Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day017.05 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. Would I be right in suggesting that this order effectively created a killing field, and that anybody else who fitted the title of Jew who came within that killing field was therefore at risk, put it that way? A. This certainly creates an atmosphere in which clearly there will be lots of killing and it will not be restricted to military combat, that there will be killing of those that are seen to be an ideological and racial enemy, as well as military. I think, when we look at, in a sense, the kinds of proposals that are brought forward, very revealing are not only the Kommissar order and the agreement between the military and the Einsatzgruppen, but the economic plans that come forward, such as the May 2nd meeting of the State secretaries, in which they say, for Germany to be blockade proof, we must take lots of material out of the Soviet Union, and we must be very clear that, when we do this, umpteen million Russians are going to starve to death. So we have an atmosphere of a war of destruction in which civilian life is going to be . P-37 totally cheap. Q. He does not say, as a result of our taking economic goods out of the country, millions of people, preferably Jews, are going to die. That is just any Russians? A. This is that lots of Russians will die, lots of civilians will die. Then, of course, if we cast that, as an historian, to put it into the wider context, you would not disagree with that, I think. Q. Yes. A. The wider context basically is where people have been shot, Jews have been shot in larger percentages than others, where people have starved, the Jews have starved first. So, if you have a programme of shooting and starving, one can begin with the fact that there is going to be a large loss of Jewish life, that this would be clear to anyone in the context of Nazi Germany in the spring of 41. That is not yet. That is not yet an explicit order for the killing of Soviet Jewry. It is a creation of, we might say, a hunting licence. No one will get into trouble killing Jews. One will get credits rather than anything against them. Q. I agree entirely, but the focus is at this stage on this document strictly, shall we say, the upper 10,000? It is the Judao-Bolshevik intelligentsia and their hierarchy, all the way down to the Kommissars, is that right? A. The focus is selective killing and indiscriminate . P-38 starvation. Q. The emphasis is on this as a measure of war? This is the kind of war we are going to be fighting? A. No. The emphasis is on measure of a war that is understood to be both military and ideological and racial. Q. A war to the death, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Browning, where do you get indiscriminate starving from? A. That is a document I believe is not one that I cited. It is a protocol of a meeting of the State secretaries on May 2nd 1941. It is a Nuremberg document, in which the protocol is that we all agree that, when we take out of the Soviet Union what is necessary to make Germany blockade proof, we must be perfectly clear that this will mean the mass starvation of umpteen million Russians. So it is a document that speaks to what was clear to everybody involved in the planning process, that this war of destruction was going to mean a vast loss of life. Given what had happened in Poland, I would argue, everyone understood that, in a vast loss of life, Jewish life was even cheaper than other life. That is what I would call the beginning of this first phase of the decision making process. It sets up a genocidal atmosphere, it does not yet set up a systematic plan for total liquidation. MR IRVING: Can I leap forward ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am going to highlight that. . P-39 I am also going to suggest -- the questions have been fast and furious this morning. That is not a criticism. I suspect you would quite welcome a break and I am sure the transcriber would. It has been actually quite intensive this morning. MR IRVING: Can I have one short question? On that point we shall round it off and let us say that this kind genocidal order, is it not almost identical to the Morgantower decision of September 1944, where the Americans said, let us do this to the Germans, we do not care how many starve? A. I would have to look at that document before I could say whether it was similar or not. What we do know of course is that that document never was implemented. Q. It was signed by both Roosevelt and Churchill, was it not? A. I would have to see such a document. MR IRVING: Thank you. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think five minutes is enough just to have a breathing space. (Short Adjournment). MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can we just identify the Kommissar document you refer to? I am not sure I know where that is. MR IRVING: The Kommissar order is in May 1941, I believe, about May 7th or May 5th. These March 1941 documents, I believe I am right in saying, are the kind of working . P-40 level papers, are they not? I do not know exactly what is before the witness. I do not have copies of these documents. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I only mention it and perhaps we can locate it in due course. MR IRVING: The Kommissar order is important because it was dictated by Hitler to General Jodl, I think, so it very clearly represents Hitler's thoughts. That would be useful if I do obtain a copy and bring it into court tomorrow. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we can at some stage, yes. MR IRVING: May I ask what this particular document was that you were quoting from? A. The State secretary's meeting. Q. No, the actual one with the references to the Judao-Bolshevik intelligentsia? A. This is footnote 137 from page 55 from the opinion by Peter Longerich. Q. And there are two more documents that Mr Rampton wished you to consider, I believe? MR RAMPTON: Yes. They are just summarized on pages 55 and 56. There in fact may be four, paragraphs 15.1, 15.2, two documents, and 15.3 on page 56, all in March of 1941. