MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: This morning we are going to be dealing, as I apprehend, may it please the court, with the Schlegelberger document which I brought, as I indicated yesterday evening, with one or two of the surrounding documents. [Document not provided].

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have only just received this clip, so I am afraid I have not had a chance to go through it.

MR IRVING: I appreciate that, my Lord. I do not think it will be a very painful exercise. We will also take on board this argument, and I have taken the liberty of submitting to your Lordship a two-page skeleton, which again you will not have had time to reflect upon but I thought it would be of assistance to your Lordship. I have also excised the first paragraph of that and put it on a separate sheet for your Lordship, in case you wish to mark it up and say, "Yes I thoroughly approve of this, this is a jolly good idea, I think Irving has it right".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will come to whether that is going to be my conclusion in a moment, shall we? Can we just have open the Schlegelberger note, unless it is in your clip?

MR IRVING: It is in the clip, my Lord. It is little bundle D which you have just received, and you will find it on page 9. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to put this into J. We .

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must keep an eye on not having stray bits of paper knocking around.

MR IRVING: This is a bundle called Schlegelberger, a 25 page document relating to the context and provenance of the Schlegelberger document which I have loosely dated as spring 1942. The document concerned is on page 9, my Lord, Tab 7.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: The first document is page 1 which your Lordship will see is the folder cover of the Reich Ministry of the Justice, and I will read the words to you which are rather illegible. We have had problems with the German text before. Behandlung der Juden, "treatment of the Jews". My only gloss on that is to say it is not treatment of the mixed race questions. It is a Ministry of Justice file on the "treatment of the Jews". I have taken the liberty, my Lord, of highlighting one or two sentences in the bundle I gave you.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is helpful.

MR IRVING: Somebody has my highlighted copy. I do not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you date the cover to the file or the cover top sheet?

MR IRVING: Only inasmuch as the earliest document in the file is early 1942, my Lord. It is a very slim file, the way sometimes these governmental jackets, I think they are called in English parlance, go. .

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: Page No. 2, my Lord, is the translation into English of the following page. Unless Mr Rampton has any objection, I will just deal with the English text.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: We read it out yesterday but I will read it out again. It is from Schlegelberger, who is acting Minister of Justice after the death of the Minister, and he is writing to the Reich Minister, Hans Lammers: My personal assistant has just briefed me on the result of the session of March 6th on the treatment of Jews and mixed races". Your Lordship will probably see that I have highlighted the fact that it is both A and B, so to speak, not just the mixed race.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is your gloss, anyway.

MR IRVING: "I am now still awaiting the official minutes." My Lord, of course, I will argue that it is not unreasonable -- we will be dealing later in the argument with what is reasonable and what is not reasonable, what would be perverse and what would not perverse. "I am now still waiting the official minutes. From the briefing by my personal assistant there seem to be decisions in preparation which I have to consider for the most part to be completely impossible. As the outcome of the talks in which a personal assistant of your department took part is to form the basis for the decision of the Führer, it would .

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be urgently desirable for me to have a personal talk with you in good time about the affair. As soon as the minutes of the session are before me, I shall permit myself to phone you and to ask you whether and when a discussion between us might take place."

Lammers replies, my Lord, and this is on page 4, that he is very ready to conform. He suggests an appointment at the end of the month; in other words, at the end of March. I do not think it is perverse then to say that the conversation which is referred to in the memorandum is therefore at the end of March 1942. I may be wrong. I allow that I may be wrong. It is always possible to be wrong, but we are looking for a deliberate or wilful distortion.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You rely presumably also on the heading to that letter which is "overall solution to the Jewish problem".

MR IRVING: "Overall solution to the Jewish problem", yes, my Lord, I am indebted to your Lordship for pointing that out, the overall solution of the Jewish problem. The next letter, my Lord, pages 6 to 8, I do not propose to read out. They do not take us very much further. If your Lordship is interested in their content, then there is a British summary.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If are you not going to rely on anything there, I am not going to take time on it. .

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MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord. Mr Rampton may very well wish to point to one or two things in it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us see.

MR IRVING: The next document, page 9, is the actual memorandum. Page 10 is something that I did not have before me yesterday, my Lord. It is a translation of the following page, page 11 or part of it. If your Lordship were just to turn to page 11, I draw your attention to two things: first of all, the number at the top, 2653, where, at the beginning of the notes or near the beginning of the notes to the second volume of my Hitler biography, namely Hitler's War, and we are already on manuscript page 2,653. This will give your Lordship an idea of the magnitude of the task and I would therefore pray your Lordship's indulgence if I have occasionally got a word wrong or mistyped a word.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not underrate the magnitude of the task at all.

MR IRVING: I am indebted to you. I have translated note 63. Your Lordship will notice that the notes are not in the book in this form. Quite simply, the publisher said, "Mr Irving, that would add an extra 500 pages on to the text", so it went. It is helpful because note 53 refers, in this context, to the Schlegelberger document. The staff evidence analysis sheet, which is also in this bundle, we referred to yesterday. The copies were notarised by .

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Dr Robert Kempner, which is not really important, unless we get on to the question of who found it first and when should he have used it. Then I continue: " Before the International Military Tribunal (at Nuremberg) Lammers testified that Himmler had told him that he had received from the Führer the task of bringing about a Final Solution of the Jewish problem, i.e. that 'the Jews were to be evacuated out of Germany'". That part is in quotation marks. "Lammers wanted to find out for himself, he said, and fixed an appointment with Führer whereupon the Führer told me that, yes, it was quite right that he had given the evacuation order to Himmler, but he did not want to hear any more briefings about this Jewish problem during the war".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is undated.

