eptember 14, 1999
London

THE LAST funeral guests leave around 2 p.m., and I drive Jessica, at her insistence, back to school. She has done well, and cheered innumerable guests out of their darker thoughts.

At 4 p.m. a girl from the undertaker's telephones: a late wreath has come, what shall they do with it? I say, "Send it round here." A bike courier delivers it at 5 p.m.: a large and costly funeral wreath of white lilies and white roses, certainly larger than any that our family could afford. It is not from a well-wisher. The card reads, THIS WAS INDEED A MERCIFUL DEATH. PHILIP BOUHLER AND FRIENDS.

Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler ran the T4 operation from his Führerkanzlei -- the euthanasia operation, Hitler's "mercy killings" of the disabled and insane.

I think I have become inured to the greasy, slimy hatreds of the traditional enemy; then common sense, or foreboding, takes over. This may just be the start of something even uglier. I photograph the wreath and card of "condolences". C. establishes that the flowers were bought at The Bloomsbury Florist; a call to the florist elicits that the buyer gave his number as [...], one which could be in Grays Inn Road (the law office district); or in Farringdon Road, where the lefties hang out. It is a fake.

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All morning searching for missing papers, for this afternoon's hearing. Then to the High Court. Mishcon de Reya now reveal, when asked, that the Pelt report is on a Macintosh disc, which they can't read. Seems like we get one lie after another from them. They had written us earlier that the report did not exist on disc.

2 p.m. At first Master Chism, the judge, is inclined to agree that Master Trench should hear our application on the Mozzochi affidavits, but Mishcon's produce a few pages of the transcript of the hearing, and say that Judge Gray could surely consider these too on the basis on the transcript; Chism looks up and inquires whether I have been shown these pages, at which I interject firmly: "No I have not, and Counsel is aware that if she makes an ex parte application on notice like this she has an obligation to provide me in advance with any documents she intends to introduce in proof."

Chism allows her application to change the hearing to Judge Gray. Outside, I tell Mishcon's that (a) we expect to receive the Pelt disc shortly; (b) we will expect a copy of the transcript. She says: "But you were at the Trench hearing, you know what was said!" I point out: "I don't know which pages you selected. Nor do I know which passages you highlighted."

In other words, more sharp practice by Mishcons. Quoi de neuf.

To the Bloomsbury Florists. They are hugely apologetic about having been taken in. The man said he broke his wrist, so could not write the order himself; he paid cash and asked them not to phone the undertakers to ascertain the time of funeral.

Headache begins banging away inside me in the evening.

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Bloomsbury Florists phone, and delivers flowers to make amends.

Half an hour later there is a ring at the front door. A female from The Daily Mail has come. Her card says she is Kate Ginn, Reporter. She asks my comments on the item in today's Evening Standard: the newspaper reports the opening of the Coroner's inquest. I tell her of the hate-wreath. I think however she came with her own agenda -- and an eye-popping décolleté, in case I did not let her in. I remind her I am not Alan Clark, and its effect would have worn off after five minutes anyway. Then a photographer turns up. All highly predictable, alas.

The Daily Mail prints nothing, which is a relief.

Don Guttenplan of the New York Times comes at 2:30 P.M. Jessica bounces in several times during the four-hour interview, and shows off her knowledge. She brings in "contracts" for me to sign, involving promises to buy a particular item (a toy) she had seen in a TV commercial. I am going to scrap that box.

After he has gone I complete the upload of GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH, with a note that it is in memory of Josephine. I am receiving scores of messages of sympathy from all over the world: I wish she could see them.

Benté smiles faintly once or twice at Jessica's antics. A poor night, repeatedly awake, brooding.

Lawrence V Conley emails me: "Howdy, Mr. Irving:

The History Channel here in the USA gave you a perfectly neutral platform this evening in its excellent documentary on the Dresden bombings. You were excellently portrayed and did a great job presenting your facts on the atrocity. In this day and age I was almost certain that a particular special interest group would prevent such a neutral and unbiased presentation from being aired without interfering with massive images of the Holocaust in effort to somehow sway the audience into believing the annihilation of Dresden was morally acceptable or just.

The best part of the documentary were the interviews with survivors including AMERICAN POWs who were actually permitted to express their disgust with the atrocity and even VERIFY that American P51s did indeed strafe civilians in the streets of the city. Even the 8th Air Force Historian was permitted to disclose a general order given by Spaatz which directed American fighter pilots to kill anything on the ground that moved---ANYTHING.

My hat is tipped to the brave people at the History Channel for doing their best to provide such an honest documentary. And congratulations to you for all your brave work on the Dresden affair. I remain a most loyal supporter. Best of luck in your lawsuit with Lipstadt. May you defend your honorable name and force the enemy to retreat in profound disorder!

