Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.17
Last-Modified: 2000/07/25

   Q.   It all comes from plate 2, does it not?
   A.   Mr Rampton, if you are saying that plate 2 starts on page
        18 ----
   Q.   I am.
   A.   Do you know how many images there were per plate?
   Q.   I have no idea.
   A.   Ah.
   Q.   I can count the pages, Mr Irving.  I do not need images.
   A.   It was either 25 ----
   Q.   35.  It does not matter.
   A.   It does, because I think that you will find that the
        remaining images you got here probably come from yet a
        third plate.
   Q.   No.
   A.   Because you could not have had more than a certain number
        of images.  Unfortunately, unless your Lordship has in
        front of you the actual colour photograph I gave you what
        the plates look like, I think those were the handwritten
        pages.  I am sorry, that would not apply.  That is
        handwritten pages and not the typed pages.  The typed
        pages have more to a page than the handwritten images.
   Q.   They seem to have got on to this plate, plate 2, and I do

.          P-150



        not know whether plate 2 ends on 13th December.  I think
        not, because the Russians tell us that the second plate is
        partly the 13th and partly the 14th, but we see, of the
        13th, they got a total of 59 minus 18, which is 41 pages,
        and the whole of what you transcribed came from plate 2,
        not from plate 1, as you would have us believe.
   A.   I am anxious not to put my foot in it by saying something
        ill considered.  The final page in the clip appears to be
        the end of the day's entry, does it not?
   Q.   It might be that it is, and it may be that there are some
        more pages in the plate relating to 14th December.  It
        might be, it might not be, it might be the end of the
        plate, I have no idea.  I suspect it is not the end of the
        plate because of what the Russians have just told us.
        However, the fact is that, starting on page 26, that is
        say, roughly speaking, eight pages into plate 2, you then
        succeed in transcribing your way all the way through in
        bits and pieces with some left out, to page 38.  Yes?
   A.   Right.  I am sorry.  I am getting the picture now.
        Obviously, you have thrown this at me just now as I am
        trying to get the overall picture.  You know this better
        than I do.  Which pages of the large type face have
        I actually transcribed?
   Q.   No.  They are not continuous.
   A.   Yes, I know that.
   Q.   You start on page 26, you continue on page 27.  There is

.          P-151



        then a gap starting at the bottom two lines of 27, and
        going through to the end of the first three lines on page
        30.  You then start again at "Ich habe noch gelegenheit".
   A.   And there is nothing on those pages that I have taken out
        that you are worried about?
   Q.   No, nothing at all.  This is not what I am driving at.
   A.   All right.  I think this is the way to do it.
   Q.   You then transcribe the whole of page 31.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   The whole of page 32, the whole of page 33 and the first
        three lines of page 34.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   You then jump to page 38, where you transcribe all but the
        last two lines of the large paragraph on that page.
   A.   In the part that has been jumped there is there anything
        significant?
   Q.   No, nothing significant.
   A.   All right, so that is unimportant.
   Q.   I do not know whether there is or there is not.  I am not
        interested in that.
   A.   That is the way to do it, so I know what you are getting
        at.
   Q.   Exactly.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   The fact is you managed to get to page 38 of a diary entry
        which, considering its date, is recording the speech to

.          P-152



        the Gauleiters and I think the Reichskommissars and,
        considering its date, is a very important entry.
   A.   Yes, if one had known that was there.  But you have to
        remember, I am looking at these glass plates through
        something the size of my little finger nail like this all
        day long, dictating on to a tape.
   Q.   Are you seriously telling me that you resisted the
        temptation to read this important speech of the Fuhrer
        from end to end, start to finish?
   A.   There was a temptation to read the entire 50,000 pages,
        this is true.
   Q.   Never mind the 50,000 glass pages.
   A.   There is a limitation.  I knew I was only going to be in
        Moscow for a few days before I flew back to England.
   Q.   You are, or purport to be, an historian with a particular
        interest in Adolf Hitler.  Adolf Hitler makes a important
        speech on 12th December 1941, which is recorded by his
        chum Joseph Goebbels.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   You are in the middle of this important speech.  Are you
        telling me that your ordinary curiosity would not have
        compelled you to read on to the end of this speech?
   A.   I have to say that, even had I seen it, and this is an
        entirely different question, I would not have attached any
        importance to it, because it is the old Adolf Hitler
        gramophone record again.  But the question you are asking

.          P-153



        is why I did not read ahead and see that kind of thing was
        there, and the answer is quite simply I did not, so I did not.
   Q.   I am suggesting that you did.  It is to be found at the
        bottom of page 50, the relevant passage.
   MR RAMPTON:  Bezuglich der Judenfrage ist der Fuhrer
        enschlossen, reinen tisch zu machen.
   A.   Yes.  Can you me where I stopped reading?
   Q.   You stopped reading eleven pages earlier, bottom of page
        38.  Actually, to be fair, in lines it is probably 12 pages.
   A.   So it was not a question of kind of my eye not running
        over on to the next page.  I would have had to read on
        twelve pages on the glass plate, and then said to myself,
        hey, this is important, but I am afraid to say I would not
        have, for the simple reason that none of the other people
        present at that Gauleiter meeting, none of the other
        Gauleiters, and there were 48 of them, bothered to write
        anything about this particular speech being any different
        from the others.
   Q.   Were you aware at this date when you were examining these
        plates, Mr Irving, what to you at one time at least was
        passionately important, that is to say, what you believed
        to be the signal ending the Final Solution, Himmler's
        telephone call to Heydrich on 30th November of this year,
        that is to say 12 years before the event which this diary

