MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: May it please your Lordship. This morning I wish to kick off by playing to the court excerpts from two, or possibly three, video tapes which are of relevance. I will explain what the video tapes are, if I may, my Lord.

The first one is one minute 20 seconds long. It is a post-war German newsreel, January 1948, and the very first section on it, fortunately, is the reporting of the end of the Auschwitz trial where a number of Defendants, rather as at Nuremberg, had been prosecuted on this occasion by the Polish Government. Auschwitz is in Poland. They had been prosecuted for crimes against humanity, and sentence was passed a week or two before this trial, before this newsreel was shown.

So it is a newsreel showing the judge handing down sentence. The relevance is purely the newsreel statement from the judge's findings of how many people died in Auschwitz which is a matter of contention. We are told by the expert witnesses in this case that anybody who says the figure is less than is now commonly assumed is a "Holocaust denier". I purely wish to show that there is a broad band of opinion over the years as to what the figures were.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The judge is expressing whatever view he does express on the basis of, what, the evidence he had heard

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during the course of the trial or what?

MR IRVING: A very lengthy trial, which ended with the execution of a number of people. We see on this short film the hearing of evidence, the hearing of witness statements, the taking of depositions, the forensic examination of the site which makes the statement that he utters all the more important. My Lord, do you have the short transcript of the passage? I have it in German.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I have, I do not think I know where it is. I have not seen it.

MR IRVING: I can provide one, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or has it been handed in? Is it somewhere in the files because there are a few loose documents?

MR IRVING: There is one. If I can kick off by showing that excerpt?

MR IRVING: It is a tracking error, I think, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are having a quite a task if you are trying to cope with that as well as everything else. I do not know if there is anyone else around who is more conversant with it than you are? We are getting a sound now. Shall we come back to that one? It may be we do not get the same problem with your next one.

MR IRVING: Let me just read out what the translation is, if I may?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, please do.

MR IRVING: This is a translation of the German text:

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"In Kraków the trial of the principal culprits for the Auschwitz concentration camp came to an end before a Polish court. The Defendants were German camp guards or members of the German camp administration staff.

Unheard-of atrocities against the camp inmates, particularly against female prisoners, were proved against them. Altogether nearly 300,000 people" -- this is the part I am relying upon, my Lord -- "from the most different nations died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. The court sentenced 23 of the accused to death, six to life sentences and 10 to lengthy jail terms; one was acquitted".

It then continues with the same statement: "The Auschwitz concentration camp remains as it stands today, as a monument of shame to the lasting memory of its 300,000 victims". Of course, nowadays, my Lord, we are told a very different picture of Auschwitz, but that was within the immediacy of the event.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate that no one is being too fussed, I understand why not, about the admissibility of the evidence, but this reads to me not like the judge or the court talking but some sort of newsreel.

MR IRVING: It is a German official newsreel produced in early 1948 at the time that Germany was under allied occupation and all the media outlets in Germany were licensed by the allied authorities.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but, I mean, in terms of evidence, I am not sure this has terribly much weight, does it?

MR IRVING: Except, my Lord, for two arguments here: firstly, if the allegation is that anybody who states figure less than one million or 4 million, whichever figure we look at, for Auschwitz is a Holocaust denier, then, denial, apparently started very early; and, secondly, if this was one of the documents before me at the time I wrote my book, my Lord, then I could hardly be accused of manipulation or distortion if I choose to rely on this document rather than on the evidence of someone like Rudolf Hess.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where am I going to put it because I think we must have a system of finding a home for every document that is handed in, if you are going to rely on it.

MR IRVING: My Lord, that should be in the bundles of transcripts, in my submission.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Perhaps the Defendants can help because let us be sensible about putting them were they belong?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. I suspect what is going to happen during the course of this trial is that we are going to create new files as we go along. The resources of Her Majesty's courts probably do not run to that. So I think what we had better do is, as these documents build up, is put them in files -- this is a document I have never seen before either -- and try to provide an identical file for each

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person in the court who will need to look at it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I do not want to spend undue time on it, but in some ways it is better to try to find them a spot in the existing bundles where they logically belong rather than having a, sort of, rather random new file created with whatever happens to turn up.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is probably right. The only place I can think of to put this at the moment is with Mr Irving's statement.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think that may be right.

MR IRVING: In my statement?

MR RAMPTON: It has no other natural home that I can think of.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think that may be right.

MR IRVING: Now, I add to your Lordship's misery by giving you the transcript of the video which we will now show?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. For the time being, at any rate, we shall put this in C4, shall we? Is that what you mean, Mr Rampton?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, I think it is C4. Unfortunately, mine do not any longer correspond to the numbers -- nor does Miss Rogers'.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The other thing is we need a hole puncher.

MR RAMPTON: Tab 1, C4, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is what I thought, at the back.

MR RAMPTON: This next one, what is the number of the transcript file? The next one goes in D(ii). I do not

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know which of the D(ii)s it will be; I have a feeling it is already there actually.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is worth spending just a little bit of time on this sort of thing at the moment because then we can get the system right for the future.

MR RAMPTON: D(ii), tab -- my Lord, the best place for it is at the back of the second volume of D(ii) where it will have a new tab No. 23.

MR IRVING: I believe I am right in saying that this transcript was not already provided by the Defendants; this is a new transcript.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think that is right. I think that is accepted. Shall we play it now?

MR IRVING: My Lord, can I just explain what it is?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: This is a transcript of a tape of a news programme broadcast in Australia on July 20th 1994 on ABC Television in Australia. It is a typical kind of news commentary programme, rather like News Night, which starts off with the news bulletin and then follows with a feature. The feature on this occasion was a feature called "The Big Lie". I do not propose to run the whole tape, but to start about three minutes in where I have positioned it as at the present which is page 2 near the top, my Lord. Mr Anthony Lerman of ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

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MR IRVING: --- the Institute of Jewish affairs is about to start speaking. The reason I am playing it is because your Lordship will see that this interview provides the Second Defendant, Professor Lipstadt, with a chance to express her opinions unopposed.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: I feel it is appropriate to allow her some minutes of the court's time in this rather oblique manner to express her opinions.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: I understand that she will not be testifying in person in this case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

(Excerpt of video was played)

MR IRVING: My Lord, I pause very briefly there and invite your attention to one scene in the newsreel that is being displaced, black and white newsreel, where we are no longer outside the railroad trucks filming the people climbing into the railroad trucks, but the camera has suddenly positioned itself inside the railroad trucks.

I am not going to draw any inferences from that at this moment, my Lord, but we are suddenly inside a darkened railway truck, taking a shot from the inside to the outside as people climb in towards us.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: That is the only point I make, my Lord. My Lord,

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this is Professor van Pelt who will be testifying in this case. This is the actual building which we will be talking quite a lot about over the coming weeks, crematorium No. 2.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: At Auschwitz?

MR IRVING: At Auschwitz -- correction, at Birkenau, my Lord, which is five miles from Auschwitz.

MR IRVING: My Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that all you want from that, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: Yes. Your Lordship will see from the transcript the rest concerns Rwanda ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have read on and I did not think there was anything in the rest of it.

MR IRVING: Unless the Defendants object, I would not propose to play the rest of the tape.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure they will not.

MR RAMPTON: No.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I do not know if you consider that was a useful exercise? I would welcome your Lordship's guidance on ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, to be frank, I think not very. In the end we have to get down to the specific criticisms of your historical approach.

MR IRVING: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: How we are quite going to deal with it, I do not know, but I think that is what has to be grappled with

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and, from my point of view, the sooner the better.

MR IRVING: We are also concerned with the Second Defendant here. My Lord, I understand she will not be having a chance to speak and I will not be having a chance to cross-examine her. I think it was a useful exercise because it gave us a chance to see her in action. I think she could have handled herself under cross-examination, had she proposed to do so.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are entitled to make the point that she is, apparently, not going to give evidence. I have that point and I have now had the opportunity of seeing her on the interview.

MR IRVING: The other point I wish to draw attention to in the video is that the other witness who will be called, Professor van Pelt, draws great attention to the building he was standing on which was crematorium No. 2 in Birkenau. He points to the holes, he points to the room. He says, "This is where it happened". In another video which I will show on another occasion, my Lord, he goes into much greater detail more emotionally saying, "This is where it happened, this was the geographical centre of the Holocaust", and so on.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say that is a post war reconstruction?

MR IRVING: No, my Lord. We say something different about that. This is crematorium building in Birkenau. What we say about that is that it was not what the Defence make .

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out that it was. With your Lordship's permission and consent, I do not want to reveal precisely the arguments we will lead on this occasion. We will give the Defence great time to prepare counter arguments and we have spent a great deal of time and money with architectural consultants and so on providing this evidence. I would prefer to leave that evidence ----

MR RAMPTON: Can I intervene to say something about that? I do not find myself left very happy about what Mr Irving has just said. The days are long gone where a Claimant who responds to a plea of justification is entitled to keep his rabbits in his back pocket and pull them out when it suits him so as to deprive the other side of due notice so that they can deal with it. If he is sitting on expert reports, expert evidence, as indeed he flagged up yesterday in his opening that he was, then we must have them.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right. Can we just take stock at the moment, Mr Irving, and see where we are going? You did, I think, say you were intending to show three videos. Are you really wanting to show a third one?

MR IRVING: I sense a certain impatience of your Lordship.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hope I am not displaying impatience. I am just telling you how I see the priorities. I am not impatient.

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MR IRVING: Possibly when we come to the Auschwitz phase, it will be useful to show the next one which does concentrate much more closely on the fabric of the sites of Auschwitz.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I ask you, following up what you told me yesterday about the misunderstanding, whether it is or it is not agreed that Auschwitz should be taken separately and first?

MR IRVING: We have agreed that, my Lord, and we have reached a very satisfactory arrangement on the presentation of our principal witnesses from overseas.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very good to know. Your opening is really concluded now, as I understand it?

MR IRVING: That is so, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So I think probably, unless you tell me that there is something else you want to deal with first, the time has come for you to start giving evidence.

MR IRVING: What I had proposed to do this morning, my Lord, the bundle which I submitted this morning and replicates bundle D(ii), I think, which we have already had, which is a very large number of photocopies of all the books which I have ever written, apparently, which have been very ably put together by the Defendants. I had put together a selection of pages from those books on which I was going to draw your attention, passages which would refute statements that had been made by the Defendants and also by counsel yesterday.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: In relation to Auschwitz?

MR IRVING: No, my Lord. Do I am apprehend that your Lordship wishes to deal immediately with Auschwitz or other different phases?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, if we are going to divide up the trial, and I can see the sense of it, into Auschwitz and the rest, it seems to me at the moment, and Mr Rampton may take a different view, I do not know, that it is sensible really to plunge into the issues that arise out of Auschwitz rather than going to anything else, because the time for doing that may be when we get to the second, as it were, half of the trial.

MR IRVING: My Lord, the Auschwitz matter is an immensely complicated matter involving the assembly of a great deal of expert material, drawings. The Defendants deluged me on Friday evening after close of business with a further 5,000 pages of documents from van Pelt's report. To start straightaway today with that would put me at a gross disadvantage. I am sorry that there may be a misunderstanding. The agreement we reached was on the dates of presentation of our witnesses from beyond the seas, van Pelt in the case of the Defence and Professor McDonald in my case, and I was still hoping and anticipating we could deal with the reputation aspect first which is well prepared, and push Auschwitz along away from us for a while.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you say "for a while", I mean how long is the while?

MR IRVING: As long as is necessary for me to deal with the reputation aspects of the case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I do see the sense of your establishing, I think by evidence, your reputation. I do not myself think that will take very long because, bear in mind, I have read a lot of the material. That is not to say I do not want to hear you say it from the witness box in summary.

MR IRVING: My Lord, you have read it, but the Press have not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but the exercise is not really entirely for the members of the Press. I do not think we want to take a lot of time in dealing with matters which are not uncontentious, but which, perhaps, are not at the heart of what is the true issue between the parties. I am very anxious we get on if we can as soon as possible.

Can I just see what Mr Rampton would suggest as the appropriate course? I think my own view is that Mr Irving ought to go into the witness box from now on because I think the case has really been opened. I see the sense of hearing some evidence about his reputation by way of preliminary.