Somebody inquires about the dedication to "Michael" in the GOEBBELS. I reply:

Michael was the 14 year old son of an American friend who lived in Johannesburg and moved in 1992 to George, on the Indian Ocean -- A house backed by mountains. They lost Michael within two weeks of their arrival. He was a fine boy, I knew him well, and this was my way of saying thank you to the S.'s for their hospitality and kindness.

I send this message to my organiser in Cincinnati:

I have no idea what response the mail-out will get. If any. I think the IHR left it too late. I have not detected even the slightest seismic whisper from it. ... We have learned a lot, and the speaker line-up for 2000 is very strong already.

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F. tells me darkly that he has phoned several people on the IHR mailing list, and they have not received my mailshot. I take Jessica to school for the last time for several weeks, quite sad. She chats gaily about the "contract" she has with me, which involves me buying her an Animal Hospital for her birthday which is, she reminds me, Dec. 5. I say yes, I remember very clearly the day she was born in 1993: When she appeared, I say, I asked her her name and she replied: "My name ith Jethica." "I don't lithp," she squeaks.

I sit for fifteen minutes with Benté before it is time to leave for the airport. She looks in repose, and quite beautiful again. It reminds me of how she looked in the hospital when Jessica was born.

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The Delta plane to Atlanta, Georgia, takes off around 1:30 p.m.; a very grungy McDonnell Douglas plane, with fat Black stewardesses. All because I have had to factor Los Angeles into this trip. As the plane soars into the clouds, I have a sudden sense of being nearer to Josephine; and all the way over the Atlantic, a nine-hour flight, I keep having half-forgotten images of the thirty-six years I knew her. She is in the afterlife. She is with the angels. How unimaginable is the pain of losing a child, indescribable the emptiness, until you have been through it yourself.

Online for over an hour at Atlanta, set out at 7:30 a.m.; breakfast at Chattanooga, midday lunch at Knoxville, Tennessee. I drive all day to Louisville. I buy a stack of new shirts for $5 and $7 each, and dark trousers. Function at the St John's Academy.

Cincinnati, arrive at midday. At three p.m. the guests start registering for the function in a steady stream. Twenty or thirty come from Canada, and Maureen W. from Australia: a real Down-Under type, but pleasant to be with and I invite her to dine with us tonight at the "captain's table," so to speak. To date the tollfree phone has not rung once as a result of the IHR mailout. It has obviously not yet been delivered. Three thousand wasted dollars.

I open the function with a rousing speech; that is at 6:30 p.m -- running half an hour late, as everybody has enjoyed the opening social gathering so much. Bradley Smith follows with his warm-up; speaking in the warm, gentle pace of the Prairie Home Companion radio personality from Minnesota, and with the same kind of dry, easy-natured wit, he brings the audience into the right spirit, although some are scratching their heads a bit over his relevance and inclusion.

My feeling is that the audience does not want a heavyweight lecture right off, first evening; Smith is pure candy floss (though we could have done with more about his Campus Project).

I pluck two or three salient points from his talk: his reference to his epiphany, on reading a 2,000-word article by Robert Faurisson in Le Monde, has reminded me of Miklos Vasarhelyi telling me in 1979 that it was reading Animal Farm that converted him from a prison-seasoned communist minister to brave, risk-everything anti-Communist revolutionary in the 1956 Budapest Uprising. I mention the effect of reading the Leuchter affidavit on my own views, in 1988. And since Smith has made much of two pig stories, I bring the house down with Lady Grover and her pig-with-a-wooden-leg.

After dinner, Peter de Margaritis speaks on Rommel and the Sixth of June 1944. A surprisingly adept speaker who holds the audience despite the late hour; he proves his mettle under questions from the audience. He turns out to have been a good choice.

As I leave the function room around 11 p.m. I glimpse the sallow-faced, rather pansyish K. huddled over a payphone speaking to somebody. I send Catherine Weeks over to "phone" from next to him, but he stops in mid-sentence as she appears and hangs up. I suspect he is passing word of the location to somebody. Or perhaps simply reporting in.

Up at 7 a.m. Today is the main conference day and once again we begin and end late. The auditorium is soon packed, not a spare chair to be had.

Joseph Bellinger talks about the suicide of Heinrich Himmler; could not have happened to a nicer guy, but the whole thing does stink. As I point out in summing up, the notion that Himmler could have concealed the capsule in his mouth, a 1.5 inch glass ampoule, for two hours while answering questions under interrogation is ludicrous. It turns out that the SS Gruppenführer Prützmann and Paul Giesler died in the same manner.

It all looks very like a hit squad was operating against top SS officers; most of them no doubt richly deserved the death penalty, but it is a pity that Churchill gave orders for these hits; like a small-time hoodlum, he had them "whacked."

Then comes the treat, from 11:30 to 1 p.m. John Sack lectures on the theme: "Revenge and Redemption" (the lecture he was invited to give at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington; the invitation was withdrawn). In 1945 tens of thousands of German prisoners were beaten, tortured, and killed in concentration camps established in the new Polish territories. Sack has revealed this in his brilliant study An Eye for an Eye.