MR IRVING: This is from the transcript of the international military tribunal.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. What I mean is there is no indication in the document as to when that was said by Hitler. For all we know, it may have been said in 1940 or '41.

MR IRVING: I will deal with that point very shortly, my Lord, when we skip a page, and we now come to page 12. Your Lordship or Mr Rampton might quite well object that it is unsatisfactory, that I should produce the quotation from the transcript in that form, of course, the Military Tribunal transcript. I objected, of course, in exactly .

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the same terms yesterday but, if your Lordship is interested, I am sure we can obtain the precise page from the transcript. Page 12. Two or three years ago, I went to the national archives in Washington and looked at the detailed verbatim interrogations of a number of people who were present at the Wannsee Conference and at the subsequent conference, my Lord, which your Lordship will remember was on March 6th 1942.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mean Wannsee?

MR IRVING: Wannsee on January 20th 1942 -- W-A-N-N-S-E-E -- and the subsequent conference, which was held at the headquarters of Heydrich on March 6th 1942. I wanted to find out what the participants said, what they recalled immediately afterwards, after the war. They were interrogated in detail by the Americans. We have the verbatim transcripts in German and English. I did not copy the transcripts, but I typed extracts on the filing cards which you will see on pages 13 and 14, my Lord, the relevant parts. I have translated them on page 12 which I think is all we need to look at today. Cabinet counsellor, Dr Hans Ficker of the Reich Chancellery (Lammers' department) stated that from the invitation it was evident that evacuation or sterilisation were on the agenda." I skip on to the next sentence: "Lammers took this minute to the Führer and .

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returned with a memorandum. The discussion of the whole affair is to be postponed until after the end of the war". That must have been in March 1942. That is the opinion of Boley. "To our horror", and I rely on this sentence, my Lord, "we learned that that then continued behind the scenes. We learned that that then continued behind the scenes". Although Hitler had given this order, leave everything until the end of the war, to our horror, they learned that it went on behind the scenes, rather like the Bruns business, your Lordship will remember. The order comes down from Hitler's headquarters. What we are looking for, I would submit, is any indication that I have been perverse in putting on this kind of document the meaning that I did in my various writings and utterances. If I continue now to the next statement by Mr Gottfried Boley, who is also at the Reichs Chancellery Department, he testified that he had been interrogated about this on more than one occasion. The conference, he recalled, was at the headquarters of Heydrich's department, the RSHA. Eichmann opened, and I am relying on this purely to show that it was not just a discussion about the mixed race, my Lord. It was a discussion about the Jews as a whole. Eichmann opened with the need for a quick solution of the Jewish Question. Boley told his wife .

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afterwards that they had talked of Jews being supplied like cattle. One man had objected, one cannot proceed against Jews who had behaved correctly, Eichmann's No. 2, that was SS Hauptsturmführer Günther, said "that comes under our police judgment".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not at the moment see what bearing that has on the issue we are concerned with.

MR IRVING: It is an indication where the kind of decisions are being taken, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. Anyway Boley again?

MR IRVING: Boley in another interrogation said, and I draw attention only to the second two sentences, Hitler wanted postponement until after the war. "Whether the security police knew about the different orders from Hitler, I cannot say." In other words, different to what they were doing.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: My Lord, your Lordship may attach no significance whatsoever to these documents. I am an historian looking at these documents. I submit that it is perfectly proper for me to pay attention to them, and it is not perverse for me to attach the significance to them that I did and the meanings that I did.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: That is all that I have to submit on this Schlegelberger memorandum, my Lord. .

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: You did that very, if I may say so, effectively and briefly.

MR IRVING: Your Lordship will have apprehended that I attach importance to the Schlegelberger memorandum. I have quoted it frequently, I have illustrated it in my books, and I wished to make sure that it stayed upright without being sunk.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It would not be exaggerating to say that it is something of a linchpin for your thesis about the extent to which Hitler knew about what was going on.

MR IRVING: One of the chain of documents to which we occasionally refer, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Schlegelberger.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, do you want to add anything?

MR RAMPTON: I have some questions remaining about Schlegelberger, particularly in the light of these documents.

MR IRVING: Do you wish me to go into the box?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have to keep an eye on the time.

MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship need not fear; we have enough material for today.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not worrying about having enough. Mr Irving, perhaps you would go back into the box?

MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.

Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON QC, continued.

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, there is one document which you have .

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not included in that little clip, is there not? A. Mr Rampton, I spent a large part of the night in looking for my Schlegelberger file, but the documents came back from solicitors for the Defendants in such disarray that it was in vain. I had to reconstruct it from other sources. Q. Curiously enough, I did the same exercise myself last night, and the document that I have included in my little clip which I will hand in---- (Document not provided) .

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are we going to put these?

MR RAMPTON: For the moment they can go together. Perhaps they can both go in whatever the J number is.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: J7.

MR RAMPTON: Some of them may in due course be filed away into the core file.

A. May I express incidentally my amazement that this bundle of documents did not turn up in the bundles that were put to the court?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. I understand the point. Let us get on.

MR RAMPTON: There is a document, Mr Irving, that you did not include -- I am not saying it is deliberate, at least not at the moment -- in the little clip and that is the actual minute of the meeting on 6th March 1942, is it not?