MR RAMPTON: I have read his witness statement. Apart from what he said in his opening yesterday, I really have no clue, no real clue, about what his case is on the detailed . P-117

factual issues. I am in the same position as your Lordship found yourself yesterday or said you did.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: I would like to know what his case is and I do not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, I understand that.

MR RAMPTON: I do not mind what order he takes to do that. If he wants to saturate with his historiographical issues, his techniques and the inaccuracies of the criticisms which we have made, that is no problem to me at all.

Whether he does it from the witness box or whether he does it as part of his opening, again I really do not mind.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think it is terribly important, but I think it probably is properly done by evidence rather than by further opening statements.

MR RAMPTON: I agree. If he says he is not yet prepared to deal with the Auschwitz issues because they are, indeed, detailed and complicated, that is perfectly all right with us, but I do want to know what his case is and at the moment I do not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, his case is to be found not only in his witness statement plainly but in the pleadings.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, I have some of his case from the reply.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is quite comprehensive, it appeared to me, on the extent to which Hitler is responsible for the Final Solution, relatively speaking.

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MR RAMPTON: Yes, relatively.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not, if I may say so, Mr Irving, very detailed in relation to Auschwitz. I have the broad thrust of your case, but I think there is a lack of detail.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I am ignorant of the rules of procedure in this matter. Would it be possible for me to be examined in the witness box on two occasions?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Let us get clear what is being proposed. It is being proposed that there should be a division of this trial really into two separate compartments, one is Auschwitz which is to an extent a free standing issue, it seems to me, a discrete issue.

The other is all the other issues, such as the bombing of Dresden, Hitler's responsibility for the Final Solution, and so on. Obviously, they are not wholly separate, but I think they can be taken separately for the purposes of the trial.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I think a perfectly satisfactory solution which the court will, no doubt, find favour with is that I will go into the witness box today and submit myself to cross-examination on my pleadings, on the statements that I have made, on the correspondence that I have submitted to the other parties, on my opening statement and whatever other matters they choose to put to me. I will answer from the baggage that I carry around in my memory. No

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doubt, I will have the opportunity at a later date, possibly when I can go back to my diaries or other papers, to produce materials that I could not produce from memory. I am sure this would be an adequate solution to the problem.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I make a suggestion and then you can both, if you would like to, comment because I am very conscious you are in person and this is, for obvious reasons, not an easy case for you to conduct in person, but what I would suggest is that you now go into the witness box, that you deal with your reputation and your published works and so on, and you can take it that I have read your witness statement, that you then state, at any rate in broad outline, what your case is on Auschwitz -- I am perfectly happy, as it were, to help you along by asking you questions and then you can elaborate in your answers -- and then for Mr Rampton to cross-examine you in relation to Auschwitz,.

MR IRVING: At a later date?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, straight off, why not? We are dealing with that issue first.

MR IRVING: Very well.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we will have, I do not know whether this will work in terms of timing, the expert evidence in relation to Auschwitz, hopefully, from your expert and from Professor van Pelt. Then you will have the

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opportunity to make submissions about it either at the very end of the case or, perhaps, at an earlier stage.

Does that sound a sensible way of proceeding to you?

MR IRVING: I am not too happy about being cross-examined on Auschwitz because our work on that is not complete. Your Lordship may consider this is irrelevant, whether our work on that is completed or not, because I am being asked about my own work and my own writings, and things that I may find out in the future are neither here nor there which is the phrase that I used yesterday, but I am sure your Lordship will have my interests at heart.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am very anxious that you should say whatever it is you want to say. Your case should be fully deployed. But the case has been brewing a very long time. I am a bit alarmed to hear that you are not, as it were, fully up to speed on the Auschwitz issue.

MR IRVING: We have been fully up to speed repeatedly, my Lord, with all the indications of that phrase. Every time we thought we were up to speed, we then received a fresh avalanche of binders with further documents.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, plus the 5,000 pages on Friday.

MR IRVING: Indeed, and more during the weekend.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you be content to proceed along the lines I have indicated and if you reach a point where, for example, Mr Rampton is putting to you a document which you have not had a chance to look at before, then you make . P-121

that point and ---- MR IRVING: Precisely.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- we ask him, perhaps, to go on to some other point?

MR IRVING: I believe that the present atmosphere and climate of opinion in court is, as Mr Rampton rather indicated, it is not fair to sand bag your opponents with surprise materials.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very much the way in which litigation is now conducted.

MR IRVING: And we certainly have not done so. I found it mildly offensive that the Defendant should imply that we had. I have subjected the Defendants to a stream of questions over the last few weeks on their reports which, clearly, indicates which way we are thinking.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, may I now ask Mr Rampton whether he is happy to proceed in the way I have just outlined?

MR RAMPTON: I will proceed in any way your Lordship wants; the problem I have starting straightaway with Auschwitz is simply a practical one. I do not have my Auschwitz papers here. I have to go and get them.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: We will not get to Auschwitz today? In that case, there is no problem, I can start tomorrow. If I do not have to cross-examine today, then I do not have any problem at all. I will start wherever it pleases your

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Lordship tomorrow.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, in principle, the idea of dealing with Auschwitz separately is one that I believe you are in favour of?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. We were given an indication that Mr Irving's opening in evidence-in-chief would take us up to about the end of the week after next, that is to say, until Monday, 24th January, which is why Professor van Pelt is not here at the moment. So, in that sense I have a slight reluctance to start on Auschwitz until he gets here. It is not an overwhelming reluctance by any means at all.

I can quite easily, on the other hand, start with something completely different. I can start with issues arising from Professor Evans' report without any problem at all.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: He covers really the whole gamut.

MR RAMPTON: I know. From your Lordship's point of view, that is perhaps a little inconvenient. The alternative -- it is one I do not advance with any great warmth -- is to adjourn this case until the beginning of next week by which time Mr Irving should be up to speed on Auschwitz.

I say that for this reason. Although it is perfectly true that the source documents were served on him last week, Van Pelt's report, the fact is that a very large number of those reports, documents, plans are illustrated in van Pelt's report; that they have been

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available in the archives in Auschwitz and in Moscow for a very long time. The main report was served at the end of July last year. I do not have all of that much sympathy with Mr Irving -- I have some, of course, because he is in person.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think the point you make is actually a fair one, that Professor van Pelt makes his point in his report without actually exhibiting the source material, but it is pretty obvious what he is saying.

MR IRVING: My Lord, it is not. Architectural consultants who have asked us for detailed drawings of many levels of the construction work that went on over a period. They need to know where the light switches were, that kind of thing. You cannot see that kind of information from the rather smudgy photocopies that were exhibited to the report.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: You do not do any better if you look at the nice coloured photographs which Professor van Pelt has now produced in that regard. They are just better copies of what he has already reproduced.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am very reluctant to adjourn the case.

I really think we have to get on for obvious reasons.

MR IRVING: My Lord, can we not start the cross-examination on non-Auschwitz matters which will certainly take us up to the weekend? I am sure Mr Rampton has a any number of

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questions he is curious about.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am perfectly easy. I think you had between you reached agreement. It appears, perhaps, that is not really right. I do not mind in which order we take things. I think there is something to be said for taking Auschwitz first, but if you prefer that it was dealt with the other way round, that is fine.

MR RAMPTON: I can deal with a whole range of different topics, not necessarily in an orderly fashion. That is the trouble. What I am anxious to avoid is when I do get to Auschwitz in cross-examination, perhaps it might be tomorrow, for example, Mr Irving says, "Well, I am sorry, I cannot answer that, I have not had time to think about it or to instruct myself". That is absolutely hopeless.

He then comes back, having heard my questions, and we have to start all over again.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see that.

MR RAMPTON: I am not really interested in attributing blame for these things. He is obviously not up to speed on Auschwitz and I do not really want to cross-examine him on it until he is because it is an unfair contest, apart from anything else.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us do it the other way round then. Let us take the other issues. That is really a course that you prefer, is it not?

MR IRVING: That was my original proposal, my Lord.

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MR RAMPTON: When Professor van Pelt gets here (which is the week after next, I think) then I will start on Auschwitz because that, I would think, would have given Mr Irving enough time.

MR IRVING: We are looking forward to it, in fact.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will proceed on the opposite basis of taking all the other issues.

MR IRVING: I am indebted, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is up to you in which order you deal with them, but you will start with your reputation and history which I think you can take quite ---- MR IRVING: In cross-examination?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, this is in chief.

MR IRVING: Right.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then it is really entirely up to you, I think, how much you want to say in chief, and it is not very easy for you to do because in a sense you will be making a speech from the witness box, or whether you want to simply submit yourself to cross-examination on these various other issues, Dresden, Hitler's role, and the like.

MR IRVING: The court would simply certainly prefer for reasons of integrity that the evidence should be under oath.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would, I think that is the right way of doing it.

MR IRVING: Then the sooner I go into the witness box, . P-126

therefore, the better. That may well speed things up.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. So you are happy to proceed in that way?

MR IRVING: I am happy to proceed in that way, provided the Auschwitz stage is left until later on.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is going to be. Mr Rampton, you are content with that as well?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, I agree to that. I will find something else to start with.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure you will. Mr Irving, the next problem, and you can really choose whichever you prefer, that is the witness box. If you find it more convenient to stay where you, I am perfectly happy if Mr Rampton is happy at this stage anyway, for the evidence to be given from there. When it comes to cross-examination, the position may be different because I do not see that you can really cross-examine along a row. But it may be easier for Mr Irving to stay where he is for the time being.

MR RAMPTON: That is what Miss Rogers suggested. It is a good idea. He has all his papers there. When he gets to be cross-examined, we may have to have a break while he gets all the stuff up there because I cannot cross-examine side by side.

MR IRVING: I would prefer, my Lord, the first part of the cross-examination should be done from box, but when we . P-127

come to the Auschwitz stage where we will have papers, I might revert to your Lordship's original proposal, that it should be continued with me standing here.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will see about that when the time comes.

But would you prefer to give your evidence-in-chief ---- MR IRVING: I would prefer to give it from the traditional place.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Unless you want to deal with anything else, I think you ought to go and be sworn.

MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord. At some stage, of course, my Lord, your Lordship is aware wish to deal with the Hizbollah allegations and the Farrakhan allegations, but this can done at any time.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think even that is best done from the witness box because this is a libel trial, it is a rather unusual one, but you will want to give what one might call some of the standard defamation evidence.

MR DAVID IRVING, sworn Examined by the Court.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think the best thing is if I give you a little bit if a steer, if I can put it that way. Would you rather sit down?

A. I am not sure that I need scaring.

Q. No, the word I used was "steer" not "scare", simply so that your evidence has a shape that might make it more comprehensible. Shall we start by your full name address?

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A. My full name is David John Cawdell -- I will spell that, C-A-W-D-E-L-L Irving, I-R-V-I-N-G.

Q. And address?

A. My address is No. 81 Duke Street, London W1.

Q. Yes. You have made a witness statement for the purposes of this action and it is dated 22nd January last year.

Would you formally confirm that that is so?

A. That is so. I have made a witness statement and the statements in it are true.

Q. Yes, thank you. Now, you can take it that I have read it, but, as you pointed out a little while ago, the Press is reporting this case and I think it would be right to give you the opportunity to restate in summary form anything that you wish to from that statement.

A. I do not have a copy of the statement with me.

Q. I think you probably should. Do you have anyone to help you fetch and carry documents?

A. My entire staff was called to the Bar just before Christmas, unfortunately.

Q. Perhaps if you can provide? Thank you.

A. The statement is 18 pages, my Lord. If I were to read the statement out, it would take us until lunch time or would that be too long?

Q. I am very much against you doing that because the main object of the exercise is, perhaps, to get your evidence across to me. I have read it, but I am giving you the . P-129

opportunity to be selective and make in a summary way any of the points that you want to make again in your oral evidence.

A. I think I have made the principal statements from this.

I repeated them in my opening statement yesterday. My books have received high praise from established academic, official and government historians in every country where they have been published. I just mention the names of Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, AJP Taylor, Professor MRD Foot, Captain Stephen Roskill, Professor Norman Stone, Professor Donald Cameron Watt. The reason I have mentioned those names, as your Lordship will see in your files copies of the reviews and praise that these people have given to my works.

I have not only written about World War II, of course; I have also written about other matters like the Hungarian Uprising and the German Uranium Research Programme during World War II.

