Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.20 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 MR IRVING: Yes. It was a matter which occurred to me quite simply because the witness talked about the entry of America into the war. MR RAMPTON: Yes, I know, but I mean there is no dispute that up until Hitler declared war on the USA, which is one of the stupidest things he ever did, amongst others, there was no question about that there was some kind of a plan to keep the Jews as hostages to try to prevent the Americans joining the war. It failed partly, as I say, because Hitler made the mad decision to declare war on the United States, but there it is. MR IRVING: He had bad counsel, did he not? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I personally do not get much help from . P-179 that because if it is designed to show that Hitler was merciful, it does not seem to do anything of the kind. MR IRVING: Can we now move on to the handwritten document of 18th December 1941? A.Yes. Q.Again very briefly. This is Himmler's notes originally for a conversation with Hitler, the conversation to take place at 4 p.m. on 18th December 1941. Do you have the handwritten notes? A.Yes, I do. Q.In my bundle? A.Yes. Q.In my little bundle? A.Yes, I have it. Q.On the left-hand side Himmler has written as one topic "Judenfrage"? A.Yes. Q."Jewish problem" -- unmistakable the word there because it is very clearly written? A.Yes. Q.On the right in a slightly different handwriting, probably in his green crayon, he has written "als partisan" and "als surotten"? A.Yes. Q.How do you translate that? A."To be extirpated as partisans". . P-180 Q.Yes, not "like partisans"? A.No, "as partisans". In other words, they are to be treated, the Jews are to be treated as partisans and killed. It is another of these, this rather thick, there is a kind of thickening of documents from the documentary record immediately after the declaration of war on America, and this is one of the documents that follows from that. Probably a fall out of Hitler's speech to the Gauleiters on 12th December. Q.On the following page but one, the next page but one, we have a table talk dated July 24th 1942? A.Yes. Q.This is not from the Henry (sic) Heim table talks now, this is from the ---- A.Heinrich Heim. Q.Heinrich Heim. I am sorry, before we do that one, can I direct your attention to one of the little documents I brought in this morning for you? Right at the end, it is typed in big typeface, it is a note on a conversation? A.I do not think I have got it. It is a picture is the last one. Q.Two or three pages before that, you should find two pages typed in large typeface? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Consisting of what? MR IRVING: Henrich Heim? A.Henrich Heim. . P-181 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have that. A.1862 is the number on the top right-hand side of it. It is in the small bundle beginning with the type, with a kind of ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have the bundle, but mine, obviously, does not extend as far as everybody else's. MR IRVING: In that case I will leave it then. It was purely the man who did the table talks who had -- perhaps that could be given? Do you have a copy of it, witness? A.Yes. Q.Right. Is this a memorandum drawn up by Henry Heim? A.Heinrich Heim. Q.Heinrich Heim? A.1968. Q.Yes. A.Rather a long time after the war. Q.Yes. Does he describe a conversation that he records -- was he the man who wrote Hitler's Table Talk? A.He was one of the three people who recorded Hitler's Table Talk, yes. Q.Will you look just briefly at the third page that is in front of you there which is another typescript page -- do you have it -- of an actual page of Hitler's table talk in German. A.Yes, with a "page 4" on top? Q.I think so, yes. . P-182 A.No. 4, yes. Q.This is one of the Henry Heim table talks which ---- A.Heinrich Heim, yes. Q.--- he himself typed, is that right? A.It is Heinrich Heim and Henry Picker. You must not confuse the two. Yes, it looks like it. There is no date or anything on it. Q.He was in a position to know things. He was at Hitler's table or at the next door table writing notes during his table talk? That is what he did, is it not? A.That is right, yes. Q.He was the adjutant to Martin Bormann? A.Yes. Q.In 1968, he remembers Adolf Hitler in December 1941, for what it is worth, and I throw that in and you will comment on that, does he not say: "I remember Hitler clearly saying in December 1941, 'I do not know what the Jews are complaining about. All I ask of them is that they go and do some good hard labour somewhere. I do not know even ask of them to go and serve in the armed forces'"? A.Yes. Q.Do you think that conversation took place or that remark was made by Hitler? He says there, "I forgot to write it down at the time"? A.Yes. Q.Does he not? Would you attach any kind weight to that . P-183 remark? A.I mean, not a great deal since Heim was a dyed in the wool old Nazi who ---- Q.Was he a war criminal? Was he arrested? A.--- was described by people who knew him as not really living in the real world and always had this incredibly rosy view of Hitler. Q.He was Hitler ---- A.This is about 40 years, nearly 40 years, after the event, and he is trying to tell everybody that Hitler cannot have known about Auschwitz. So I treat this with a certain degree of scepticism. Q.Well it was not 40 years, was it? It was slightly less. A.1941 to 1968. Q.Yes. But if he had said that in ---- A.Take off three years, if you like. Q.