A. That is correct. The reason for that being that it did not come from that Ministry of Justice file. This comes .

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from, as the serial numbers at the foot of it clearly show, the Foreign Ministry files.

Q. It did not, but it is one of the footnotes to your Goebbels book, is it not?

A. I am sorry, the footnote is referred to in the Goebbels book? It is indeed, yes.

Q. It is footnote 36 to page 388, and one knows it is the same document for two reasons: First because the personnel mentioned at as being at the meeting include Carstensen and Schmidt-Burg?

A. Yes.

Q. And because the film roll number at the bottom right hand corner of the page that you have got there is the one which you give in your footnote. So we are looking now at the right document, are we? It is 371962?

A. Yes. Can you show me again the page reference in the Goebbels?

Q. Yes I have copied it for convenience. It is page 388, and it is note 36 in the upper half of the page, the big paragraph before the word Eichmann. My Lord, I have copied for your Lordship note 36 which is on page 647, where Mr Irving said -- perhaps I will read the Goebbels text first so that it will become a little clearer what it is that I am driving at. I will start if I may on 388. "On the following day" -- that is he and one can see from the previous page that that is Goebbels and the following day .

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is 6th March -- "Goebbels took note of an extensive report prepared by Heydrich's office, probably on the Wannsee conference. There were still eleven million Jews in Europe, he dictated, summarising the document. 'For the time being they are to be concentrated in the east [until] Later; possibly an island like Madagascar can be assigned to them after the war.' 'Undoubtedly there will be a multitude of personal tragedies,' he added airily, 'But this is unavoidable. The situation now is ripe for a final settlement of the Jewish question.' In a covering letter Heydrich invited Goebbels to a second conference, on March 6. Goebbels sent two of his junior staff." Then one goes to note 36, and one sees that it says they, that is the two junior members of staff, were Carstensen and Schmidt-Burg of its Eastern territory subsection. Minutes of conference, March 6th 1942, on Final Solution of Jewish problem. Then your Lordship sees inside the bracket right at the end is the same film roll number, whatever it is, reference number 371962.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right?

A. "Eichmann talked crudely at this meeting"-- that is the meeting of 6th March attended by Carstensen and Schmidt-Burg - "of 'forwarding' the Jews to the east, like so many head of cattle. The ministry of justice handled the report on this new discussion like a hot potato." -- That is note 38. That is the letter of 12th March, which .

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your Lordship has, to Herr Lammers in the Reichskanzlei. "The Reich Chancellery referred it all to Hitler." That is an is interrogation of Hans Ficker, that footnote. I ask you to note the words "it all", Mr Irving. "Hitler wearily told Hans Lammers that he wanted the solution of the Jewish problem postponed until after the war was over - a ruling that remarkably few historians now seem disposed to quote." That suggests, does it not, to the reader, Mr Irving, that the conference on 6th March was about the overall solution of the Jewish question?

A. The final solution of the Jewish question is the title given on the minutes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But that was not the question. The question is you are conveying to the readers there that it is the final solution which is postponed.

MR RAMPTON: That was what that conference discussed, is what you are telling the reader.

A. Yes.

Q. Now would you please look at the minute of the conference, the one you footnoted?

A. Yes.

Q. Please read it yourself. Tell me when you have finished and I will ask you a question.

A. I think I am familiar enough with the document. My Lord, can I mention the fact that we have one of my .

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witnesses present. Is he allowed to be in court?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. It is only in criminal trials that generally speaking you do not.

A. Yes. I think I am sufficiently familiar with the content of this memorandum to answer questions.

MR RAMPTON: The only topics that were discussed at that meeting on 6th March 1942 are the fate of the Mischlinge, that is to say the children of mixed marriages, and their parents, the Mischehen. There are two items, there are not?

A. Yes.

Q. The first is the Mischlinge on page 478 at the bottom?

A. Yes.

Q. And the second, on page 483 at the bottom, is the Mischehen, that is to say mixed marriages?

A. Yes.

Q. There is not a word in that memorandum of that conference about the solution in general, apart from the heading which was a general heading always used for these documents. Am I right?

A. You can say that about this document, yes.

Q. Then, if you will, turn to the next page in my little file.

A. 371?

Q. Yes. I will use yours because you have translated it and I have not. .

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A. This refers clearly to the conference concerning the Jews and the mixed races.

Q. I will just find your English first. I am going to read it again.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not, because we have been through it once before.

MR RAMPTON: "My personal assistant has just briefed me on the result of the session on March 6th, meeting might be a better word, on the treatment of Jews and mixed races". That personal assistant was a man called Masfelder, was it not?

A. That I do not know.

Q. If you look at the protocol, you can see Masfelder, sorry. The front sheet of the protocol, which is one of your own documents.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can short circuit this. Mr Irving, this must be a reference to the conference of which we have just seen the record, is it not?

A. Yes indeed.

MR RAMPTON: That conference had nothing whatever to do with what was to happen to the Jews overall. It was under that general heading, but it was specifically about Mischlinge and Mischehen, was it not?

A. The minutes of the conference record only those parts dealing with the Mischehen, the mixed marriages.

Q. So, in effect, you have totally distorted what was .

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discussed at that meeting. You have totally distorted therefore the reason why Schlegelberger wrote to Lammers and therefore, if the Schlegelberger has a place in this chronology, you have distorted the effect of that, too, have you not?

A. This omission that you repeatedly make, and I beg to differ on that because of course I am looking at the other documents in the file and also looking at the interrogations of the people who were at the meeting.