John Keegan, the Defence Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph (and your Lordship will be aware why I have stated this) has written: "Two books in English stand out from the vast literature of the Second World War: Chester Wilmot's 'The Struggle for Europe' published in 1952 and David Irving 'Hitler's War'" which appeared three years ago. That kind of quotation rather gives the lie to the statement by the Second Defendant

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which we saw on video that nobody takes me seriously.

It says here in about 1975 Adolf Hitler's Private Secretary, the late Christa Schroeder, gave me a small pencil sketch, a self-portrait of Adolf Hitler, which he had retrieved from his desk in the last days of the war. She gave it to me as a gift and I keep it. I do not, of course, have any kind of portrait of Adolf Hitler on my office hanging on the wall in the way that has been described.

Am I proceeding in the correct manner?

Q. Yes, I think this is exactly what I think is the right way of proceeding.

A. I consider myself to be an expert on the careers of the principal Nazi leaders, including specifically Adolf Hitler, Goring and Dr Josef Goebbels. I am an expert on the archives about these people. I am expert on the current state of research into German and other wartime persecution and liquidation of the European Jewish communities.

Q. You said yesterday -- I am sorry to interrupt you-- that you did not regard yourself as being an historian of the Holocaust, can you just in your evidence ---- A. This is true.

Q. --- explain what you mean?

A. There is a subtle difference. I am an expert in the state of research but not on their findings, so to speak. I am

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an expert on the way they go about their research, but not so much on the actual details of the Holocaust, and so on.

Q. When you say "they", who do you mean by "they", the Defendants?

A. No, my Lord. I am sorry, I should have made myself clear. I mean the Holocaust historians, the historians who specialise in that topic.

Q. Yes.

A. Over the years I have collected a very large archive of original documents and copies of original documents, like private diaries and papers like that, from the top Nazi leaders using various techniques and methods, all entirely legal and, as part of my technique, I would then donate these papers immediately to the suitable archives so they are immediately available to other historians.

My views upon politics are on page 1047.

Q. Yes.

A. The Defendants have chosen to refer to my politics and they wrongly categorise them. They say that I am extreme right-wing or something like that. I have never belonged to a political party, left or right, except I think I joined the Young Conservatives at University.

My father stood as a Labour candidate in the 1945 General Election. I voted for Sir James Goldsmith, my Lord, if I can make that point in the last election, in other words, neither one nor the other. I regard myself

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as a laissez faire Liberal. In other words, I do not really care much about politics so long as they spend the money on hospitals rather than Millennium Domes. I have a family reason for saying that.

I do not look down on any section of humanity, either coloured immigrants, I have regularly employed them, or females. Your Lordship will appreciate the reasons why I make these points. I have five daughters, in fact -- I am sorry, I had five daughters.

I do not look down on the mentally or physically disabled. I admit to having little patience with smokers and none at all with drug abusers. This is not to say that I have applauded -- I have to state this because I will probably be asked about it -- I cannot say that I have applauded the uncontrolled tide of commonwealth immigration into this country.

Like most fellow countrymen of my background and vintage, I regret the passing of the Old England.

I sometimes think, my Lord, that if the soldiers and sailors who stormed the beaches of Normandy in 1944 could see what England would be like at the end of this century, they would not have got 50 yards up the beach. I think they would have given up in disgust.

Q. You said you are getting towards paragraph 23 of your witness statement, 1048?

A. My reputation as an historian.

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Q. You said you wanted to develop that and I think now is probably the appropriate time to do that, if you want to.

A. I have, of course, a very large collection of ring binders of Press clippings which have been made available to the Defendants and in which they have not shown the slightest interest. Reviews in all the leading newspapers of the world of the books that I have written. I believe I have written about 30. I could have produced all those reviews to the court, but if I just summarise and say that they are largely very favourable reviews, the kinds of reviews that made publishers line up to publish my books until the turning of tide.

Obviously, there were some reviews that you could describe as the curate's egg, but, by and large, the reviews were exceptionally favourable. It may be said that the reviewers were not as clever, perhaps, as the expert witnesses whom the Defendants have summoned for this case. That may be one argument; maybe they had not seen though me, perhaps. Arguments like that will be advanced, but I submit this is not the case. These were book reviews written by experts in their own field, like Captain Steven Roskill who was an eminent naval historian, Professor MRD Foot, who is another official historian, Professor Sir Frank Hinsley. If I just summarise it as briefly as that, my Lord?

Q. Yes, I think that is sufficient.

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A. If you wish to question that, of course, I will be quite happy to put in all the evidence to support the contention, but Defendants have not shown any interest in these statements.

Q. Can you help me because I have not alighted on them. Are they in one of the files?

A. They were within my discovery. They were disclosed to the Defendants in proper form. Admittedly, I did not do an index of the entire set, but they were shown 16 ring binders full of chronologically organised, properly pasted up reviews and Press clippings in which, who knows, they might have found some goodies they could have used against me, I do not know, but they did not bother with them.

Q. Take your own course, Mr Irving, but do you now want to deal with the publication of "Denying the Holocaust"?

A. The publication of the book. I paid no attention to that book, my Lord, until 1996. It did not come into my ken until 1996. I believe it was published in 1994, but in April 1996 we published in this country my book the Goebbels' biography, "Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich". Your Lordship will be aware this is the only book that I requested that your Lordship study in some detail because it is a book that I am particularly proud of.

When we began marketing that book in the United Kingdom, which meant literally that I and my publisher imprint rented a van and visited approximately 980

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bookstores up and down the length and breadth of the country, which is a very enjoyable exercise. I do not do it out of tedium; it is very interesting to visit the bookstores and their managers. We marketed the book directly to them and we sold many thousands of copies in this manner, but we came across the phenomenon that in a number of bookstores, particularly in the Waterstones chain, the head of the history department took an aversion to me.

After visiting a number of the bookstores, it became quite plain that the reason for the aversion to me was the fact that they were selling the book "Denying the Holocaust", published by the first Defendant and written by the Second Defendant. This book was being believed by Waterstones or by their employees and by, no doubt, other bookstores too. It was causing me considerable concern because these bookstores were thereupon refusing to stock my books.

So I thereupon during that tour began to purchase copies of "Denying the Holocaust" as evidence that the book was on sale within the jurisdiction. I put the publishers on notice. I put the author on notice.

I put certain of the book sellers themselves on notice because under the Defamation Act anybody in the distribution chain can be held liable for the peddling of libels. I subsequently, of course, separated those --

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I discontinued the action against the book sellers for reasons that need not occupy the court.

At the beginning of September 1996, which is that same year, which had been a very harrowing year for me, as I had seen my American publishers, St Martin's Press, in conjunction with my big American publisher, Doubleday's, simultaneously deciding, we now learn, upon representations made by the Second Defendant not to go ahead with publication of my Goebbels' biography, I decided that I had no recourse but to take libel action against this book which was, obviously, part of the cause of my problem.

So I issued the writ, after taking usual procedural steps, the letter before action and so on, I think it was dated September 6th 1996.

Q. Yes. Now, you have selected for complaint a number of particular passages from the book and I think it would be appropriate if you were to deal with them, and where you best find them, I do not know, but certainly they are to be found in your Statement of Claim, but it may be you would rather deal with it in some other way.

A. May I return my papers and collect the Statement of Claim?

Q. Yes, of if you point out where they are, perhaps somebody can do it for you rather than having you go backwards and forwards?

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A. They are in the ring binder.

Q. Thank you very much.

A. My Lord, I was defamed and libelled on a number of pages in the book. I do not propose to read out, unless your Lordship wishes otherwise, the specific passages.

Q. No. You are entitled to take your own course about that but I think what you ought to do is just give an indication of ---- A. I will read out ---- Q. --- why you object to the passages that you have selected for complaint.

A. If I go to paragraph 9 of the Statement of Claim which is "The natural or ordinary meaning of the words complained of"?

Q. Yes.

A. I contend that the passages meant, and were intended to mean and understood to mean, firstly, "that the Plaintiff", meaning myself, "is a dangerous spokesperson for Holocaust denial ... for denial forces who deliberately and knowingly consorts and consorted with anti-Israel, anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial forces and who contracted to attend a world anti-Zionist conference in Sweden in November 1992, thereby agreeing to appear in public in support of and alongside violent and extremist speakers, including representatives of the violent and extremist anti-Semitic Russian group, Pamyat, and of the

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Iranian-backed Hizbollah and of the fundamentalist Islamic organisation Hamas and including the black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, born Louis Eugene Walcott, who is known as a Jew-baiting black agitator, as a leader of the US Nation of Islam, as an admirer of Hitler and who is in the pay of Colonel Gaddafi".

My Lord, the wording that I use in this is, of course, very closely related to the wording used in the work complained of. I have not chosen those words myself. I have merely distilled them out of the Defendant's text and adhered as closely as possible to the original wording.

Q. Yes. You are just paraphrasing really?

A. I am not even paraphrasing, my Lord. I am gluing the words together into a complaint form using the words actually used by the Defendants in the work complained of.

Q. That is what I meant by "paraphrase".

A. So I have added no colour, I have turned up no volume.

These are the extraordinary words used to describe me by the Defendants. They say, "that the Plaintiff", myself, "is an historian who has inexplicably misled", in other words, the word "inexplicably" is in the original book, "misled academic historians like Ernst Nolte into quoting historically invalid points contained in his writings", my writings, "and who applauds the internment of Jews in Nazi concentration camps". I am accused of having applauded . P-139

the internment of Jews in Nazi concentration camps which is a particularly perverse allegation in my view.

No. (iii) "that the Plaintiff", David Irving, "routinely perversely and by way of his profession, but essentially in order to serve his own reprehensible purposes ideological leanings and/or political agenda", and here are the allegations, "distort accurate historical evidence and information; misstate; misconstrue; misquote; falsify statistics; falsely attribute conclusions to reliable sources; manipulate documents; wrongfully quote from books that directly contradict my arguments in such a manner as completely to distort their author's objectives and while counting on the ignorance or indolence of the majority of readers not to realise this".

Q. May I interrupt and ask you this? Am I right in thinking (and I may be quite wrong) that really that is the imputation against you which causes you the most concern?

A. Professionally, clearly so, my Lord.

Q. Yes.

A. I mean, the name calling is neither here nor there and your Lordship may make of it what your Lordship wants, I submit. Clearly, some of the name calling will stick, but it would be a real waste of this court's time if I take each of the names I have been called in turn and try to prove that is not so. This is what has cost me my career, unless the court disposes otherwise at the end of

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this trial, my Lord.

I complained that the work complained of describes me as an Adolf Hitler partisan who wears blinkers and skews documents and misrepresents data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions specifically those that exonerate Hitler.

I am accused of being an ardent admirer of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, an ardent admirer of the Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler; that I conceive myself as carrying on Hitler's criminal legacy and that I placed a self-portrait of Hitler over my desk; that I have described a visit to Hitler's mountain top retreat as a spirit experience; that I have described myself as a moderate fascist. These are the allegations contained in the book.

Further, that before the Zündel trial began in 1988 in Toronto, I, the Plaintiff, compromising my integrity as an historian, and in an attempt to pervert the course of justice and one Faurisson, Robert Faurisson whom we saw in the video, that I wrongfully and/or fraudulently conspired together to invite an American prison warden and thereafter one Fred Leuchter, an engineer who is depicted by the Defendants as a charlatan, to testify as a tactic for proving that the gas chambers were a myth".

The loaded words in that sentence, my Lord, are . P-141

words that are actually contained in the book.

"That the Plaintiff after attending Mr Zündel's trial in 1988 in Toronto, having previously hovered on the brink now denies the murder by the Nazis of the Jews". So I deny the murder by the Nazis of the Jews, this is one of the allegations. That I described the memorial to the dead at Auschwitz as a tourist attraction; that I was branded by the British House of Commons as "Hitler's Heir", and that I was denounced by the same British House of Commons as a Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler apologist and accused by them of publishing a fascist publication, and that this marked the end of my reputation in England.

My Lord, it may possibly not be familiar to the Defendants that there is a distinction between an early day motion being put in the House of Commons by a group of disgruntled members of Parliament and the House of Commons actually voting and reaching a decision. It is nothing more than a propaganda move by people who wish to draw attention to something within the privileged atmosphere.