The role of Lola the concentration camp commandant -- how she agreed to cooperate, then refused, then threatened, then denied (but he found her papers appointing her as commandant of the Gleiwitz camp).

He has done fine research, and speaks brilliantly, one of the best speakers I have heard for a long time. After lunch we show the History Channel's documentary Inferno in Dresden: It is well made, very moving, and with good sized chunks of my interviews, as well as of Air Commodore Probert. Afterwards I talk briefly about the writing of the book THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN, on which the film is largely based

Brian Renk lectures then on Professor Christopher Browning and The State of the Evidence for the "Final Solution". He draws on his knowledge of Browning's present position, and even B. says he is appalled at Browning's deceptions, as revealed.

The formal dinner is held in the ballroom. I deliver a speech on The Perils of Public Speaking; then comes Doug Collins, who speaks as a Veteran of the wars of Dunkirk and the Canadian Human Rights Commission. His speech does down well. The whole day is a brilliant balance of speakers, if I say so myself, and nobody leaves early.

Instead of starting at ten next day it is closer to eleven a.m. when Russ Granata begins to deliver his Activity Report from Carlo Mattogno, based on the 20,000 documents they have retrieved as copies from the Moscow secret state archives on Auschwitz and the other Nazi camps at Majdanek, Strutthof, and from the Prague archives too.

Germar Rudolf delivers a scholarly and scientific address, illustrated by slides, which I have entitled Ordeal by Ire: How arriving at a politically incorrect chemical conclusion can just about ruin one's career in modern Germany. He wanted to call it "An Expert Update About the Leuchter Report," but it is much more than that.

It is two-thirty when he finishes, and I call a lunch break until three-thirty. Charles Provan finds a nearly full room for his talk, Massacre at Dachau, the inside story of the US Army's worst W.W.II scandal. His figures are lower than I believe the evidence would suggest (Colonel Buchner's own book talks of 540 killed, while the official inquiry talks of only seventeen here, four there, etc.)

At four-thirty it is all over. Great congratulations all round; a hugely successful function, cheers when I mention that next year we'll include a riverboat cruise. We must also have a closing social function, to hold everybody together.

Farewells around 6 p.m.; a fleet of free stretch limousines, for which we are paying, carries our guests away to the airport and train station.

At seven we all go out to dinner in Cincinnati; I invite John Sack and a couple of others tag along; we go to the Mecklenburg Inn, but the food is atrocious. The "sauerkraut" tastes like nothing on earth, the mettwurst is bland and unpalatable, and they have added broccoli and other vegetables. There are five in our group but the surly and hostile waitress adds a compulsory eighteen percent tip, snarling that we are part of a party of more than five (others, paying separately, have joined at the other end of the table!)

Catherine Weeks has done immensely well, really blossomed into a most efficient ground manageress for these events.

I leave Cincinnati and arrive at Cleveland 4:30 p.m.

Big function in the evening, then send this email to Benté in London:

I am currently in Cleveland. . . I leave for North Carolina, a two day drive, tomorrow. Very successful function this evening here. . . . I have begun dictating the opening speech.

One of our guests has published an Internet newsletter with a very full account of the Cincinnati function. This compromises next year's security and much else. I admonish him: "You will have surely noticed at the foot of the programme the note stating that no members of the media were being invited or allowed to attend, and that any delegate seen giving interviews to the press would be thrown out...? Was that not plain enough language?"

The Internet is an odd animal. In response to a bleat from that journalist, which is both offensive and rude, I reply:

If we do not allow the media to be present, it is because we do not want ANYBODY to report what goes on behind those closed doors. Common sense also should have dictated that I do not want opposing lawyers to have my tactics spelt out to them in writing. You will no doubt have read how worried they were, as per the Jerusalem Post article...

I arrive back in Key West, having added 2,700 miles to the odometer of the rental car since Atlanta. I report to Benté: Arrived here last night at eight p.m. with a beautiful sunset seizing the western sky as I crossed the Seven Mile Bridge. It lasted half an hour, getting more and more vivid. I could see the people in other cars that passed me (!) absolutely transfixed by it. I have thought of poor Josephine a lot, far too much, during the last ten days of driving across America. There is now a violent thunderstorm raging and drenching downpour, Quoi de neuf (it is of course the weekend). Decks thus nearly cleared for work. I have today resumed work on the final updating of HITLER'S WAR.

Real History, USA. Focal Point Publications is now accepting registrations for the Cincinnati 2000 weekend (Sept. 30 - Oct. 2). The function includes an extra day and a daylong riverboat cruise. Registrations accepted before Dec. 31, 1999 will qualify for a 25% discount on the registration fee of $300, which includes the grand dinner (couples: normal rate $250 per person, three or more $200). Address at top of page, or 81 Duke St, London W1M 5DJ; or [email protected].

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