Q. Let us look at the interrogations, shall we?

A. If you remember, the business about Jews being supplied like cattle and so on. Quite clearly that is not in the minutes either. There is a lot of stuff that happened at that conference which is not recorded in the minutes. I think it is a mistake to adhere slavishly to the Nazi memoranda taken by these gentlemen, the minutes, which as you yourself have said frequently were written for camouflage purposes.

Q. It is page 12 my Lord. Let us look at your extract from the post-war interrogation, shall we?

A. Yes.

Q. Whether or not Hans Ficker is talking about this meeting one does not know because one has not got the full text, but assume that he is, then what he said was: From the invitation, whatever that means, it was evident that evacuation or sterilisation were on the agenda. What was .

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discussed at that meeting was to how to deal with the Mischlinge and their parents the Mischehen, and the question arose should they be sterilised, should they be evacuated, should they be allowed to stay where they are? That is what was discussed, was it not?

A. Well we have of course two different versions of the same meeting. We have several different versions of the same meeting. We have the wartime minute taken by the one that you referred to us from the Foreign Ministry files, which of course was before me, but we also have the other sources of that meeting.

Q. Mr Irving, the document that you referred to and relied on in the account that you gave in your book Goebbels is this document.

A. I specifically refer also to these interrogations of Ficker and Boley and the rest in this paragraph.

Q. Do not move the goal posts please, Mr Irving. It is no good talking about some other memorandum. This is the memorandum which you footnoted in Goebbels, is it not?

A. These gentlemen are clearly referring to this conference in their interrogations because they say it was at the headquarters of Heydrich, which pins it down as being this conference where the talk is about Jews being supplied like cattle.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are missing, I think, Mr Rampton's point on this, and I do not think we want to spend very long on .

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it. It is that the evacuation and sterilisation that were on the agenda may have been the evacuation or sterilisation of Mischlinge?

A. It may be.

MR RAMPTON: You do not tell your readers that, do you? You do not tell your readers that the discussion at this conference was confined to the fate of the Mischlinge and the Mischehen.

A. I am sure that Professor Evans would have spent eight pages on this one detail, but I am writing a book which has to be kept into the confines of one bound volume.

Q. Unless you will answer my questions, we are going to have a bad day. Will you answer my question? You do not tell the readers that the discussion at this conference was confined to the fate of the Mischlinge and Mischehen, do you?

A. Will you allow me to read again what I have written?

Q. Yes, indeed.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not take long because really the answer to that question must be yes, that you are conveying to the reader that it is the whole question that is being postponed until the end of the war?

A. I think, My Lord, that I have stated on several occasions in the Goebbels' book, and your Lordship will remember the case of Gottschalk having caused Hitler particular agony, in my submission; that I have repeatedly referred to the .

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fact, to the question of the mixed marriages and mixed races was a thorn in the side of the Nazis because they did not know how to treat them, which side of the line to put them. I cannot keep on, in a book which is for publication, coming back and reminding readers of things that the intelligent reader will be carrying in his brain anyway.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr Rampton was asking you about the passage at page 388, I think.

MR RAMPTON: I was, yes.

A. Well, I think that the lines, about 10 lines down, where Goebbels is quoted as saying: "For the time being that it be concentrated in the East, undoubtedly, there will be a multitude of personal tragedies, but this is unavoidable". We then go straight on to talk about the March 6th conference. I am making it in a way that a responsible writer should. I did not want to put the whole contents of this 10 page memorandum into a book at this point. That would have been acres of sludge again.

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to put it once more and I cannot go on making speeches through questions which are never answered. The fact is you that you led the reader in this passage to believe that what was discussed at the conference on 6th March was the fate of the Jews .

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generally, that that then went to Hitler, via Lammers, and Hitler made a ruling that the fate of the Jews generally was not to be considered or discussed at that time. That is a total distortion of the evidence which you had before you when you wrote that.

A. I totally disagree with you, Mr Rampton. The evidence of Boley, that there was talk there of delivering the Jews to the East like so many head of cattle, that is no longer talking about the mixed marriage problem. They are talking about the overall Holocaust in the way that I have accepted it can be defined and perceived.

Q. If you can find in this memorandum which you have cited in your book reference to the general question, please show it to us, otherwise that is my last question.

A. Mr Rampton, I have referred to the fact that I do not just rely on one document. I do not jump from mountain peak to mountain peak. I look at all the surrounding hills as well.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There we are. That is the Schlegelberger note.

MR RAMPTON: I think, my Lord, that will do.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I was not intending to embark on anything new at the moment.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the plan is we have your witness so he is not kept waiting. .

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MR RAMPTON: As Professor Cameron Watt is here, he had better give evidence.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I think so, Mr Irving, if you would like to revert to your role as counsel? < (The witness stood down)

MR IRVING: Can Professor Cameron Watt be called?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course. < PROFESSOR CAMERON WATT, sworn. < Examined by MR IRVING.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, would you be more comfortable sitting down? You are welcome to sit down.

MR IRVING: I was going to make precisely the same suggestion, my Lord. (To the witness): Professor Watt, thank you very much for coming today. You are appearing, of course, under a witness summons. I want to make that quite plain to the court and you are not appearing voluntarily, so no odium can attach to you for coming and being called for the defence, for my defence, in other words, for the Plaintiff in this action.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we introduce Professor Watt and ask him about his background?

MR IRVING: Yes. Professor Watt, your name is Donald Cameron Watt?

