Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day007.03 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Whether or not Hans Ficher is talking about this meeting one does not know because one has not got the full text, but assume that he is, then what he said was: From the invitation, whatever that means, it was evident that evacuation or sterilization were on the agenda. What was . P-18 discussed at that meeting was to how to deal with the mischlinge and their parents the mischehen, and the question arose should they be sterilized, should they be evacuated, should they be allowed to stay where they are? That is what was discussed, was it not? A. Well we have of course two different versions of the same meeting. We have several different versions of the same meeting. We have the wartime minute taken by the one that you referred to us from the Foreign Ministry files, which of course was before me, but we also have the other sources of that meeting. Q. Mr Irving, the document that you referred to and relied on in the account that you gave in your book Goebbels is this document. A. I specifically refer also to these interrogations of Ficher and Bohle and the rest in this paragraph. Q. Do not move the goal posts please, Mr Irving. It is no good talking about some other memorandum. This is the memorandum which you footnoted in Goebbels, is it not? A. These gentlemen are clearly referring to this conference in their interrogations because they say it was at the headquarters of Heydrich, which pins it down as being this conference where the talk is about Jews being supplied like cattle. MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are missing, I think, Mr Rampton's point on this, and I do not think we want to spend very long on . P-19 it. It is that the evacuation and sterilisation that were on the agenda may have been the evacuation or sterilisation of mischlinge? A. It may be. MR RAMPTON: You do not tell your readers that, do you? You do not tell your readers that the discussion at this conference was confined to the fate of the mischlinge and the mischehen. A. I am sure that Professor Evans would have spent eight pages on this one detail, but I am writing a book which has to be kept into the confines of one bound volume. Q. Unless you will answer my questions, we are going to have a bad day. Will you answer my question? You do not tell the readers that the discussion at this conference was confined to the fate of the mischlinge and mischehen, do you? A. Will you allow me to read again what I have written? Q. Yes, indeed. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not take long because really the answer to that question must be yes, that you are conveying to the reader that it is the whole question that is being postponed until the end of the war? A. I think, My Lord, that I have stated on several occasions in the Goebbels' book, and your Lordship will remember the case of Gottschalt having caused Hitler particular agony, in my submission; that I have repeatedly referred to the . P-20 fact, to the question of the mixed marriages and mixed races was a thorn in the side of the Nazis because they did not know how to treat them, which side of the line to put them. I cannot keep on, in a book which is for publication, coming back and reminding readers of things that the intelligent reader will be carrying in his brain anyway. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Rampton was asking you about the passage at page 388, I think. MR RAMPTON: I was, yes. A. Well, I think that the lines, about 10 lines down, where Goebbels is quoted as saying: "For the time being that it be concentrated in the East, undoubtedly, there will be a multitude of personal tragedies, but this is unavoidable". We then go straight on to talk about the March 6th conference. I am making it in a way that a responsible writer should. I did not want to put the whole contents of this 10 page memorandum into a book at this point. That would have been acres of sludge again. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to put it once more and I cannot go on making speeches through questions which are never answered. The fact is you that you led the reader in this passage to believe that what was discussed at the conference on 6th March was the fate of the Jews . P-21 generally, that that then went to Hitler, via Lammers, and Hitler made a ruling that the fate of the Jews generally was not to be considered or discussed at that time. That is a total distortion of the evidence which you had before you when you wrote that. A. I totally disagree with you, Mr Rampton. The evidence of Bohle, that there was talk there of delivering the Jews to the East like so many head of cattle, that is no longer talking about the mixed marriage problem. They are talking about the overall Holocaust in the way that I have accepted it can be defined and perceived. Q. If you can find in this memorandum which you have cited in your book reference to the general question, please show it to us, otherwise that is my last question. A. Mr Rampton, I have referred to the fact that I do not just rely on one document. I do not jump from mountain peek to mountain peek. I look at all the surrounding hills as well. MR JUSTICE GRAY: There we are. That is the Schlegelberger note. MR RAMPTON: I think, my Lord, that will do. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I was not intending to embark on anything new at the moment. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the plan is we have your witness so he is not kept waiting. . P-22 MR RAMPTON: As Professor Cameron Watt is here, he had better give evidence. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I think so, Mr Irving, if you would like to revert to your role as counsel? < (The witness stood down) MR IRVING: Can Professor Cameron Watt be called? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course. < PROFESSOR CAMERON WATT, sworn. < Examined by MR IRVING. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, would you be more comfortable sitting down? You are welcome to sit down. MR IRVING: I was going to make precisely the same suggestion, my Lord. (To the witness): Professor Watt, thank you very much for coming today. You are appearing, of course, under a witness summons. I want to make that quite plain to the court and you are not appearing voluntarily, so no odium can attach to you for coming and being called for the defence, for my defence, in other words, for the Plaintiff in this action. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we introduce Professor Watt and ask him about his background? MR IRVING: Yes. Professor Watt, your name is Donald Cameron Watt? A. It is. Q. You are Emeritus Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science? . P-23 A. Yes. Q. How long were you teaching at the London School of Economics? A. From 1954 to 1993. 39 years altogether. Q. 39 years a Professor of History at the London School of Economics? A. I did not have the rank of Professor until 1971, but I was on the staff. Q. You enjoy the reputation of being something of a grand gentleman, a doyen, of the historical profession in this country? A. I think it is very difficult for an individual to say what their reputation is in the minds of other people. I certainly can only say that I have held a number of senior positions in international organizations devoted to historical research. Q. Thank you. You describe yourself as an historian, writer and broadcaster. You are all three things? A. These are the various sources of my income, yes. Q. You were educated at Rugby and at Oriel College in Oxford; is that correct? A. Yes. Q. You served in the Army in the Intelligence Corp.? A. I did. Q. And that you were with the British troops in Austria in the occupation forces after World War II? . P-24 A. From 1947 to '48, yes. Q. 1947 to '48. Would you tell the court, Professor Watt, what you were engaged with in the years following your Army service? A. Following my Army service, I had three years reading politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford because only that way could you deal with 20th century history at that time; and I indulged myself in the usual activities of undergraduate. That is to say, I wrote, I played opera, I ran the Poetry Society -- I had a number of activities of that kind. Q. And you became a member of the Foreign Office Research Department? A. I was attached to it, yes -- I do not think I was ever a full member -- from 1951 to 1954, and then again on a part-time basis from 1957 to 1960. Q. Yes. Interesting. So you are quite familiar in a way with the kinds of documents, Foreign Office, diplomatic documents, that we have been looking at in this court this morning, for example. The ones with the serial numbers, the six digit serial numbers stamped on the bottom? A. The ones with the serial numbers are the ones -- those serial numbers are the way we recorded them on our index cards. They represent the serial number of the individual film and the frame number of the particular page. Q. The British, in fact, captured all the German Foreign . P-25 Office records? A. They fell into the hands mainly of the British and Americans, were collected in Berlin and were evacuated. The whole project for editing them and publishing them was evacuated from Berlin at the time of the Berlin airlift. Q. Did they go to a place called Waddon Hall? A. Waddon Hall near Bletchley, yes. Q. Near Bletchley, near the code breaking establishment? A. Yes. We had no relationship with them at all. Q. Nobody knew about them? A. Well, we knew they were there. There wee too many of them to be concealed and some of them played their part in ordinary social activities, but what they were actually doing, no, we did not know. Q. Would you give the court, in most general terms, one or two lines, a picture of the scale and scope of the captured German documentation? Was it small or large? A. Well, at Waddon itself, we had 400 tonnes ---- Q. 400 tonnes? A. --- of documents covering the records of the German Foreign Ministry and of its Prussian predecessor from 1860 onwards. We also had access to those files of the German Navy, the Reichsmarines, had fallen into British hands at Blenzburg and we had an odd collection of documents from the Nazi leaders, from the offices of the adjutantur of the Fuhrer, for example ---- . P-26 Q. Hitler's Adjutants? A. --- and a number of private, collections of private papers that were found with the Foreign Ministry archives. Q. Interrupting here at this moment, Professor Watt. Can I just ask you, when did we last meet -- 30 years ago? A. 30 years ago, I think it was, yes. Q. Have we had any discussion about what you are going to be saying today beyond just the invitation and my saying that it would just be very painful and very short? A. No. Q. I have not rehearsed you in any way as to what to say? A. No.
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