Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.16 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang on, just let us try to -- the documents are in such a mess, I am not even sure that I know which clip you are ---- MR IRVING: Bundle B, my Lord, pages 10 and 11 -- no, bundle D. Bundle D. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I am there. MR IRVING: Yes. These are the end notes for the original edition of Hitler's War which we are already at page 2,653. It is the original note 63 which was never published, but it does contain this quotation of Lammers speaking at Nuremberg, volume 11, page 61. I accept it is a brief excerpt and you are entitled to impugn it on that ground. A.Yes. Q.Does this not appear to refer to this particular episode? A.It is not very satisfactory. One would wish to see the original. Q.The original document, yes? A.I mean, we are relying on your notes here, Mr Irving - - it is always a risky thing to do. Q.But you accept that this bundle has been before the instructing solicitors now for some two weeks, and that if . P-142 I had got it wrong, no doubt one of their army of researchers would have by now brandished it and Mr Rampton would have been on his hind legs. MR RAMPTON: Thank you very much for that, Mr Irving. You may keep your insults to yourself. The fact is -- and, indeed, imply them to yourself if you wish -- this document, whatever it may be, if Mr Irving has relied upon it, should have been disclosed by him. MR IRVING: By what? MR JUSTICE GRAY: By you. MR RAMPTON: By you. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks as if it was though. MR RAMPTON: "What" may be the right description. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks as if it was. MR IRVING: It has been disclosed. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is 2653, is it not. MR IRVING: Oh, 2653 is part of the discovery. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I thought. MR RAMPTON: No, no, no, the original document. MR IRVING: Well, the original ---- MR RAMPTON: If I am looking at page 10 of what Mr Irving calls his ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is it will be in Munich, will it not? A.Yes. MR IRVING: Well, no, my Lord. The answer is it will be one of . P-143 the 46 blue volumes of the Nuremberg trial proceedings, which are no longer in my custody, possession or power, of course. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because they are in Germany? MR IRVING: Well, they are probably in every major library in the world. A.Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then why can we not -- why do you say the Defendants have to go and get it? MR IRVING: I provided this excerpt, but I can certainly provide the entire passage and your Lordship is quite right ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have just accepted this really is not all that helpful by itself. MR IRVING: Yes, you are absolutely right, my Lord, and I will certainly provide the entire excerpt. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we chase that up? MR IRVING: Yes. But my point there is it has been now, both by way of discovery of the original German text and also in this bundle before the Defence now for two weeks, in this excerpted form, and I feel quite sure that had there been any discrepancy we would have heard about it. So, witness, if I can ask you the question, Lammers there is appearing to say that at some time he took the matter up with Hitler, including evacuation, whatever is meant by that, and Hitler said, yes, he had . P-144 given the evacuation order to Himmler, he did not want to hear any more about this whole thing until after the war is over? A.He did not want any more briefings, yes. Q.Yes. So this is very much in the same kind of line as the Schlegelberg memorandum, Schlegelberger memorandum? MR JUSTICE GRAY: On your interpretation of it? MR IRVING: On any interpretation, my Lord. A.On your interpretation. Q.I am just saying it is in line, in the same kind of line. I am not talking about being a dilatory Fuhrer -- somebody who was always postponing things until tomorrow. Now we have more interrogations, if we have finished with that particular one, Professor? A.Yes. Q.Professor, you yourself have quoted at somewhat greater length than I have interrogations of people like Ficker and Boley? A.Yes. Q.Can I just start off by looking at my excerpts? If you wish to draw attention to any further excerpts that you have made -- this is page 12? A.Yes. Q."Cabinet Counselor Hans Ficker of the Reichs Chancellery stated in 1947: from the invitation to the March 6th meeting 'it was evident that evacuation or sterilisation . P-145 were on the agenda'. They took minutes. Lammers took this minute to the Fuhrer, and returned with a memorandum, 'The discussion of the whole affair is to be postponed until the after the end of war'"? A.Yes. Q.That must have been in March 1942, full stop, and he continues, "'To our horror, we learned that that then continued behind the scenes'"? A.Yes. Q.And the original German is on the following pages, I think. Now, do you agree that on the basis of that evidence they did not just discuss sterilization, but wider matters as well? A.No, no. This is rather unreliable evidence, particularly this, "'To our horror, we learned that that then continued behind the scenes'" ---- Q.Yes. I understand you do not like that, yes. A.