A. It is.

Q. You are Emeritus Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science? .

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A. Yes.

Q. How long were you teaching at the London School of Economics?

A. From 1954 to 1993. 39 years altogether.

Q. 39 years a Professor of History at the London School of Economics?

A. I did not have the rank of Professor until 1971, but I was on the staff.

Q. You enjoy the reputation of being something of a grand gentleman, a doyen, of the historical profession in this country?

A. I think it is very difficult for an individual to say what their reputation is in the minds of other people. I certainly can only say that I have held a number of senior positions in international organisations devoted to historical research.

Q. Thank you. You describe yourself as an historian, writer and broadcaster. You are all three things?

A. These are the various sources of my income, yes.

Q. You were educated at Rugby and at Oriol College in Oxford; is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. You served in the Army in the Intelligence Corps?

A. I did.

Q. And that you were with the British troops in Austria in the occupation forces after World War II? .

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A. From 1947 to '48, yes.

Q. 1947 to '48. Would you tell the court, Professor Watt, what you were engaged with in the years following your Army service?

A. Following my Army service, I had three years reading politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford because only that way could you deal with 20th century history at that time; and I indulged myself in the usual activities of undergraduate. That is to say, I wrote, I played opera, I ran the Poetry Society -- I had a number of activities of that kind.

Q. And you became a member of the Foreign Office Research Department?

A. I was attached to it, yes -- I do not think I was ever a full member -- from 1951 to 1954, and then again on a part-time basis from 1957 to 1960.

Q. Yes. Interesting. So you are quite familiar in a way with the kinds of documents, Foreign Office, diplomatic documents, that we have been looking at in this court this morning, for example. The ones with the serial numbers, the six digit serial numbers stamped on the bottom?

A. The ones with the serial numbers are the ones -- those serial numbers are the way we recorded them on our index cards. They represent the serial number of the individual film and the frame number of the particular page.

Q. The British, in fact, captured all the German Foreign .

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Office records?

A. They fell into the hands mainly of the British and Americans, were collected in Berlin and were evacuated. The whole project for editing them and publishing them was evacuated from Berlin at the time of the Berlin airlift.

Q. Did they go to a place called Whadden Hall?

A. Haden Hall near Bletchley, yes.

Q. Near Bletchley, near the code breaking establishment?

A. Yes. We had no relationship with them at all.

Q. Nobody knew about them?

A. Well, we knew they were there. There were too many of them to be concealed and some of them played their part in ordinary social activities, but what they were actually doing, no, we did not know.

Q. Would you give the court, in most general terms, one or two lines, a picture of the scale and scope of the captured German documentation? Was it small or large?

A. Well, at Haden itself, we had 400 tonnes ----

Q. 400 tonnes?

A. --- of documents covering the records of the German Foreign Ministry and of its Prussian predecessor from 1860 onwards. We also had access to those files of the German Navy, the Reichsmarine, which had fallen into British hands at Flensburg and we had an odd collection of documents from the Nazi leaders, from the offices of the Adjutantur of the Führer, for example ---- .

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Q. Hitler's Adjutants?

A. --- and a number of private, collections of private papers that were found with the Foreign Ministry archives.

Q. Interrupting here at this moment, Professor Watt. Can I just ask you, when did we last meet -- 30 years ago?

A. 30 years ago, I think it was, yes.

Q. Have we had any discussion about what you are going to be saying today beyond just the invitation and my saying that it would just be very painless and very short?

A. No.

Q. I have not rehearsed you in any way as to what to say?

A. No.

Q. In your knowledge, in your time going through the German diplomatic documents, and I appreciate you did not read the entire 400 tonnes -- nor can I claim to have read the 400 tonnes of German documents -- were any documents there which came to your attention which showed a Hitler order for what we can call the Holocaust in the sense of the extermination of the Jews?

A. I would not come across them because my work was confined, where the original documents were concerned, to the years 1933/1937, and where the editorial work was concerned, to the documents from 1939 to 1940. I never had occasion to go in and look individually at the later documents. We worked with the Nuremberg files and, of course, I was familiar with the evidence that was produced at Nuremberg .

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which dealt with war crimes and I have been consulted about this from time to time.

Q. Did you have discussions with your colleagues at the Research Department about the progress of their work when they were working on different periods?

A. No, because the whole project was concerned in the years I was attached to it to completing series D of the documents which ended with Pearl Harbour, and to completing or doing the whole of the work on the years 1933, 1937, which were published as Series C in the documents. I never had any direct dealings with documents dealing with the ----

Q. War years?

A. --- war years beyond that, no.

Q. You never heard from one of your colleagues there that they had found, stumbled across, a document of the sort that I mentioned, that Hitler had given some extraordinary orders about killing the Jews or any other ethnic minority or persecuted people directly involving Hitler?

A. No, but I cannot think, see why that would have arisen in our discussions. We were working eight to nine hours a day on the very large quantities of documents. Each document was read by members of two countries. I collaborated mainly with the Frenchmen.

Q. You are familiar, Professor, also with some of the other document collections outside your own area of expertise .

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because of research at that time for the Foreign Office because, of course, you have written a number of distinguished works where you have had to draw on collections outside the Haden Hall collection?

A. Oh, I have worked in the archives, in the American archives, for the '30s. I worked in the Public Record Office. I have worked in British private collections and I have worked on published documents from all those European countries I had direct access to and those which were translated into languages I could read.