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you very much. Professor Browning, looking at those further documents, they do not, as it were, perhaps add anything, but they maybe confirm . P-41 what you have already said in relation to the 3rd March document. Is that fair?. A. Yes. What I think they confirm is that Hitler does not see this, and does not want his generals and others to see it, as a conventional war, but that it has a very strong ideological dimension to it, and that the enemy to be destroyed is not just the Soviet army and its power to resist, but what he considers to be Judao-Bolshevism, communism, he uses different phrases. MR IRVING: Would it be right to say that at this time Hitler had knowledge of the manner in which the Soviet Union fought its wars, both its colonial wars as in Spain, for example, and also in the Finnish winter war of 1939 to 1940? A. What picture the German intelligence portrayed of the Soviet Union in all of this, is an area that others have studied, it is not an area that I think I could speak with authority. Q. Would he be familiar with the activities of the Russian Kommissars within the Red Army hierarchy? A. It is very likely he would have been given even a more lurid description than maybe would have been historically accepted but that is just speculation on my part. As I say, I cannot think of any documents at the moment that I could speak from with authority. Q. The Soviet Commissart system was a political agitator, am . P-42 I correct, within each Army unit to make sure that they pointed their guns in the right direction, roughly? A. It was to establish, in a sense, a dual control of military units, someone who would be there with military expertise and someone with political, what they called reliability. Q. Did these Commissarts have an NKBD rank? A. That I do not know. Q. Can you estimate for the court approximately what percentage of these Commissarts were, in fact, Jewish? A. I have absolutely no idea. Q. No idea. Very well. But if a substantial percentage were either Jewish or were perceived by the Nazis to be Jewish, would that justify the kind of language that Hitler used in these military plannings for the coming Russian campaign? A. No, I do not see that Jews who were part of the NKBD, in a sense, often were totally secular Jews separate from the Jewish religious communities in these towns, that they had given up, in a sense, their Jewish identity. They were often all part of the Jewish communities that were going to face the onslaught of the genocide. So if you ask me is there a justification, my answer would be absolutely not. Q. Are you aware that, in fact, the Jewish community formed the backbone of the Red Army and of the NKBD? . P-43 A. I am certainly not aware of that and I doubt that that is the case. Q. Are you aware of the fact that 300 heroes of the Soviet Union of General's rank were Jewish? A. I do not know the number, but I do not know that it is relevant. Q. Welt, I am just trying to establish the fact there may have been a military reason for Hitler to have used this kind of language in preparing his Generals for the very ugly war that was to come. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If that were so, I just wonder, Professor Browning, whether the word "intelligenzija" would have been used? It is an odd word if one is talking in terms of talking military combat, is it not? Is that right or wrong? A. Well, I think for Hitler he equates Bolshevism and the Communists with Jews, and in a sense he is talking about -- he sometimes used "leadership", sometimes he uses "intelligenzija" and in his mind these are intertwined. Q. The point I was really putting to you is if one is talking about military extermination, if that is a fair way of putting it, one would expect to find a reference to not "intelligenzija" but "senior military personnel" or something of that kind? A. Yes, I mean, and that I think is there as well, but the fact that he adds these others would again reinforce the . P-44 point I am making that there is a strictly ideological racial dimension as well as a military dimension. Q. More than a struggle of arms? A. Yes. MR IRVING: Is it not right, however, also to say that in defeating the Soviet Union, he would not only have to defeat the Red Army, he would also have to defeat the Soviet hierarchy, the bureaucracy; he would have to eradicate that as well in order to implement the German colonial rule on those regions? A. Have to eradicate what? Q. The bureaucracy, the entire Bolshevik hierarchy? A. That certainly was his goal, yes. Q. And the Nazis frequently used the phrase "Jewish Bolshevik"; it had become a bit of a slogan, had it not? A. It was more than a slogan. It was a reflection of their mentality. Q. My Lord, I think we have taken that question as far as we can go, unless your Lordship has further questions on those particular documents? MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, not at all. MR RAMPTON: May I just add this? It may save time later on. Your Lordship was asking about the guidelines ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: --- for Barbarossa, conduct of troops. The date is 19th May 1941 and the relevant part is summarized in . P-45 and translated on page 5 of part 2 of Longerich. MR IRVING: Yes. This is not a Commissart order, but it is very much a parallel document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. That is very helpful. MR IRVING: It effectively says that ordinary court procedures will not apply and this kind of thing. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much, Mr Rampton. I was not aware of that at all. MR IRVING (To the witness): Are you familiar with those guidelines of May 19th 1941? Can you answer questions about it, roughly, were they specifically anti-Jewish in nature? A. There are, I would say, three key orders, one is the Commissart order, one is the order concerning military jurisdiction and then there is the troop, guidelines for the troops, in which "Jews", simply the term "Jews", is put in the same line with saboteurs, guerrillas, so that, in effect, Jews are created as a class that can be equated on the basis of who they are with other targets who are defined by what they do. This, of course, is the essence of a racial genocide. Q. Are you familiar with the origins of these three documents you have mentioned? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you mention them in your own report actually, do you not? A. I am not sure if I mention the three documents. . P-46
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