It is rather like the privileged atmosphere that exists in this court, my Lord; people can say what they want about me and the newspapers are free to print it.

Q. Yes, well, I certainly do know about early day motions, so....

A. That some other person had discovered in a Russian archive

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-- this is the allegation in the book -- that some other person had discovered in the Russian archive in 1992 the Goebbels' diaries, that it was assumed that these would shed light on the conduct of the Final Solution, but that I was hired and paid a significant sum by the London Sunday Times to transcribe and translate, although I was a discredited and ignominious figure and, although by hiring the Plaintiff, the newspaper threw its task as a gatekeeper of the truth and of journalistic ethics to the winds and, although there was thereby increased the danger that the Plaintiff would in order to serve his own reprehensible purposes misstate, misconstrue, misquote, falsify, distort and/or manipulate these sets of documents which others had not seen, namely, the Goebbels' diaries; I would do all that in order to propagate my reprehensible views and that I, the Plaintiff, was unfit to perform such a function for this newspaper.

Finally, the book contained the allegation that I violated an agreement with the Russian archives, and that I took and copied many plates without permission causing significant damage to them and rendering them of limited use to subsequent researchers.

Q. Mr Irving, the first of those imputations that you say that Professor Lipstadt makes against you in her book is one that links you with Hamas and Hizbollah, and again I think you indicated earlier on that you wanted to say

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something about those organisations?

A. My Lord, I put to your Lordship a small bundle of documents ---- Q. Yes.

A. --- on those organisations.

Q. I have read it.

A. It is probably not necessary for me to go in detail through them. I will indicate to your Lordship that reliable sources, like the BBC or other news media organisations, have consistently described the Hizbollah and Hamas, which are two Muslim fundamentalist terrorist organisations, as being criminal organisations whose members are not allowed into other countries and are actively pursued by the forces of law and order and, indeed, actively pursued with less law and order by the forces of the Mossad, who sometimes dispose of them by jabbing the aforementioned hypodermic needle laden with nerve gas into their neck which is one of the documents which I put before your Lordship.

Q. Yes, I have read them.

A. So anybody who is described in this reckless way as being a member of the Hamas or the Hizbollah or some other similar terrorist l is at risk of being declared fair game with the forces of law and order or, at the very least, for the immigration authorities and countries who already look askance upon people for various

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reasons and, at worst, they are having their life put at risk or they are going to be ruffed up in the street by people who disagree with the Hizbollah or the Hamas.

I do not share your Lordship's earlier opinion at the pre-trial review that is a matter which falls under section 5 of the Act, my Lord.

Q. I did not express any concluded view, obviously.

A. I am sorry, my Lord. This was totally misquoted.

Q. Can you help me on something else? You will have the opportunity to make submissions about that later on. You supplied documents relating to the bombing in Oklahoma City. Does that feature in Professor Lipstadt's book?

A. It does not feature in the book, my Lord, but I thought this was the appropriate bundle to put them, in February 1996 the media in the United States, where such allegations can be made with impunity, raised the allegation that I had supplied the trigger mechanism for the Oklahoma City bomb.

Now, the Oklahoma City bombing features in some of the documents quoted, I believe, by Professor Evans or by Professor Brian Levin, because they quote from my diary on that particular day; and to be accused of having anything to do with that crime was something I found particularly repugnant and I regard it as being part of the general campaign to vilify me and blacken my name which originated from the same sources which have funded

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the Defendants with the material they have used to smear me. It is no more directly associated with them than that.

Q. Thank you very much.

A. But it is like trying to put a hook into a custard pie.

You cannot really pin anything down until you stand back and you see the whole continuum of the onslaught to which I have been subjected.

Q. The next thing you might want to deal with, Mr Irving, is the effect that that the publication of the book of which you complain has had on you. I have seen what you say in your witness statement about that, but if you want to expatiate on that, then please do.

A. My Lord, people have said to me, "Why have you picked on that book and those particular Defendants?" and the simple answer is because it is an open and shut case. I have been accused of doing things which they cannot justify.

If we admittedly find it more difficult to disprove the subjective claims, ad hominem statements that are made, there are certain specific claims that are made, like the Adolf Hitler portrait or like the misquoting of documents or deliberate and reprehensible mistranslation or distortion, which are easy to disprove and they are the ones which reflect on my professional integrity and on my career and on my livelihood, which is precisely what the Defamation act, as I understand it, is about.

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This is one reason why I decided that the time had come after 30 years to take some kind of action which I did with the utmost reluctance because Penguin Books, the First Defendants, have published books of my own in the past and you are not eager to go and sue people who have published your own books.

The book, undoubtedly, had caused me serious damage. When I consider, admittedly, this was not damage within the jurisdiction, and it is possible the Defence counsel objected and it is, therefore, relevant, but in view of the fact that the publication of this book and the author of the book were widely quoted in justification by the American publishers for cancelling my Dr Goebbels' biography, which was for me a particularly wounding and injurious event, when I wrote the biography of Dr Goebbels, it was a task of nine years, my Lord.

We have just spent three years preparing this case, writing that one book which your Lordship has seen took me nine years. It went through, I think, six different drafts; the first draft entirely in handwriting, the drafts of the manuscript which the Defendants have seen fills some ten cubic feet of boxes, as it was refined and refined and then finally totally rewritten when I came into possession of the diaries. The book was set to restore my reputation completely until the United States, because your Lordship may well agree that the book cannot

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be described as "anti-Semitic", the book, in my submission, cannot be described as justifying the Holocaust or admiring Hitler or exonerating Hitler in any kind of way, the book was, I consider, one of the most well-founded and well-researched and watertight accounts of the higher leadership of the Third Reich that I have ever written. It was the crowning point of my career. We waited with the utmost eagerness for publication day in the United States, shortly before which the publishers contacted me and said, Mr Irving, we are beginning to come under attack from all quarters. One of the quarters was from the second Defendant.

Q. Your evidence is, is it, that the -- I think you said "the author" did you mean...

A. The Second Defendant.

Q. The American publishers of the Goebbels book told you that Professor Lipstadt and -- A. No, my Lord, media accounts have linked Professor Lipstadt with this particular event.

Q. -- media accounts, rather than the American publishers?

A. This is true, my Lord, and it is very unsatisfactory that we are not going to be able, as I understand it, to question Professor Lipstadt about what contact she may have had.

If I may state at this point also, one would have liked to have seen in her discovery, had her

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discovery been complete, and I am going to submit her discovery was incomplete, any correspondence that she might have had or any communications she might or might not have had with the publishers' concerns, St Martins Press, or with the people who were putting pressure on the publishers, because the Second Defendant was certainly instantly quoted as an authority on the reasons why the book should be suppressed.

Q. Yes, but you are entitled to make applications for discovery, but let us focus on your evidence. If you want to make that application we can deal with that at the beginning or the end of the day.

A. It is not an application, my Lord, it is an allegation.

I was informed by the second Defendants' lawyers when your Lordship will have seen that I succeeded in obtaining an order that the Second Defendant should be required to swear a list on affidavit. When that occurs, as your Lordship is aware, I am not allowed to go behind the affidavit until the trial of the action. I was repeatedly reminded of this by the defendants' solicitors, who said you will be able to cross-examine Professor Lipstadt when the time comes, on her affidavit, and, of course, now we will not.

Q. Yes.

A. That is not the last time I shall refer to that, my Lord.

I find it an unfortunate state of affairs.

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So the book anyway in the United States did not appear. The just proceeds of that book not appearing were denied to me. But not only the just proceeds of that book but as it seems now all future books, because all the publishers with whom I previously dealt in the United States have pointed to that episode in grief and terror and said we cannot afford that to happen to us. The chairman of the St Martin's Press was obliged to resign six weeks later over the scandal and nobody wanted to go through that again.

Q. Yes. So that is your evidence about the effect of what has been published by these Defendants. Now -- A. Specific details, yes, my Lord, of course, there is a long-term effect in this country as well.

Q. -- describe that.

A. The book, which has been published by the First and Second Defendants has been not just sold through the normal outlets, it has been placed on the Internet on two different website locations. I have no way of knowing whether they are active participants in that or not because we cannot cross-examine them on that. I, the Defendant, but the book has been made available in other words to 200 million Internet users. They can download it free, the entire book, and review probably regardless of whatever injunction your Lordship sees fit to make at the end of this trial that book will continue in perpetuity in

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cyber space. The book has been donated to very large numbers of university libraries around the world. One of my correspondents at the University of Durham has found no fewer than three copies in Durham University library with library plate gummed into the front saying "donated by Friends of Durham University History Society". There is no such Society. So it has been actively propagated by who knows whom. The book is relied on as a source. It is an authoritative source by people who wish to attack me further. So it has an ongoing rolling effect far beyond the effect it has just on the one customer who picks it up at his local Barns & Noble or Waterstones bookshop, my Lord.

Of course, the book is a very much more serious libel -- vehicle for a libel then a newspaper. When newspapers have libelled me or defamed me in the past and people have come to me wringing their hands in grief as you will see from one of the speeches I made. I said, fear not because today is already Monday and what appeared yesterday is already wrapping fish and chips or being flushed down the drains in some paper processing plant.

Whereas books go into libraries.

But simultaneously, as your Lordship will have seen from the witness statement of Professor Evans, when he went to the British Library and asked to obtain a copy of my book he was told that it had mysteriously been put

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in the pornographic book section and was not freely available. The book which I have on the desk in front, my book "Hitler's War".

It is quite ingenious campaign, my Lord, I would aver that on the one side my book is being suppressed and squirreled away, hidden out of sight so people cannot see what I actually wrote. Pressure is put on publishers so they do not publish my books and simultaneously a campaign is launched by very well qualified writers and very gifted writers, armed with ammunition from all around the world in an attempt to defame me which I then cannot answer.

Has your Lordship further questions on ---- Q. Not on that aspect, and I do not want to impose any kind of rigid pattern to your evidence if you do not want it to emerge in that way?

A. My Lord, I find it is very useful that you ask me these questions because it is like an examination in chief.

Q. I hoped you might. Yes, that is what it is really intended to be. What I was going to suggest you deal with now, is the plea of justification because that is obviously the main issue. If it is not inconvenient to you it would be most helpful to me if you were to deal perhaps quite briefly with the various allegations that are put against you in the Defendant's summary of case, because I think everybody agrees that superseded the original defence, we discussed that at pre-trial review?

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A. Yes.

Q. I think it is a convenient summary of the allegations that are made against you and can you deal with it briefly or at greater length. It is a matter for you. I have no doubt you will be cross-examined about it anyway, but would it be appropriate to go through -- A. If I can find it in this bundle.

Q. -- the topics. I have it in a separate file. I do not know whether if you have it in the same form I have, the Defendant's summary of case?

MR RAMPTON: We have it. Does your Lordship have it in a separate file?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That may be something I did and have forgotten about.

MR RAMPTON: It is in the pale green thing.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got it?

A. I have the summary of the Defendants case, yes.

Q. Well, as you recall it is divided into sections, and the first section, which is quite a short one, is the allegation that is made against you by the Defendants that you are what is called a "Holocaust denier".

A. My Lord, I think I led, or at any rate I gave my reply to that allegation in my opening statement yesterday at some length, and I am not sure there is very much more I can add to that in chief, so to speak. Perhaps the ---- Q. Can I just put a little bit of flesh on the bones of that?

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A. Yes.

Q. The way the Defendants put their case is to quote quite a large number of, mostly speeches, that you have made?

A. Yes.

Q. Usually in North America, and to say that you have denied that there were any Jews killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz and so on, and refer to Auschwitz in dismissive terms. The first question, I suppose, is to what extent you accept that you are accurately quoted. I am not asking you to go into the detail of it, but do you accept that you have said that sort of thing, in general, whether the quotation is accurate?

A. In general, those quotations are accurate, my Lord. Of course, I am quite unhappy about the use of word "holocaust" without having had it very closely defined.

It is a very elastic expression.

Q. You state what you understand it to mean?

A. The Holocaust was the tragedy that befell the Jewish people during World War II. I would set it as broadly as that. One could even set if more broadly and say the Holocaust was whole of World War II and that the people who died and suffered in that Holocaust were not necessarily confined to the Jewish religion, but any number of innocents, whether gypsies, homosexuals, the people in Coventry, the people in Hiroshima. I think it is otiose to try and define the Holocaust just the way you

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wish to define it in order to snare somebody, which appears to be what happens in a case like this. They set it as wide as they want when it is a concern, for example, of taking money from the Swiss banks. I will justify that statement in a moment, and they set it very narrowly when they then try to snare a writer who is dangerous to them, as they put it.