Q. Professor Watt, from your knowledge of these archives that you worked in, the Public Record Office in London, the national archives in the United States, the Foreign Office collection in this country and elsewhere, would you say that the records of the Third Reich, one way and another, either in original ribbon copy or in carbon copy, are largely intact, give or take a few holes of what the Russians took?

A. No, there are very substantial gaps in the later period.

Q. In the later period?

A. From 1941 onwards.

Q. In specific departments, like the SS or the Army or the Air Force?

A. I think that the gaps are consistent with the files not ending up in an archive and where they did to destruction by one means or another, and to their falling into hands .

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of people who wanted to hang on them.

Q. For example, when the German Army archives at Potsdam was burned down in an air raid, that kind of thing?

A. That kind of thing and, in fact, some of the, one of the worst accidents was when a couple of trucks carrying German Foreign Ministry records in the Secret classification collided with one another and caught fire, and we had only fragments, burnt fragments, and the more you touched them, the more they disintegrated.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, may I ask you, you may not know the answer, but was there evidence that documents had systematically had gone missing in the sense that somebody had said, "We must take out a particular category of documents" or not?

A. Not in the Foreign Ministry, Sir, because, my Lord, the German Foreign Ministry practice, as we found out when we were looking at the documents dealing with the origins of the First World War, was either to deny the existence of files which were relevant or, in a number of cases, to unstitch the backs of them and to remove the documents so that the researcher was presented with what he understood to be a complete file but was not. Since in no case were the researchers allowed access to the registries where all these documents were and that one had noted, this kind of gap misled a number of very prominent American scholars.

MR IRVING: Professor Watt, can I ask, when was this .

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unstitching done? Are you suggesting after the war or during the war?

A. No, no. It was done by the political archive in the late 20s and 30s.

Q. But not relating to the Third Reich records?

A. No, because the issue of anybody looking at them from outside would not have arisen at that stage.

Q. Thank you. So, by and large, the records of entire departments are there, but sometimes there are gaps where individual accidents happen, trucks colliding, buildings burned down, but then there would have been copies elsewhere?

A. Not necessarily, no. We were helped by the gentleman called Loesch who had filmed a great many of the important documents before the originals were destroyed and, indeed, there was a great deal of dispute over the genuineness of the text of the Nazis in 1939 discovered that this was Photostat.

Q. How safe is it to draw negative conclusions in the way that I sometimes do (if I may ask a leading question) on the basis of the fact that there is in the body of documents now existing 55 years later, after we have access to just about everything, including the Bletchley Park intercepts which are enormous, how safely can one say because there is not a document there, in your expert view, Professor Watt, would it be perverse to say the fact .

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that there is no such document after 55 years, it would be perverse to say that, therefore, this document probably did not exist?

A. I think there are two problems with that argument. One is that the range of the destruction is something which we cannot know because Nazi principles of registration of documents were, to put it mildly, somewhat amateurish. Secondly, the distribution of documents within the offices over which the Nazi amateurs had taken control was very peculiar; and, thirdly, as with other major leaders of other countries at that time, there are periods in which they did not confide their thoughts to anybody else, or to anybody else who might have recorded them. That was, I think, the reason why the first sight or the first news about the Hitler diaries, alleged Hitler diaries, was for a moment so uplifting a piece of information. I came to hear about it when I had just come back from Finland and I had missed all the previous kerfuffle about it. My first reaction was at last something is going to fill in the gaps, but then, of course, I realised that it was not.

Q. Professor Watt, you are familiar with the way the German documents look, Civil Servant documents. They had a kind of standard layout, did they not?

A. Those that came from professional offices, yes.

Q. How would you classify the SS in this respect? Would the .

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documents of the SS that came into Abteilung Inland II --

A. I think there it depended very largely whether the SS man concerned was a trained bureaucrat or not.

Q. There was actually a Civil Service regulation, a manual, I believe, on how documents had to be laid out, the reference number, the address, the location of the address list, and so on?

A. That is true, but there was also a very, the sort of macho SS type who says, "Do not bother me with all this nonsense". So that one cannot, I think, read anything out of this one way or another.

Q. Are you familiar with German security classifications?

A. Yes, up to Top Secret and so on, yes.

Q. If a document is marked "Vertraulich", is that round about the lowest security classification, "Confidential"?

A. I suppose so, yes. It is somewhere between "Restricted" and "Confidential" in the British classification.

Q. We will stick to the British classification because the American classifications are different, are they not?

A. Yes.

Q. For example, American "Top Secret" is our Most Secret. If we go up the next rung in the ladder "Geheim"?

A. "Geheim" is" Secret.

Q. The one above that, we then divide?

A. "Streng geheim", "Hoechst geheim". The problem with that .

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kind of document is exactly the same as one has in the British system, that there is a tendency to overclassify simply to emphasise the importance of the individual and of the post that he has occupied. It is not a very good guide.

Q. If you were to be shown a document in which the classification "Geheim" had been upgraded manually to "Geheim Kommandosache"?

A. Yes.

Q. Then that would imply that somebody attached importance to the increased security rating?

A. It would certainly imply that somebody did, yes. Whether ----

Q. Conversely, if somebody had crossed out the "Kommandosache" and left it just as "Geheim", that would imply that they thought it was over classified?

A. That is certainly true.

Q. And this would indicate that the person who wrote that document did attach importance to security classifications; he was being pernickety?

A. Either that or he was engaged in a feud with the person who had first put the original grade on. I do not think you could arrive at any distinct generalisation without looking at the document concerned.