.          P-154



        entry records?
   A.   12 days?
   Q.   12 days.  What did I say?  12 years?
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   It is obviously not 12 years, is it?  12 days.  That is
        elephantine, Mr Irving, but we will not worry about that.
        You knew well about that diary entry, did you not?
   A.   Yes.  I knew about a lot of documents, yes.
   Q.   No, no.  This is one of your cherished icons, or it was
        until it was shattered.
   A.   Said to have been, yes, but I do not agree that it was.
        It was one of a long series of documents.
   Q.   This was Hitler ordering a final end to any shooting of
        Jews for ever, or killing of Jews for ever.  If you look
        at the introduction to the 1977 edition of Hitler's War,
        we can all see that.
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   Are you really telling me that a speech made 12 days after
        that crucially important event in your mind, you come upon
        a Hitler speech at the meeting with the Gauleiters and the
        Reichskommissars, and you do not read the whole of the speech?
   A.   Quite simply did not, because of the very scarce resource,
        namely time.  The archive opened and closed at set hours.
        I was only going to be in Moscow for two more days.
        I think this is already probably the last page of notes

.          P-155



        that Miss Teplar made of our actual discoveries.  We were
        running out of time.  I could not afford just to indulge
        my curiosity.  I had a shopping list to fill for the
        Sunday Times.  There were certain items we were trying to
        obtain.  I was reading these glass plates under extreme
        conditions of awkwardness, namely using a 16 times little
        thumbnail magnifier.  I did not do badly under the
        circumstances, and I agree I should be horse whipped for
        having not seen that there but, even had I seen it,
        I would not have used it, I do not think.
   Q.   You would have suppressed it anyway, would you?  It does
        not seem to you significant?
   A.   I do not think so.  I think the Schlegelberger document is
        of far greater significance than this.  This is just the
        old Adolf Hitler gramophone record.  I made that prophecy
        then and they do it ----
   Q.   Sure.  This is the prophecy coming to actuality, if I may
        borrow from the French for a moment.  It is being
        realized.  He prophesied to the Jews that, if they should
        once more bring about a world war, they would experience
        their own annihilation in doing so.  This was no mere
        talk.  This is on 12th December.  The world war is there.
        The annihilation of Jewry must be the necessary
        consequence.  Then why was the world war there,
        Mr Irving?  Why was Hitler speaking to the Gauleiters on
        12th December?  The reason is that he declared war on

.          P-156



        United States the day before.
   A.   That is right.  He had picked up the gauntlet.
   Q.   Yes.  Do you tell me honestly that you did not think that
        that speech by Adolf Hitler the day after the declaration
        of war by Germany on the United States, making this into a
        world war, was something you were not interested in
        reading from beginning to end?
   A.   This is the difficulty.  If you are sitting in a library,
        in your book lined cave, just picking volumes off a shelf
        with an index and a contents list, with the content of
        every entry in the diary, then this is made so easy for
        you.  But, if you sitting in a Russian archive without
        even a microfilm reading machine, and you are looking at
        glass plates, and you are the first person to open those
        boxes in 55 years, you have not the faintest idea what
        lies ahead of you.
   Q.   This is the date, is it not, Mr Irving, on which in effect
        Hitler, having declared war on the United States and thus
        having brought about a world war, declares war on the
        Jews?
   A.   No.
   Q.   He says to them, does he not: "Right, mates, you brought
        about the first war, I told you that you would be for it
        if there was a second war.  Now this is it.  Face the music".
   A.   Actually, the declaration of war was the next day.

.          P-157



   Q.   What, the 13th?
   A.   That is right.  Hitler declared war on the United States
        on 13th December, and the speech is on the 12th.  The
        diary entry is the 13th, but Goebbels also wrote it up one
        day later.  It is not any significance, that point, just ----
   Q.   I rather think it may be.  I had always thought that it
        was 11th December.  I do not know why I thought that.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Just pause a moment.
   MR RAMPTON:  They think it is the 11th, too.  They know a lot
        of history, far more than I do.
   A.   I would not bet on it, but I think I am right.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think there is a reference, which caught my
        eye as I was looking through, in Goebbels diary to the
        United States.  I cannot now find it.
   MR RAMPTON:  Dr Longerich thinks it is the 11th, my Lord.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  What would be conclusive, with all respect to
        him, is if Goebbels mentioned it as having happened before
        he wrote his diary entry.
   MR RAMPTON:  Or if Mr Irving did, but I cannot find it in the index.
   A.  It would be in my book Hitler's War, but of course that is
        just a pack of lies, is it not?
   MR RAMPTON:  No.  There are some things that are right.  For
        example, the name on the cover, Hitler, and war.
   A.   I think a sudden silence is going to fall among the---
-

.          P-158



   Q.   It is quite an important point so, if your Lordship does
        not mind, we will find out, on the best authority, when it
        was declared.
   A.   I think it is a "Who wants to be a millionaire" question,
        is it not?
   Q.   Not really, I think.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Page 15 of Goebbels diary entry?
   MR RAMPTON:  Page 15 in this Russian version, my Lord?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Yes.  I am not sure if it actually does
        answer the question, but it is coming close.

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