The reference to the Swiss Bank is justified as follows. I have in my files and I can produce it to your Lordship if you wish probably five or ten whole page advertisements inserted in the newspapers around the world, and your Lordship may well have seen them, inviting people in entitled to compensation for their suffering in the Holocaust to come forward, and for the purposes of that advertisement those people are defined as any person who was persecuted in Germany during the periods of the Third Reich, or in Nazi occupied territories, by virtue of his religion or by virtue of being a minority. He did not have to be in a concentration camp. He did not have do work in a slave labour factory. The mere fact of being within the frontiers of those countries justified that man to Holocaust compensation. That, of course, is, in my submission, an offensively wide description of the word and I think that the two line description I gave, the Holocaust is -- I would prefer to see it defined for the purposes of this court, this trial, the Holocaust is the

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tragedy that befell -- that undoubtedly befell the Jewish people during the Third Reich, not even just during World War II.

Q. Well, do not let us be too bothered about labels, but can I just ask you this; I understand what are you saying about the Holocaust being a term you could apply to the World War II generally, but if you take it as meaning, for the purposes of this question anyway, a systematic programme of exterminating Jews, conducted by the Nazi regime -- A. My Lord, I think the difference -- Q. -- can I just ask you this, do you accept that there was any such programme first; leave aside the issue of gas chambers?

A. -- no, I do not. I think this is the defect, with respect, in your Lordship's definition. The systematic programme to exterminate the Jews is the cause, whereas the Holocaust, the word "Holocaust" as I would see it is the effect, the result, the tragedy that results. When we are looking at the Holocaust we are looking at the victims. We are looking at the mass graves. We are looking at the people being machine gunned into pits. The Holocaust in my submission is not the machinery which produced the result, it is the suffering and not the murderer, shall we say.

Q. So I want to be clear on this, because it is obviously

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important.

A. It is very important indeed, my Lord.

Q. You are saying that, yes, there were multiple shootings by Einsatzgruppen and so on during the invasion of Soviet Russia -- A. There was mass murders of Jews committed by Nazis in their satraps -- Q. -- but it was not pursuant to any systematic programme, is that your case?

A. -- again, I would have to -- I am not cavilling, but these are important definitions, my Lord. If the definition -- if by using the word "systematic" you are implying that the system, the Third Reich as such originated these massacres, then I would have to quibble with that. I would say that certainly at a lower level a system emerged and that it was systematised somewhere in the hierarchy; does your Lordship appreciate -- Q. Yes, I follow what you are saying.

A. -- yes. I submit that the Defendants will find it very difficult to suggest that it was a Third Reich decision.

In other words an Adolf Hitler decision, which is of course the open water between us at present.

Q. Can I ask a similar question; do you accept or deny totally that there was any systematic gassing of Jews in gas chambers, whether at Auschwitz or at elsewhere?

I know we are not dealing with Auschwitz but I think that

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that ought to be part of -- A. Yes, I think if we can leave out the word "systematic" which is contentious, I do not deny that there was some kind of gassing at gas chambers in Birkenau, it is highly likely that there was.

Q. -- on a solely experimental basis or -- A. That is the word I have used to give an indication of scale and to give an indication of the authority on which it was conducted, and, well, I leave it at that. But now you appreciate the reason why I am reluctant to insert the word systematised into that, because that implies that it was conducted on authority from above and that there were guidelines, and in some of the killings they were very definitely guidelines, my Lord, and I will lead some evidence on that later. Because Heinrich Himmler in fact refers to guidelines in a message he send to one of the commanders which has not been revealed previously.

Q. -- do you want to add anything more in advance of cross-examination about the allegation that you are a Holocaust denier using the term "Holocaust" in the narrow definition?

A. I do, my Lord, I wish to say that if you are not allowed to examine components of the Holocaust as I described it, the tragedy that was inflicted on the Jewish people in the Third Reich, if you are not allowed to examine individual components of that and say, yes, this definitely

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happened. This is slightly exaggerated, that bit I find little evidence for. In other words not to carry out normal kind of analysis that you would do as a writer or as an historian without being accused and defamed as being a Holocaust denier instantly by the assembled mass media, then I would think would be a very sorry state of affairs.

To that extent I find it offensive to be called a Holocaust denier because there are aspects of the Holocaust as currently portrayed that I find questionable, debatable and they need to be debated. But that is not Holocaust denial in my view, my Lord.

The defence contention that somebody who challenges the figure is a Holocaust denier ipso facto, I have read Professor Evans' report in great deal here where I think he gives four criteria of what a Holocaust denier is. Somebody who says that Adolf Hitler did not give the order, somebody who challenges a figure. Somebody who says there were no gas chambers. I forget the fourth one. It is almost as though those four criteria have been tailor made in the way that you would have a suit tailor made for this very action, my Lord. I do not think that your Lordship will set much store by those four criteria.

I hope you will not. Because if it is not possible to question the 6 million figure, for example, that I have been I accused of being a Holocaust denier, you run into immediate difficulties, because the Auschwitz authorities . P-159

themselves removed the memorial stone for 4 million dead and replaced it with a memorial stone for one million dead; are they Holocaust deniers under Professor Evans' definition? It is an absurdity.

Q. Again, take your own course, but I was being to move on and I was going to skip for the purposes of my so-called examination-in-chief of you, skip altogether the section dealing with Auschwitz and indeed the one...

A. If you had not, my Lord, I would have reminded you of what we agreed this morning.

Q. Yes, quite. I am also going to skip Treblinka, Sobibor and Belzec, because it seems to me they really belong in the same compartment of the case as Auschwitz.

There is a section though in a subsection in section 2, you may be able to find the page 28, which is headed: "Mass Murder of Jews by Shootings", I am not sure that really belongs in that particular section, but I can see why it has landed up there; do you want to say anything at this stage about that in fairly general terms? I think the criticism is made of you that whilst you recognize that many, to use a neutral word, many Jews were shot and killed in horrific circumstances, you have downplayed it, you have underestimated the number of deaths which occurred in this fashion?

A. I do not like playing numbers games, my Lord, and a lot of these numbers are very suspect. Your Lordship may not be

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familiar with this, but there was the case against Field Marshall Manstein, conducted by British War Crimes Court in Germany, where Manstein was represented by very eminent and able QC, I think it was Paget, who subsequently wrote a book called "Manstein and His Trials" and he led very good evidence indeed on these figures, proving how totally impossible many of the figures were relating to the Einsatzgruppen, but I say this with the utmost diffidence as I am not a expert and I have no intention of becoming a expert on that. What I am an expert on is the role played by Adolf Hitler in these killings and if I can just spend two minutes of the court's time describing the sequel to what happened yesterday, the November 30th 1941 episode, documents we have here in the British archives. They are of the utmost importance because they go a long way to refuting what Mr Rampton said yesterday about my interpretation of that Himmler document.

If you remember, my Lord, on November 30th 1941, an event to which both the defence and I in our opening statements have referred occurred. A train load of 1,035 Jews from Berlin arrived after a two or three day journey at Riga. They were unloaded from the train that morning in ice cold conditions and had the misfortune to arrive in the middle of a mass extermination, a mass shooting of Jews being conducted by the local SS commander. They were shot immediately in the pits, and, my Lord, I am sure you . P-161

will vividly remember the description of that very shooting that was given to us by General Bruns in the Bruns Report, to which I have repeatedly referred.

Q. Yes.

A. So that one episode, when great good fortune, having a lot of documentation, the defence as I understand it are going to seize on the fact that in the Bruns Report the local SS junior says it is the Führer's orders. I think there are very grave reasons for doubting that because Heinrich Himmler, as we heard yesterday, at 1.30 p.m. on that same Sunday, November 30th 1941, was called into Hitler's bunker and at or about that time, and I am going to be quite careful how I say this, he had reason to make a telephone call to SS Obergruppenführer Reinhardt Heinrich, who was his henchman, his closest lieutenant.

He was the head of the killers, shall we say, he was above the Gestapo, Reinhard Heydrich, and in that telephone conversation he said certain things as a result of which he jotted down two lines in his note pad. I have the actual handwritten notes on the table next to my stand there. The first line says: ( German spoken) Jew transport from Berlin. I appreciate quite readily that in the first chapter of my "Hitler's War" book I wrongly put that in the plural. The second line continued with the words ( German spoken) "no liquidation".

Now, many things can be said about that

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document, my Lord, the first is, how is it that it was not until 1974 when David Irving took the trouble to transcribe Heinrich Himmler's note, 30 years after the war was over that this extraordinary note came to the attention of the historical community. Well, I do not know why they do not want to read Heydrich Himmler's handwriting. It is a very difficult handwriting and I have to plead that as being my partial excuse for having misread ( German spoken) and also on the following day for having misread word "Juden" as "haben" (?) or vice versa.

Q. I think the point they make is not so much about legibility, but that this on its face looks as if it is talking about a single train transportation to -- A. Yes, this true, my Lord.

Q. -- to Riga from Berlin.

A. I should have put in the word "the". I left out the word "the" in my text based on it. I should not have said "transportation of Jews" I should have said "the transport of Jews". But I corrected this as soon as this was pointed out to me, my Lord.

But I can continue because the inference that I drew from this, if this telephone call is made ( German spoken), from the bunker, from Hitler's bunker at the Wolf's lair in Rastenburg, East Prussia, Himmler has been required to telephone Reinhard Heydrich and tell somebody these Jews from Berlin were not to be liquidated, you have

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to very interesting conclusion, namely the liquidation was in the air and people have pointed this out to me and I do not dispute that for one moment. But what interested me is Adolf Hitler's biographer is that here is a case of Hitler intervening in a negative way. But it gets more interesting, my Lord, because we now have 20 years further down the road at the end of the 1990s in the Public Record Office the intercepts of the radio messages sent by Himmler the very next day to the man who had carried out the killings, SS Obergruppenführer Jeckeln. Now this may be new to your Lordship. It is certainly new to everybody in this court; December 1st 1941, the day after the killings, Jeckeln gets a message from Heinrich Himmler in top secret SS code which we broke reading, and I have this there memory, I have the actual document on my desk over there but the sense is, the words are: These shootings that have been carried out in Riga, concerning the shootings in Riga, any excess, any further excesses, arbitrary excesses and actions against instructions given to you -- no. You have been given clear guidelines.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we ought to look at this document I am not familiar with it.

MR RAMPTON: Nor are we.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I think we should look at it.

A. My Lord, it has been supplied to the Defence several weeks ago.

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not doubting that for a moment. Can you indicate where it is so we can get it for you?

A. It is large yellow sheets headed "Most Secret" in my case, at the bottom of the inside of my case. Then I do not have them with me, because I was intending to lead this material tomorrow.

Q. So I understand what you are saying, you are saying there is a message from Himmler to Jeckeln?

A. From Himmler to the Chief of the SS saying: There were very clear guidelines for the outsettlement, the outplacing of the Jews from Berlin.

Q. So it is about the Jews from Berlin?

A. It is talking about Jews from Berlin, clearly referring to this train load. He then continues: Any further arbitrary actions and actions against instructions will be severely punished, and he ordered Jeckeln to report immediately to Hitler's headquarters. On December 4th, my Lord, and this I do have there in the big blue volume -- can you give it to me, the Himmler Diary, have had that volume now for 20 years -- on December 4th 1941 Jeckeln then turns up at Hitler's headquarters and he is raked over the coals, there is no question, because the killings of German Jews stopped for the next few months. On December 1st I would say ---- Q. Is there a copy of this document? If there is not there should be one.

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A. My Lord, there are copies made. I had all this bundle ready to be produced tomorrow.

MR RAMPTON: Can I help?

A. Because of the importance ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think Mr Rampton knows where it is.

MR RAMPTON: I do not know if it is he same document. From its wording I very much suspect it is, but on page 353 of Professor Evans' report at paragraph 6 ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor who?