--- which I think is a very obvious piece of self-exculpation. Q.Unless it is true? A.Ficker, if you look at the Himmler Dienstagebuch, Ficker actually had dinner with Himmler seven times in 1942 to 3 at the height of the extermination of the Jews and it beggars belief to suppose that it continued. It also beggars belief to think that the, I suppose he means extermination of the Jews here, carried on behind the . P-146 scenes without Hitler or anybody in the senior positions knowing about it. Ficker and Boley, Ficker himself admitted that he and Boley were together in an internment camp after the war, and they discussed the meeting of 6th March 1942 more than a dozen times. In other words, they cooked up a story, or a kind of version of the events, between themselves, which would exculpate themselves. That does not mean to say that everything they said was wrong, but one has to regard what they said with extreme caution, particularly what Ficker says, because he was not actually at the meeting of 6th March 1942 himself. There is also a problem when you look at what we are calling the Schlegelberger memorandum, because that simply reports Lammers's view that Hitler, in a kind of ongoing way, had said, repeatedly said, that he wanted the solution to the Jewish question postponed until after the war. It does not say that there was a specific meeting about the event. So I think we have to regard all of these later documents ---- Q.Unless Lammers had gone to Hitler and Hitler said, "Herr Lammers, how often have I told you I do not want to hear about this"? A.I think he would have said that he had gone to Hitler because then that would have meant that he had got from Hitler a kind of decision about this, and that is not what happened. That is not what happened. . P-147 Q.We do not know. We are just tied to the documents in front of us. A.In you take the contemporary documents, still remembering that it is uncertain whether it really was from the spring of 1942, and if you regard the contemporary document as superior evidence of these cooked up stories from after the war in allied captivity by people who were trying to save their skins, then I think there is no indication that Herr Lammers did go specifically to Hitler. I think, if Lammers went specifically to Hitler and got a ruling, as it were, then it would have been in a different form from this rather unsatisfactory scrap of paper we have. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, do you think that that is borne out if you look at the text of the Schlegelberger memorandum? Because whatever the tense of "habe" and however you translate that, what it appears to me to be saying is that the Fuhrer has been on and on about postponing the solution of the Jewish question. A.Yes. Q.Then he (Lammers) infers that the present discussions, which you say are about Mischlinge, are only of theoretical value. A.Exactly, my Lord. Q.Which is a very odd way of expressing himself if he had actually gone to Hitler and had, as it were, an instruction from Hitler. . P-148 A.Precisely the point. MR IRVING: Is it possible, my Lord, I discussed this question with your Lordship, that Lammers, being an experienced Civil Servant, did not want to burn his fingers by taking it up with Hitler again and just said this to the minister? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not your case. MR IRVING: No, it is not. But it is dangerous to speculate too far, to go too far outside ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. I agree. MR IRVING: -- the parameters of the documents. We are just trying to establish what the document can have meant, who knew about it and whether in fact these statements are self serving. Professor Evans, if there were a number of people who were at this meeting and they were all held in allied internment camps, would there not have been a strong temptation for one of them to have purchased early release by shopping the others? Did that not happen quite a lot? A.I thought you said we should not speculate too much. Q.Can I ask you if you have ever heard the witness Wilhelm Hottl H-O-T-T-L, who was an SS officer? A.Where does he appear in relation to the Schlegelberger memorandum? Q.This is a typical example of a witness at Nuremberg who purchased favourable treatment by providing statements . P-149 that the Allies wanted to hear. A.What has this to do with the Schlegelberger memorandum? Which of these people, I mean Ficker or Boley? Ficker was not there so we discount him. Is it Boley then, whom you are saying purchased ---- Q.I am not trying to trick you into an answer. I am just asking you if it is not likely that, if there were several people in the allied interrogation centres or internment camps who had knowledge of this very delicate matter, and one of them had information that is the kind of information that the Allies wanted to hear, he would have been quite happy to shop his colleagues by turning it in in order to get an early release date? A.That is totally hypothetical. Which person are you talking about here who did that in relation to the Schlegelberger memorandum, and what is the evidence for it? Q.Was Gottfried Boley present? A.Yes, at the 6th March meeting. Indeed. Q.Did he on September 14th 1945 -- I am now on the second paragraph of my page 12, my Lord -- describe Eichmann's uncouth behaviour at this conference and say how Eichmann used language about Jews being supplied like cattle or being shipped around? One man had objected, "one can't proceed against the Jews who behave correctly", and Eichmann's number 2 said, "that comes under our police . P-150 judgment". Is that a self-serving statement, do you think, a man describing that the conference was conducted in these uncouth terms? A.I think, if he had been really self-serving, he would not have said not "one man", he would have said he protested. Q.Yes, but why did he have to put in these ugly details about a conference that he attended? A.If I had been Boley and wanted to exculpate myself, I would have that I was the man who objected. I would have said, "I said one cannot proceed against Jews that have behaved correctly, and I raise objections to all this," but he does not do that, does he? Q.His final statement on June 10th 1947 in the final paragraph, where he says that Kritzinger sent him to the conference, Eichmann was in the chair, there were 20 or 25 participants, and he then testifies at this conference there was no talk of "really grim things", but of the preliminaries, the evacuation and sterilization. A.Exactly so.
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