--- a German court of law at or about the same time there were numerous trials going on that had been quoted by the expert witnesses in their footnotes of German trials in the 1970s, so it is not impossible -- he says that this remark does keep coming back to him. He keeps on remembering it, does he not? Hitler having said, "I do not know what the Jews are complaining about. I just want them to be sent off to do hard work. I am not even asking them to go and fight in the armed forces"? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, just so that I am clear, you rely . P-184 on that as being Hitler's state of mind at this time? MR IRVING: According to this source ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. My question was you rely on this document as establishing that that was, indeed, Hitler's state of mind? MR IRVING: As far as I think the German Jews are concerned, yes. I do not think Heim is specific about which Jews he is talking about. I do not think he is throwing in all the wretched Jews in the Russian cities who have fallen into German hands. It is a document in the Institute of History. It is in their archives. They have conducted several interviews with Heim and, for what it is worth, I have put it in as yet another indication that the people who were close to Hitler never heard him saying anything different. On some occasions they heard him say things like this. Now, we ---- A.Yes, I mean, it is difficult to digest this, just having first seen it. I mean, I would not place a great deal of credence on this ---- Q.I am sorry you have just seen it. It has been in discovery for about 18 months. A.--- on this document. Well, it is just not a very convincing document. It may well be that Hitler made some kind of cynical remark like this, that Jews -- he was always saying the Jews had reason to be grateful to him. Q.Yes. . P-185 A.All he wanted from them is work. But I think that is just a cynical remark ---- Q.Yes. A.--- in the winter of 1941 to '42 and it does not ---- Q.Professor, I think you may very well be right, you may very well be right. A.It does not support the rather kind of romantic things that he goes on to say about Hitler later in the document. Q.Can you now look to a table talk written, not by Heim or probably not by Heim, but by Henry Picker who succeeded him? A.Yes. Q.July 24th 1942? A.Right. Q.It is the end of the first ---- A.Sorry, this is your -- you are still on page 4, is it? Q.I am sorry, it is in my bundle ---- A.Ah, yes, your bundle. Q.--- of my chain of documents? A.Yes, I have that. Q.At the end of the first full paragraph ---- A.Yes. Q.--- is Hitler quoted as saying: "After this war is over" -- there is that phrase again, is it not -- "after this war is over" ---- A.Yes. . P-186 Q.--- "I am going to stand rigorously on the standpoint that I am going to knock these cities' heads together", if you can put it like that, "if the Jews don't come out and we get rid of them to Madagascar or some other Jewish national state"? A.Yes. Q.Do you detect there two lines that I have been constantly putting to this court, first of all, the tendency of Hitler to postpone things until after the war is over and, secondly, the tendency for a geographical solution rather than for a homicidal solution, if I can put it like that? A.What I detect there, Mr Irving, is pure camouflage by Hitler. He is telling a group of people at dinner this complete porky pie about wanting to send them off to Madagascar. It is 24th July 1947, the time when the extermination programme is already in full swing. The camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Auschwitz are already in operation, Treblinka had just got its first contingent, and on 10th February 1942 there is a Foreign Office document who, in fact -- in which the official had first proposed the Madagascar plan, many months earlier than this document, says that the Fuhrer has decided that the Jews should be pushed off, not to Madagascar, but to the East. Madagascar, therefore, does not need to be foreseen for the Final Solution any more. So, on his own orders, the plan had been . P-187 abandoned in February, and here he is spinning this kind of smoke screen, to use your phrase, about it in his circle of acquaintances and officers and so in July 1942. So I think this is a ---- Q.So he is living in cloud cuckoo land then, is he not? A.No, he is deliberately trying to deceive his audience. Q.Or living in cloud cuckoo land? A.No, deliberately trying to deceive his audience. Q.Well, your sentence that he is deliberately trying to deceive presupposes that you can produce evidence that he knew precisely what was going which is what we have been searching for for several weeks. A.Well, I do not think -- there is plenty of evidence, Mr Irving. Q.I think we have dealt with that document now. Can we now just go on to the next one which is July 28th 1942? It is a white on black document. This is a document that you yourself also quote, do you not? A.Yes -- if I can find it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mine is almost illegible and in German? A.Yes, mine is very difficult to read. MR IRVING: I am only relying on the first paragraph, my Lord, and I will read it out to you in English, if I may? A.That is what worries me. Q.There should be a dark version and a light version. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have only got a -- no, wait a minute, no. . P-188 Actually, you are quite right. There is a page in between in my clip.
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