MR RAMPTON: Professor Evans page 353, paragraph 6, he has a quotation from a document: "The Jews have been resettled out of the territory of the "Ostländer" (?) only to be dealt with in accordance with guidelines issued by me or the Reich Security Head Office on my authority. I will punish individual initiatives and contraventions.

Signed H. Himmler", and it is annotated as being Himmler to Jeckeln, 1st December 1941 at 7.30 p.m. in the Public Record Office HW16/32.

A. That is correct.

MR RAMPTON: It is the same document.

A. Does he also have the following message, let me ask Mr Rampton, where he instructs Jeckeln to report to headquarters immediately?

MR RAMPTON: I do not have that document.

A. Clearly the significance of that is even more important than this rap on the knuckles about the arbitrary

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reactions and acting against authority and disobeying the guidelines. On December 1st, the day after the killings, the same day as these telegrams, here is in Himmler's own handwriting a telephone call at 1315 to SS General Heinrich about the executions in Riga which everybody agrees is referring to this appalling atrocity where the Jews had been shot into the pits. The significant feature is, as all the historians on both sides now agree, that from that time on the killing of German Jews stopped for many months. The fact that this instruction had come in the first instance from Hitler's bunker and on the following day from Heinrich Himmler who had been to see to Hitler who sends him a message that I would describe as "panic stricken" to General Jeckeln saying "any further actions of this nature, any arbitrary actions against the guidelines, will be severely punished and you are ordered to report to Hitler's headquarters", is a matter which I think is so serious that this is the reason why I was preparing a very detailed bundle on it, my Lord, with complete facsimiles and translations for your Lordship's attention, because it goes very closely to the central issues in this case: How far was Hitler personally involved and what were his intentions?

Q. In relation to the shooting?

A. Of European Jews as opposed to Russian Jews.

Q. Yes, but in relation to death by shooting.

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A. And also in relation to my contention, as your Lordship will be aware, that there is a chain of documents of varying magnitudes of integrity and weight which indicate that Hitler was a negative force in this matter, whereas there are no comparable documents indicating the opposite. I know it is barely credible, but if one comes to this with a open mind and then 20 years later one comes across yet another document like this extraordinary British intercept, this decode of the SS message from Himmler to the man on the spot who had done the killings, saying any further such actions will be subject to punishment and ordering him to report to Hitler's headquarters. It is an extraordinary episode and I find it also highly significant that the German historians have so far not been prepared to refer to this episode with a single line as far as its significance is concerned, because they are mortally terrified under the consequence of the new laws passed in Germany. It has been the foreign historians, like myself, who have drawn attention to this exchange of documents.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your case really, as I understand it, that that particular example of the transport from Berlin demonstrates what you say was Hitler's role in relation to it?

A. My Lord, it is one indication. It is not the only evidence that I rely upon, my Lord.

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Q. No, that is what I meant by "demonstrate", "illustrates" is a better word?

A. I am careful there, because when I introduced in my previous book, the November 30 handwritten annotation by Himmler, my opponent said, "this is his only evidence, this is what he relies on", and it was not, I had more.

My Lord, we shall be hearing at a later stage in these proceedings Dr John Fox, who is an expert, among other things, on these police decodes, and I shall be asking him, with your Lordship's permission, the condition of these decodes and are they wall to wall? Is everything there, or are there gaps? If one finds an item like this, of course, it is a nugget, one is not entitled to expect to find it, but one find it and here it is, suddenly in our faces, you cannot ignore it. There are several documents like that, my Lord.

Q. Well, I was going to invite you to perhaps pass on now from the shootings of the Jews and to skip section 3, which is the Leuchter Report?

A. While I am in full flood can I move on to another Hitler document just three months later?

Q. Yes, of course.

A. After the Wannsee Conference, which was an interministerial conflict on the executive measures for the Final Solution, whatever it was, there was a lot of paperwork in 199 -- Q. In 1942?

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A. In 1942, the Danzig Conference was held on January 20th 1942, my Lord. After the Danzig Conference the ministries engaged in a lot of paperwork, and at one stage the necessity was ventilated of bringing up this matter with Adolf Hitler, whatever the Final Solution was, the Ministry of Justice began to get uneasy about it, because they could see it had ugly connotations; there were illegalities being adumbrated, and the head of the German Civil Service, Dr Hans Lammers, who was a minister, a Reich minister, telephoned the head of the German Ministry of Justice, whose name was Schlegelberger, we shall be hearing quite a bit about the Schlegelberger document and in this telephone conversation which Schlegelberger wrote a minute on, or what a lawyer would probably call an "attendance note", Lammers said "the Führer", Adolf Hitler, "the Führer", Adolf Hitler, "has repeatedly said he wants the solution of the Jewish problem postponed after until the war is over". This is a document that is caused my opponents immense difficulties. The difficulties they solved initially by pretending it did not exist, by which I mean they did not quote it. They did not adduce it in their history books, and when that thorn in the flesh, David Irving, kept on reminding them of existence of this document, which tripped them up whatever their hypotheses were, that is when the real battle began, the skirmishing began. But I think your . P-170

Lordship will appreciate that I am entitled to point to that document as being another document in that chain of evidence, unless of course I have deliberately mistranslated it, or misconstrued it.

Q. No, I do not think that is suggested.

A. Yes, but it is clearly a very important document. A wartime document written by a lawyer on a phone call from the head of the German Civil Service, who is the next one up to Adolf Hitler, saying the Führer has repeatedly said he wants the solution of the Jewish problem postponed until after the war was over, which was typical Adolf Hitler, anything like that he wanted put on the back burner he had fought this ghastly war through. There were several problems like that, the church problem was another one.

Q. What was Schlegelberger's position?

A. He was at that time, as I understand it, Secretary of State, which is the equivalent of a permanent Under Secretary in a British ministry. In the Ministry of Justice, his Minister was Dr Franz Gürtner, who I believe had died recently at that time, so he was effectively in charge of the Ministry, Schlegelberger, and the minute he wrote was directed to a few notorious names including Roland Freisler. It is quite an interesting document and interesting about the document, my Lord, is at the time of the Nuremberg trials it vanished. It remained in

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original in the Ministry files, but the photocopies provided to the lawyers at Nuremberg, this extraordinary document, vanished. It was not there, and it gave me a lot of trouble locating the original eventually.

Q. Yes. Would you like to pass on now, do you accept that the Leuchter report is plainly part and parcel of the Auschwitz issue?

A. Yes.

Q. I think that must be right. Then the next section in the Defendant's summary of case, which is -- A. The Leuchter Report, of course, exists in two incarnations, my Lord. The original Leuchter Report was an affidavit drawn up as an expert report for the Canadian courts and what we published was a glossy version truncated and streamlined.

Q. -- but it was basically the same?

A. Made the same allegations and on the same contentions.

Q. We will leave that on one side, shall we.

A. Yes.

Q. I can see it comes in in some other context. Then there is a heading called "Historiography", this is really the section where there are a whole series of detailed criticisms made of you, it being alleged that you have skewed documents and generally behaved in a -- A. Reprehensible -- Q. -- disreputable way as a historian in your treatment of

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the evidence. Now it is up to you how you deal with it, you can either deal with it generally, or you can make some specific points on the instances that are cited against you?

A. -- well, the general statement I would say is Mandy Rice-Davies, they have to say this, my Lord, they would say that, would they not? My opponents, who I could also categorise as my rivals, dislike the fact that I get to the documents before them. For 30 years I have been the one to dig out the diaries.

By way of a general remark I would say I that I would visit the widows and obtain the papers, not because I was more industrious than them, but purely because I took the trouble. I visited the widow of State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker, who had been Ribbentrop's State Secretary. She was Baroness Marianne von Weizsäcker, who was subsequently the mother of the State President of Germany, President von Weizsäcker and it turned out that she had all her husband's diaries and letters, which she made available to me, and was rather puzzled that she had not made them available to the German historians and her reply was, "Mr Irving, they never asked". It was the same with very many other historians -- many other historical sources. Purely by virtue of visiting the widows or next of kin or digging around I have obtained these diaries and private papers.

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Q. But leaving aside digging out the evidence.

A. Well, this generated the envy and jealousy which is unfortunately what has fuelled lot of the criticism.

Q. I hear you say that, but what about the criticism of the use that you make the evidence once you have got it because what is said against you is that you pick and choose?

A. My Lord, this is almost certainly something which can only be dealt with on piecemeal basis, they will put individual documents to me in cross-examination and to their delight I may occasionally concede that, yes, I got something wrong. I will concede that I misread the word "haben" in Himmler's appalling handwriting, and if you were to have a look at his handwriting you will see how very similar it is. I will provide the documents to your Lordship tomorrow to the alternative word. This kind of thing happens.

Q. Well, if I may say so, I think you are right that this particular topic has to be dealt with on a ...

A. Piecemeal basis.

Q. Well, case by case basis, I think that is it probably right, but if you want to say anything more generally at the moment about your -- A. I will say generally, of course, and it is important for the case to know, and I am saying this on oath, I have never knowingly or wilfully misrepresented a document or

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misquoted it, or suppressed parts of the document which would run counter to my case, I think it is important to state that. Any of the other allegations in that line, misquoting, misconstruing, mistranslating, distorting or manipulating a document I have not done. I shall be very surprised indeed if the defence manage to make out a watertight case on even one document in that line.

I think I would hang up my hat if that could be established against me. It would be a despicable thing for a historian to do, but it would be also very difficult, because in my case I have always instantaneously made my documents available to my opponents. Sometimes in advance of publication of my own book I would turn over documents like the Bruns Report to Professor Fleming. When I found the article Aumeier Report in the British archives I actually contacted Professor Richard van Pelt, whose book on Auschwitz I greatly admired and I said you will certainly find this document of great interest and I told him exactly where the file was to be found. I have always been like that.

It would be very difficult simultaneously do that, my Lord, and at the same time distort the document because you are going to get found out and shot. So I did not do it. But that is the only general remark I would make and possibly of importance because it is a statement on oath.

Q. I think that is right. The next topic that is addressed

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by the Defendants is the bombing of Dresden in 1945?

A. Again, I will make a general statement on it, my Lord.

This was the -- it was not actually the first book I wrote. The first book I wrote was a history of the bombing war, but it was only published in German -- in Switzerland. It was written at the same time as I wrote the book "The Destruction of Dresden", which was a three year task, between 1961 and 1963.

I emphasise the years, because in 1961 and 1963, of course, we were not in the happy position that we are in now where we can go to the public archives and see the documents. I understand that I can go down the road to the public archives and actually see correspondence that I had with Harold Wilson, this kind of thing.

I personally frown on it. I liked the old 50 year rule because there were ways round it. But in those years there was a 50 year rule in operation. In you wanted to write a history of something that happened in World War II you could not get the original documents if you were not an official historian.

Q. That is from the British -- A. From the British point of view.

Q. -- what about the German records, were they available?

A. The German records were in a more difficult position because Dresden lay in the Soviet zone of Germany, the German Democratic Republic as it had by that time become . P-176

and although I had established cordial relations with City Archives Director in Dresden, Dr Walter Lange, they were under no kind of obligation or compulsion to make their records available to me and they did so on a very piecemeal basis, what the Germans would call in salami slices, piece by piece they would give me a document, according to how they thought they could fit it into the Cold War propaganda. I had to weigh it from that point of view.

I emphasise this because three years later after the book was published those same officials in East Germany decided they had now just found a report on the statistics on the air raid on Dresden which produced figures which were different from mine.

Q. You are making this point really to explain why your estimate of the number of deaths, which is really what the Dresden issue is about?

A. Yes.

Q. Has fallen fairly dramatically from a quarter of a million -- A. I would not say "fallen", that implies only way, I would say "fluctuate".

Q. -- in a downwards direction, would you accept that?

A. If you were a scientist you would not say "the figure is this", you would say it is probably that, with a upper margin of this and a lower margin of that. You would give . P-177

a range of probabilities, and the range of probabilities I have given has remained roughly the same, but I have brought down the target figure. The original figure I gave, I hasten to add, was not my figure, it was the figure given to me by a man who met the Trevor Roper criteria. If you remember, my Lord, somebody who is in a position to know.

This was a man who was school teacher in Hanover who had nothing to gain from it, who had asked no money for it, but after the air raid on Dresden, which took place on February 13th 1945, this school teacher had the unfortunate task of running the missing persons bureau in Dresden, the Dead Person Section, he had been given the job of setting a card index in this appalling task of trying to identify the dead. They did it, for example, they collected buckets of wedding rings from the corpses.

