand by the parole, we might say the phrase, Germany
        first, cheers and shouts of sieg heil".
   MR IRVING:  "First" is wrong.  It is "forward".
   MR RAMPTON:  "Germany forwards".  Are you reading on?  Then
        Worch makes an appreciative speech.  How do you
        characterize, Professor Funke, those kinds of sentiments
        to an audience of this nature?
   A.   It plays with this greater Germany feelings of that kind
        of people.  Clearly it refers before to the matter of the

.          P-182



        Third Reich, the so-called matter of the Third Reich, to
        Rudolf Hess, a man of peace, who did the peace, according
        to Irving, with England, so then there is a reference to
        the joint, you know, venture he is up to between the white
        England and the white dominated or what have you Germany
        to have a hegemony over the always criticised East, the
        Bolshevik and post-Bolshevik East.  It is alluding to the
        former critics to the Soviet empire.  There you have again
        these kind of ideas how to manage it to have this greater
        Germany.  It includes a kind of implication that this
        cannot be without very intense conflicts with the western
        Allies or Western nations in the whole.  So this is a
        phrase that also you have again and again, that there will
        be some kind of conflict, even war, be it internally or be
        it internationally, and here you have a kind of subtle
        hint that they will do it, the bigger Germany, the greater
        German activists will do it, and it will cause conflicts
        with the Western nations.  I have to say as a political
        scientist that of course the border thing in Europe of 89
        follows, is one of the most debated and dangerous things
        we have, and this is true, as you know, also for the last
        century.  Gottfried Kussel, for example, said in this very
        Halle, you know, meeting just before this event happened
        that, if it is necessary, I do not want it, but if it is
        necessary, we will have an internal war; we will have a
        civil war in these countries, and as an Austrian he refers

.          P-183



        to Germany and Austria.
                  So you have this kind of war-mongering or at
        least implicationing of wars in this whole right-wing
        extremist utterances.
   Q.   Thank you.  There is only one other thing about this
        script or transcript, translation.  On the second page it
        says: "The future of England can only be secured in common
        friendship with the new Germany."  You talked about the
        white England.  Am I right, correct me if my history is
        wrong, did Hitler have an idea that England was the
        repository of some kind of pure Aryan race with whom he
        would like to be friends?
   A.   Yes, it was always his wavering not to be faced with a war
        with Great Britain, and in that sense these kind of white
        Aryan feelings are widespread also during the Nazi period
        and especially Hitler himself.
   Q.   Just before we leave this document which representing
        Mr Irving's words we think in Halle in 1991, just look at
        the top of the page.  In the light of the answers you gave
        earlier, well, we start at the top of Mr Irving's speech:
        "My dear Germans, I have known you for 30 years since
        I worked here for a year as steelworker in West Germany,
        and I as the first historian in the world wrote a book
        about the destruction of the German city, the middle
        German city Dresden, therefore, I have no fear to write
        the truth about what we, the English, committed against

.          P-184



        the German people in terms of war crimes during the Second
        World War.  I welcome it." Then there is applause and
        cheers.  Does that surprise you, Professor Funke?
   A.   No, not at all.  It shows, especially for these people, a
        clear identification with this kind of greater Germany
        thing, this kind of Nazi past, the past of heroic things,
        whereas, so to speak, those who realize the reasons of the
        more political and military defeat of national socialism,
        they in a way say in different forms, that of course this
        Second World War by Churchill and the Americans, and even
        the Soviets, had to be done to crush Adolf Hitler down.
        This is, so to speak, the alternative level consensus of
        postwar Germany.
   Q.   Thank you.
   A.   Only because of that, just to put another sentence to it,
        only because of this defeat there was a chance to rebuild
        democracy, and that means especially the recognition of
        human dignity of the basic human rights.

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