Q. There is a parting of the ways, is there not, in this top security classification of Geheime Kommandosache on the .

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Army documents, roughly speaking, and Geheime Reichssache on the political documents?

A. Those were classifications which go back before the Nazi period, yes.

Q. But normally you find Geheime Reichssache -- R-E-I-C-H-S-A-C-H-E ----

A. Yes, that would be -- certainly if one found that from the Wehrmacht(?) period, one would regard that as the top classification.

Q. Then there another one on top of that which is "Nur durch Offizier", "Only by officer's hand"?

A. No. That is an instruction as to how the documents should be handled. It is a bit like the -- there are very similar classifications in the British and it has to do with the handling of the document in transition, not with the actual -- I would have expected to find "Nur durch Offizierhande" on a document which was already classified as "Geheim" or "Höchst geheim" or "Streng geheim" or one of the classifications of ...

Q. One of the highest -- "höchst geheim" is H-O-C-H-S-T?

A. Yes, that means "Highest Secret".

Q. Very rare. I have to admit, I have not seen that. To our surprise, we found another secret classification, Professor Watt, in the last day or two, on some of the documents, "AR". We have come to the conclusion, I think, although this speaks against me, that this is the .

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classification "Aktion Reinhard". That is a possible or probable interpretation.

A. I never came across anything like that. I had a look at the document.

Q. Professor Watt, just remaining on that topic for one more question: if you were an historian, as indeed you are, or you were teaching students how to become an historian, would you advise them to use the original document or facsimile, if possible, rather than use the printed text?

A. Always, and, indeed, I used to urge my graduate students when using secondary works always to check the original reference if this was at all possible. The geographical distribution of the documents used to meant very often that there was not, but where you have to look at the original, I mean, where an original document has been cited by another author and that seems to play an important part in the argument you are using yourself, then it is of extreme importance to check the original. I would add that, in my experience and in the advice I gave to my students, I always recommended that they should take most seriously those documents which seemed to support the views that they were in the process of supporting. After all, if you are in the process of being sold a pup by somebody, the man who is trying to deceive you will come as close as possible to what you know to be the truth before slipping in the element of .

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falseness; and the conflict between the historian's desire to arrive at a decision and the insubstantiality of any written evidence, or any other evidence, particularly oral evidence, or of the kind of man who comes up and says, "Never mind what the documents say, I was there and this is the real truth", is one which is a constant pitfall in our paths and which has misled a great many people, including some extremely important and senior historians in the past.

Q. Professor, I was not going to ask you about eyewitness evidence but where would you rank eyewitness evidence on the scale, if you had, for example, aerial photographs, if you had prisoner of war intelligence, contemporary prisoner of war intelligence, if you had intercepts from Bletchley Park, if you had captured documents, either captured during the war or after the war, and eyewitness evidence, in other words, anecdotal evidence and, finally, interrogations, whether under oath or not in court, how would you classify those in order of reliability, starting with the least reliable?

A. I do not know that there is any way of classifying those, because it depends so much on the individual. I did a great deal of interviews, particularly in the period before the 1967 Public Records Act released documents of 30 years of age, and in my experience the kind of evidence I got differed according to the personality of the person .

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giving it. In some cases I found that the man I was interviewing had his own documentary record and was consulting it, and that what he said was confirmed later. In other cases, including at least one Minister of the Crown, I was given a very plausible and, for all I know, a very true story of a meeting at which he was supposed to have been present; and when the records of that meeting subsequently became available, it was clear that he was not. He should have been, but he just was not that day, and he must have heard the story from one of the people there and then repeated it.

Q. But he seriously believed that he had been there?

A. Well ----

Q. By he came to tell the story?

A. If a gentleman who holds the rank of Admiral of the Fleet and is a junior Minister in the Cabinet tells you that he is there, one's reaction is not to question him and, indeed, it was one of these confirmatory details.

Q. But ----

A. For all I know, the story was true; it is just that the man who gave it me alleged that he was present and was not.

Q. My question was, Professor, if you remember, at the time he told the story he believed that he had been there?

A. He may have come to believe it. Memory is a very tricky .

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element.

Q. So to repeat my original question, where you would rank on that scale of material that is lying before you, at one end of the bench you have the eyewitnesses and at the other end of the bench you have, for example, the Bletchley Park intercepts?

A. The Bletchley Park intercepts, in so far as they are complete, are always regarded as the most reliable because there is no evidence that the dispatcher was aware that his messages could be decoded and, therefore, he would put truth in them. There are cases, of course, in which messages were sent in a code that was expected to broken in order to mislead.

Q. The Japanese Purple Code, for example, the Japanese were aware that we were breaking it, is that not so?

A. That is not my information.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, I do not know whether you know the answer to this question but ----

A. That is not my information, no.

Q. The Bletchley Park intercepts, we have heard of messages about the shootings on the Eastern Front going back to Berlin and those having been intercepted by Bletchley Park, but how wide did it go? What other kind of topics, do you know, were intercepted at Bletchley?

A. We were reading at different times a very large proportion of the Naval codes. We were reading the Abwehr codes. We .

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were reading some of the German Army codes. Not all the Bletchley Park intercepts have as yet been released, my Lord.

Q. But, on the whole, they were military?

A. This is not an area in which I have particular expertise.

MR IRVING: We have another expert who we will be calling on precisely this, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. I need not trouble you further.