I am sure the defence will appreciate when I talk about buckets of wedding rings, gold wedding rings, were collected from the corpses of the air raid victims because inside a German wedding ring there is the initials and the date of the wedding, so they could identify the corpse from that. Or they could have an index card just saying "KD" and a date on the inside of wedding ring. They built up this card index.

Of course, this was incomplete because they had not got all the corpses and not all the corpses were

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adults, not all the adults were married. But he was able to extrapolate and he kept a diary, which he also made available to me. When I asked him the 60,000 dollar question, I said, Dr Voigt or Mr Voigt, how many people in your estimate died in that air raid on Dresden? He gave me an upper estimate and a lower estimate, and he then said that in his own belief the figure was probably 135,000. Which was the figure I then used, and I quoted the source as being this man. In other words it was not a figure on my authority, it was a figure on the authority of the source. I see no reason really to depart from that figure because, it may sound self-defeating, I say that there is not much difference between 135,000 dead and 35,000 dead. Both of them are a monstrous tragedy or crime, depending on which end of scale you are viewing it from. If you are one of those dead it hurts just as much if you are one of the 35,000 or one of 135,000. So I confess that I did not dedicate as much work to try to pin down the actual death roll as no doubt the defence would have liked me to have done, the Defendants in this case, my Lord.

But I would also submit this cannot be categorised as being wilful misrepresentation, or distortion. My Lord, you will remember that I said that the German police chief's document giving a different death figure had been found three years after I wrote the

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book. It was supplied to me by the East German authorities, very kindly, voluntarily, and by an extraordinary coincidence in exactly the same post I received from the West German Government a summary of the German Finance Ministry files for that week which contained precisely the same figures that that East German document contained, because otherwise one which might have suspected this was an East German cold war propaganda trick. So it was a very authentic kind of document. But even then you had to say the document was dated, I believe, March 10th 1945, less than four weeks after the air raid on Dresden.

My Lord, I do not know if you have seen the photographs of Dresden after the air raid. There was not very much left standing. The building -- the city was pancaked. Nobody had excavated the city centre. The people who were living in the old town were still buried in the basements where they had been suffocated or crushed alive. So the figure that the Police Chief gave in his report of March 4th 1945 could still only be regarded as provisional.

Q. What is the figure in the current edition of "Destruction of Dresden"?

A. Can I just complete what I was about to say, I was just pausing for dramatic effect. The step which I then took, having received this document, was as follows: . P-180

I discussed it with my publisher, and I said that it was an important enough document that I had to draw it to the attention of the reading public immediately, and he -- Mr Kimber -- and Mr Kimber, God rest his soul, he said: David do not do that. If you do, it will come down on your head. It will reflect on you in a bad way, and I said this is an important document, and I have a duty to bring it to the attention of reading public, and I sent it as a letter to The Times, which is in the discovery, and The Times newspaper published it, I believe, on July 6th 1966, within a very true days of my actually receiving the document from the East Germans, the new figures, the fact that there was a considerably lower death roll estimated by the local Police Chief. I added my reservations, the fact that the city was still largely unexcavated, even then, in 1966 and the fact that local Police Chief was in charge of air raid civil defence measures. So he had no reason to give a bigger figure. He would prefer to give a lower figure.

Q. This is Mr Grosse?

A. I cannot remember exactly which name it was, the man who wrote the final report. Grosse wrote the incorrect report, the propaganda report, my Lord. I emphasise the fact that I made this immediately known to the reading public and not only that but at my own expense I had a reprint made of that letter by The Times newspaper. I had

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500 copies printed and for the next few years I enclosed that letter with all my correspondence to other historians.

Now I do not know any other historian who would have taken action like that, my Lord. He would hoped nobody found out, possibly. He certainly would not have gone out of the way to draw the attention of other people to an error or possible error that he had made in one of his own books. To find myself now, 30 years later, defending myself against the allegation of manipulation and distortion beggars description, it is repugnant, my Lord.

Q. What is the figure in the current edition of "Destruction of Dresden" for the number of deaths?

A. I have reduced my best estimate to the region of 60,000.

This is the edition which is called "Apocalypse 1945" the destruction of Dresden because it was not until three years ago that I sat down and analysed that Police Chief's report and compared it with the Grosse Report and saw the obvious similarities and the obvious discrepancies and decided that the Grosse Report had been deliberately issued by the Propaganda Ministry for propaganda purposes. But 60,000, my Lord, 35,000, 135,000, you may disagree with me, but I see no difference between these figures, any more than somebody whose says it was not 6 million who died in the Holocaust, it was only one million

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which is the kind of sentence I would never utter because each one of those people being killed is a crime and I consider people being killed in saturation bombing air raids, although I am British, I think it is wrong.

Q. Do you sometimes in your books make comparisons between the number of deaths caused by Allied bombing raids with the number of deaths caused by Nazi bombing raids?

A. I think the word "comparison" would be wrong, my Lord, but I have done it in a way that possibly a journalist would, I have mentioned the facts in successive sentences.

In my very first book "The Destruction of Dresden", if your Lordship were to turn to the very last page of that book, which I have with me, and it is in the bundles I distributed this morning, of "The Destruction of Dresden", the very last page says: "That this was undoubtedly a terrible crime. It was a crime committed against a city in Germany, a country which had carried out the most appalling massacres against helpless citizens." I forget the actual wording I used, but it is in that book. There was that kind of comparison. I do not consider it to be offensive to say too colloquially "you did it too" and when airmen say, as I asked them at the time, I would ask the Bomber Command airmen who pressed the button and dropped the bombs, I would say to them what were your feelings? They said they had no feeling because they could not see their victims. I consider this is not

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an adequate justification but I do not think this goes to the issues in this case.

Q. Yes. The next section is the allegation that is made by the Defendants that you consort and associate with some pretty unsavoury characters in North America and elsewhere; that is to say very right-wing extremists?

A. My Lord, can I deal with this in summary in general terms?

Q. Yes.

A. At this stage, undoubtedly if they want to go through it piece by piece and name by name and phrase by phrase.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am sorry to intervene, particularly to correct a judge, but your Lordship might have missed a couple of sections, I think.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have I?

MR RAMPTON: After Dresden comes -- it may be because the way the file is arranged.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is Hitler's Adjutants.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, Hitler's Adjutants.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That does not belong in Dresden.

MR RAMPTON: No.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is rather why I skipped it.

MR RAMPTON: Another route to the exoneration. But your Lordship went straight from Dresden to right wing extremism.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

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MR RAMPTON: Along the way jumping over Hitler's Adjutants.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: And Nazi anti-Semitism.

MR RAMPTON: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are quite right.

MR RAMPTON: Hitler Adjutants is quite an important section, certainly.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you for that, Mr Rampton. Can I therefore invite you to comment on the -- you will find this as page 7.

A. Page 7.

Q. The allegation that you really ignored the evidence when you claim -- A. Shall we go through 1 to 6 in detail, my Lord, now?

Q. -- yes, if you would like to because Mr Rampton is quite right -- A. The allegation is that I ignored the most basic cautions in interviewing members of Hitler's staff. Well, jealousy place a part in this. Adolf Hitler's personal staff at the end of World War II, so far as they survived, were very bruised people. He had four female secretaries, they were all locked up for periods of several years by the Allies. I remember my friend, Ralph Hoffmann, who I invited to lunch just to see what it would be like to having a liberal playwright lunching with Hitler's secretary. When he heard that the Americans had locked her up for two years he said but why did they put you in

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prison? She said I typed for the Führer. I typed for the Führer. He said, but millions carried guns for the Führer. They were very bruised people. They did not want to speak to their own historians and they certainly did not want to speak to the former enemy. It took me many years to win their confidence by methods that might be found odious. I would become very friendly. In the case Christa Schroeder particularly, I would just invite her out to lunch and say Frau Schroeder we will not talk about the War, knowing very well that she would want eventually to mention something that happened. But at the moment I took out a pen she would clam up. She would not say anything, so I had to write a note afterwards. It was this kind of situation. Very delicate, drawing them out and then eventually after five or ten years Christa Schroeder revealed that she had written private letters to a woman friend throughout her time with Hitler and she got all those letters back. She produced the letters and gave them to me.

The allegation is -- I think allegation No. 2 that I would use documents like that in injudiciously.

Q. -- just one more question on the first criticism; you say that you accept that you did not approach the matter in what you regard as the ideal way, but you say there was no all alternative because that was the only way of getting these people to talk?

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A. A historian is accustomed to going to archives or my reproof to the historians, particularly of the Defendants' historians, is that they sit if their book lined caves taking books out of shelves, taking a sentence and working it into their own fabric and at the end of the day not contributing anything to the sum total of human knowledge.

I did the exact opposite. I ignored the book lined caves. I did not reads their books, which they regarded as a personal slight. I went to the very fountainhead of the information, the people who had worked at Hitler's side for twelve years. By then I aver and I submit and I strongly resent in this court on oath at no time was I not aware of the fact that I had to treat what they said to me with the utmost caution, and it was only when I was satisfied they were being completely frank with me, that I added weight to the evidence they gave me and I will give two examples of that, my Lord. One of them was Walter Frentz. He was the personal film camera man attached to Hitler's staff and he took the colour photographs of Hitler's staff which figure in a lot of my books. One day Heinrich Himmler said to Walter Frentz in August 1941, which he told me and this is the reason I am saying this, because I persuaded him to tell me something against himself. He said that Heinrich Himmler had said to him in August 1941, Herr Frentz it gets very boring here at the wolf's lair, doesn't it? We are going out to

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the Eastern Front for a few days, do you want do come with us? Two or three days later Himmler said to Walter Frentz and Frentz related to me this one evening over a body of wine (he is still alive) at Lake Constance. Himmler said to Frentz, tomorrow we are going to be doing a mass shooting, do you want to come along and have a look? The next morning in the misty hours of dawn Frentz and Himmler and Carl Wolf, and a number of other SS gentlemen, Frentz himself is in the airforce, found themselves standing at one end of a field outside Minsk, at the other end of which, as Frentz described it to me, large pits had been dug out by "backhoes" or bulldozers and truck loads of civilians who were being driven up and stood of this pit and being machine gunned in the pit. He described this to me in great deal. I do not have to go into all the detail he gave here, my Lord. His wife was very astonished to hear this. Halfway through this description his wife, Mrs Frentz, said, Walter, I have never heard this before.

And Walter went slightly pink because I suppose he was in his cups and he had not realised he had told me so much.

Mrs Frentz niggled slightly in the way that wives do and said, Walter, you say these were civilians being shot, were there women and children being shot too? Walter Frentz said, "I cannot remember", but you could tell from the way he said "I cannot remember" that he could.

My Lord, I aver that if I get that kind of

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information out for the first time from a man who has not even told it to his own wife, then I have succeeded in extracting information, even from Hitler's Adjutants.

There is another episode of exactly the same character. I persuaded a man to talk to me who had been the Adjutant, not of Hitler, but the Adjutant of Hitler's Adjutant, his SS Adjutant. Hitler's SS Adjutant was an SS general named Hermann Fegelein. He subsequently married the sister of Eva Braun. Hermann Fegelein's Adjutant was Johannes Göhler, who lived in Stuttgart.

Q. May I interrupt you, it is going to be helpful to the transcriber, who is having a fairly massive task with all these names if you when you mention a fresh name just spell it out.

A. I have given her a list of 5,000 names. His Adjutant was a man I am going to speak of SS Colonel Göhler. I will not bother with the accents. Johannes Göhler told me that in the last days of the War, in April 1945, he was present when Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS came to see Hitler and reported that there was a concentration camp in Thuringia, probably the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, about to be captured by the American forces, and what they should they do with the inmates, because they could not evacuate them all in time, Göhler said to me, Mr Irving, Hitler said, Herr Reichsführer, stay over until the end of the conference. After the conference, -- Göhler said, -- after

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the conference Hitler sat on the edge of the conference table with his legs dangling and said, "Herr Himmler, those convicts are to be liquidated if they cannot be evacuated in time". I asked Mr Göhler about that episode on three separate occasions, spread over several years just to see if there were discrepancies in the different versions, rather like a stereoscopic picture of the episode. The narrative remained the same. You will find that particular episode in my books on Adolf Hitler. That is an episode recounted to me by an SS officer against the reputation and honour of the SS and against the honour and reputation of Adolf Hitler, yet I extracted it from Hitler's Adjutants, or the person who I would certainly put in this category. This is what entitles me to aver once again that I have not failed in my duty as an historian in so far as the Adjutants are concerned.

Q. That conversation, which I am bound to say I do not remember, is in "Hitler's War"?

A. Certainly in "Hitler's War".

Q. Cited in a way that accepts it did happen?

A. Unquestionably, my Lord, yes.

Q. I am afraid I have not got that in my mind. Yes. I think you were on the...

A. That was number 2.

Q. Yes. That is illustrative, is it really, about what you are saying about that criticism?

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A. Well, the plaintiff, that is myself, is tendentious in his choice and interpretation of documents, rejecting out of hand the greater wealth of statements. My Lord, you will have noticed the subtle difference between statements and documents, I am sure. Directly implicating Hitler in the Final Solution and adopting as persuasive the few statements exculpating Hitler without any proper explanation for so doing.

My Lord, in your former incarnation as a barrister I am sure you have also had to weigh statements and documents and decide which you attach more importance to. Documents in this connection are anything from a wartime document, a microfilm, a tape recording, an aerial photograph, a deciphered intercept, or even a building as document in this connection; where a statement made by somebody for whatever purpose, usually to exculpate himself and pass the blame on to somebody else, as frequently happened in the war crimes trials, is to be viewed with the utmost suspicion.

Statements in my submission are usually relied upon by people who have not got enough documents, they have not got enough documents because they have not gone out and done the fieldwork. They like using the statements because they fit in with their preconceived notions, whereas the documents like the ones I have I mentioned, the Schlegelberger document and the Himmler

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telephone notes are inconvenient. They find no explanation for them. So they prefer their statements to my documents, my Lord. This may seem a trite answer, but it is the answer which I shall give until they come at me with chapter and verse in cross-examination.

Q. Yes, I think this is another example of an allegation that is really only capable of being dealt with by looking at the individual cases relied on.

A. I think the choice of words between their statements and my documents is not by happen chance, I think they have chosen the word "statement" deliberately because they intended to put to me self-serving statements made by people in various war crimes trials under whatever conditions against the documents which I have obtained.

Q. Yes. Now the next criticism really relates, I think, to mainly to the way in which you dismiss some sources which do not say what you want them to say.

A. I am sure your Lordship is also a bit baffled as to what they are getting at here, I am sure Mr Rampton will assist us when he comes to the cross-examination. If they are saying I do not put in adequate apparatuses in my book saying what sources and archives I have used there are several reasons for that.

Q. I think the key phrase in that criticism is "double standards"; I think what is said against you is that you are inclined to adopt uncritically some source material . P-192

because it suits your agenda, as they put it, whereas you dismiss -- A. I accept -- Q. -- more reliable evidence because it does not fit in with your agenda?

A. -- I accept that that is a valid criticism, my Lord. AJP Taylor said the same to me once. He said, when you are looking at the Final Solution you are asking for a document, when you looking at what happened to General Sikorski you are quite happy to make allegations without a document. There are answers you can give. It is a valid criticism, but I am not going to say it is a "correct criticism".

Q. Can you explain what you mean by that.

A. They are entitled to make that criticism on their perception of the way history is written. If I take that specific example, that there is no document -- I point out there is no document showing that Hitler even knew about Auschwitz, whereas when I wrote about the death of General Sikorski in a book published in 1967 I am accused of having said it was probably sabotage even though there is no documentary evidence to suggest it was. This is I think an acceptable distinction because we are after all the victor nation; all our records are intact. We lost none of our records through World War II. We were not invaded by the Red Army; our archives were not bombed and

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blasted and burnt to pieces. Our archives are intact. We now no longer have a 50 year rule, and so we would be entitled to expect to find as a result of our having had unconditional surrender from the Germans and total insight into their archives we would expect to find the record relating to Hitler, then we would not expect to find in the British Secret Service archives, which, of course, are only the archives which are still closed in this country.

That became a bit convoluted, if I had a second chance I would say it again slightly differently.

Q. I think I understand what you are saying. You are really saying that because the German archive is incomplete -- A. Yes, we have total insight into the German archives such as they have survived by virtue of unconditional surrender which we did not have at the end of World War I, but we certainly had at the end of World War II. There are no German archives that were withheld from the invading forces.

So after over 50 years we would be entitled by now to have found the document that proves me wrong, whereas we are not entitled to expect to find records about General Sikorski, even now, because it would have been a Secret Service matter and Secret Service files are closed for at least the next 100 years.

So it looks like a double standard to start with until you realise you are looking at two different

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theatres of operation. But, again, if they want to put specific examples to me, some I will concede, and most I will not, probably.

Q. -- well, I think before we move on to the next point we will adjourn and resume, if you will, please, at 2 o'clock?

(Luncheon adjournment) MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can I before we resume with your evidence just ask Mr Rampton something, if you will forgive me? It is a logistical question, Mr Rampton.

Assuming you are going to be starting to cross-examine this afternoon ---- MR RAMPTON: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- I am wondering whether I have all the files that I ought to have here because what I do not want to find happening is that you ask a question in relation to a document that I do not have a copy of. Are you able to help?

MR RAMPTON: Can I just say, I do not know how long I will get, but assuming it were an hour or so, your Lordship would need the copy of Mr Irving's opening which you should have already.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have.

MR RAMPTON: And files D2(i), (ii) and (iii).

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have all of those too.

MR RAMPTON: The only other thing that your Lordship would need

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would be Professor Evans' report if we got as far as that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have that. Thank you very much. I thought I had better check?

A. My Lord, before you resume your examination or your questioning, can I raise just two points?

Q. Of course, yes.

A. I drew your Lordship's attention to a newspaper, a leading article which appeared in The Independent this morning.

Q. Which I have read. I cannot lay my hands on it at the moment?

A. I have it here, my Lord. I personally found it pushing the envelope of what is permissible, but maybe, in view of the fact that either I am a litigant in person or we are sitting without a jury, this kind of comment is permitted.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the position really is this, Mr Irving. I understand what you say, but I can really only intervene if I were to take the view that in some shape or form it amounts to a contempt. I do not. I am fairly clearly of that view. But if it helps at all, I totally disregard it.

A. Thank you very much, my Lord.

Q. I think I will not say any more about it.

A. My Lord, you asked in one of your questions whether I had compared or weighed casualties against casualties, atrocity against atrocity. I have referred to the final paragraph of my "Destruction of Dresden" book, and, my . P-196

Lord, the bundle which I handed you this morning which I believe is on the desk in front of you at this end, the thin bundle, is that it, bundle B on page 5.

Q. Yes, this is the new bundle.

A. That is the new one I gave you this morning. It is selections from the books. You already have the entire books.

Q. Yes, you mentioned that.

A. If you look at page 5, my Lord, big figure 5, at the foot of the page, there is this paragraph: "On 13th February 1946, the former Commander in Chief of RAF Bomber Command sailed from Southampton on the first stage of his journey. That night throughout eastern and central Europe at 10.10 p.m. the church bells began to peal. For 20 minutes the bells ran out across the territories now occupied by a force as ruthless as any that the bomber offensive had been launched to destroy. It was the first anniversary of the biggest single massacre in European history, a massacre carried out in the cause of bringing to their knees a people who corrupted by Nazism had committed the greatest crimes against humanity in recorded time".

That is about as close as I have ever got to weighing atrocity against atrocity, my Lord, and that was in my first book.

Q. I am just puzzled by the date.

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A. Well, it is the first anniversary of the Dresden raid, my Lord.

Q. I see.

A. This is why the bells are ringing.

Q. I see. It was the Commander in Chief of Bomber Command setting out that misled me.

A. The second page I would draw your Lordship's attention to concerns the adjutants. You asked whether I had made use of that information I obtained from the adjutants about Buchenwald inmates to be liquidated. Page 99, my Lord, by chance, is one of the pages that I included in the selection.

Q. Tab 4, the last page.

A. It is big figures 99 at the bottom of the page. The third paragraph, my Lord, is: "As American troops advanced across ... Hitler was confronted with the problem of the concentration camps. Goring advised him to turn them over intact and under guard to the Western allies who would sort out the criminals from the foreign labourers and Russian prisoners thus preventing hoards of embittered ex-convicts from roaming the countryside and inflicting additional horrors on the law-abiding. Hitler did not share Göring's trust in the enemy. Sitting casually on the edge of the map table after one conference, he instructed Himmler's representative to ensure that all inmates were liquidated or evacuated before the camps were

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overrun." The footnote at the back of the book which I could show you if my Lordship is interested, because I have the book here, says the source of that information is the SS Major, who was Himmler's Adjutant's Adjutant, who has, however, requested that his identity be withheld.

Some of these people at the time I wrote that book were still nervous about being identified, but he was the source.

Q. But he is no longer nervous?

A. I am sure he has no nervousness now, my Lord, because the years has passed, but he was the source and that was the episode which I recounted to you. You asked if I used it.

In my submission, I have used it exactly as it should have been used and at the proper length.

Q. Is this the 1991 edition or the 1977?

A. That is the very first edition, my Lord, 1997. If your Lordship is interested, I can certainly produce almost identical pages from the subsequent editions.

Q. No, do not bother. Thank you very much. Yes, now anything else or shall we resume? We are still on the topic of Hitler's Adjutants. I think you have dealt with criticisms (i), (ii) and (iii)?

A. Double standards.

Q. And the next one is, at any rate, self-explanatory?

A. I distort, suppress, manipulate evidence, but until they

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give chapter and verse, I cannot say.

"The Plaintiff claims falsely that all of Hitler's surviving adjutants, secretaries and staff had uniformly testified that the extermination of the Russian or European Jews was never mentioned at Hitler's headquarters. That claim is contradicted by the evidence, my Lord. I shall be interested to see what the evidence is to which they are referring.

Q. Just pause a moment. Do you accept that you have made the claim that all the Hitler surviving adjutants and so on have uniformly testified that the extermination of the Russian or European Jews was never mentioned at Hitler's ---- A. I think the full extent of the statement was that they have been frequently questioned ever since the war both by American and British interrogators and by others in between and certainly by myself on each occasion, and each of them has said that this systematic extermination of the Jews, or whatever -- what is it -- the extermination of the Russian or European Jews was never mentioned at Hitler's headquarters, that it was never mentioned in their presence. Obviously, they can only testify to what they personally witnessed and that was all I was interested in.

Q. Yes, but the point I was on really was this, you have made that claim?

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A. I have made that claim.

Q. You say it is a true claim?

A. I have maintained that it is true claim. If, however, the Defendants produce new evidence that it is false, I will accept that evidence, but that does not amount to my having distorted and manipulated. They would have to show that evidence was on my desk within my four walls, so to speak.

Q. Yes. The last one?

A. "In full knowledge of the historical detail, the Plaintiff subjectively filtered, bent and manipulated his sources to his own political and ideological desire to exculpate Mr Hitler." Well, that is a bit of a polemical question, I suppose, in which the sting is in the question rather than in the answer.

Q. Not really. Anyway, answer it.

A. Well, the answer is under oath, no. My Lord, I have never consciously done any of those things in order to exculpate Hitler. In fact, I have bent over backwards to include what I knew from reliable sources which met my criteria, and in the very introduction to my book "Hitler's War" which is included in the bundle which I provided this morning, my Lord, I gave a short list, a check list, of the crimes he did commit: "He issued the commissar order for the liquidation of the Soviet commissars and signed it. He issued the euthanasia order for the killing of the . P-201

mentally disabled and signed it, back-dated it to September 1st 1939. He ordered the killing of British commandos who fell into German captivity. He ordered the liquidation of the male population of Stalingrad and Leningrad..." and so on. There is a long list of these crimes which I gave as a kind of check list form in the introduction of the book specifically to avoid the kind of accusation that I apprehended would one day be made.

Q. I suppose, to be balanced, you would accept that you would not only need that short list, but also a list of what one might call the opposite points where you say ---- A. Said nice things about him.

Q. --- said commendatory things about him which, I think it is right to say, you do from time to time in "Hitler's War"?

A. I have