MR IRVING: Professor Watt, I only intend to detain you for another five or 10 minutes at most. Moving away from the documentation that you yourself worked with, you have had occasion on a number of times to read books that I have written on the commission of newspapers who have given the job to you to read them or possibly even out of entertainment or possibly even because you wanted to use them yourself as a source, have you a general comment to make on the quality of the research or the writing?

A. I find your version of Hitler's personality and knowledge of the Holocaust, a knowledge of the mass murder of the Jews, a very difficult one to accept. That, of course, is a view that I have expressed in the reviews I wrote of your Hitler's War, in the review I wrote of the Goring and the Goebbels' biographies. I find in other areas where your particular political convictions are not involved, I am most impressed by the scholarship. There is a book, my Lord, .

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which I have brought me which is a second version of the book in which I collaborated with Mr Irving back in the 60s which is an edited version of possibly the only surviving document of the German research office, so-called, which was one of the agencies involved in listening to telephone conversations, in decoding diplomatic and other ciphers and so on. There were also agencies -- there was one run by the Foreign Ministry and there was one run by the German armed forces, but this was most ----

Q. Pioneering?

A. --- high level one and it was one which, although it had people, both of convinced Nazis and those who were unconvinced, on its ranks, it certainly enjoyed the highest reputation. The document itself is a lengthy summary of British policy in the year 1938, 1939.

MR IRVING: Professor Watt, have you any comment on the way in which I handled the document?

A. Yes, this is what I am about to come to. When I collaborated with Mr Irving on this ----

Q. You wrote the introduction to the book.

A. --- after my discovery of it, I only had one basic document on the subject of the [German] which was the evidence of a man who was then unnamed which was provided me by a German organisation. Mr Irving's second version of this is, I think, a major contribution to our knowledge .

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on the subject. He has worked very effectively. He has interviewed large numbers of people. He has identified the British and American reports on the organisation. The British ones, I may say, I am in the process of trying to persuade the authorities to release because they are available in America but not here. I find it -- invaluable is perhaps too strong a word, but a very, very effective piece of historical scholarship, and it is one which does not deal with the issues on which Mr Irving is complaining.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask this, as a military historian, and I underline the word "military", how do you rate Mr Irving?

A. I think Mr Irving is not in the top class, but as a historian of Hitler's war seems to ----

Q. That is what I meant.

A. --- I think his is a view which, even if one disagrees with it, has to be taken seriously. He is, after all, the only man of standing, on the basis of his other research, who puts the case for Hitler forward and it seems to me that it is mistaken to dismiss it. It requires the most careful examination, though, I must say, I hope that I am never subjected to the kind of examination that Mr Irving's books have been subjected to by the Defence witnesses. I have a very strong feeling that there are other senior historical figures, including some to whom .

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I owed a great deal of my own career, whose work would not stand up, or not all of whose work would stand up, to this kind of examination -----

MR IRVING: Would you like to mention some names?

A. --- and I think that would be a ----

Q. Sir Lewis Namier, perhaps, would you?

A. Well, Namier I would mention because it was the first article I ever published -- the rash youth that I was, my Lord -- was an attack upon him and I am told that it was passed around Balliol College in plain brown wrappers because it caused such a sensation.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, when you said what you have just said about Hitler (sic) as a military historian, you are talking ----

MR IRVING: Irving.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- not really of what he has written about the Jewish problem; is that right?

A. I am talking about his whole case for Hitler. I think it is difficult to divide this man's personality. I do not think he has solved what to me is the mystery which is the extraordinary third rate nature of Hitler's mind from personality and thoughts. How he could have managed to suck into his own private fantasy world the whole of Europe and the major powers and so on is one of the historical mysteries which I yet to see anyone tackle. I am waiting for the second volume of the latest .

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biography.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is one of the few issues we do not have to tackle here either, so...

A. But it is a case, I think, of whether one is arguing about the key or the lock.

MR IRVING: Professor Watt, can I put this to you? I will read it out as that is the simplest way of doing it. It is attached to the back of the little sheaf of documents I gave my Lord. (Document not provided) Professor Watt, it is the review in the Daily Telegraph. It is the only review I am going to put to you. "On June 16th 1977, when you were invited to review my book Hitler's War, which was the first edition, am only going to read one paragraph. Mr Irving's views on Hitler's position in relation to the massacre of European Jewry are well known. He believes the massacre was organised by Himmler and Heydrich without Hitler's knowledge, a belief he rests on the absence of any direct evidence of Hitler's knowledge and the existence of certain specific orders in specific cases that there was to be no liquidation. From these negatives he deduces the positive, backed by evidence from the survivors of Hitler's immediate entourage that the matter was never mentioned in their presence at all". This is yourself writing, Professor Watt?

A. Yes.

Q. "To this argument each historian would have apply his own .

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judgment." You do not say straightaway what an absurd idea, what a perverse kind of reading of the documents. You carry on by saying, Professor Watt, "For myself I found it initially not unpersuasive, having read the book, until I reflected on the character of Himmler". At that point I propose to stop. In other words, that was your position at the time you had freshly read the book?

MR RAMPTON: May I interrupt? Could Mr Irving please complete the paragraph?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, because I do not have that document in front of me.

MR IRVING: "I found it unimaginable", yes, why not, "I found it unimaginable that he could proceed on so vast an enterprise without obtaining his master's approval". To put it the other way round, you imagined that he did obtain his master's approval, Professor Watt? Is that so? Is that what you are saying? You imagined that he must have obtained Hitler's approval?

A. I assumed that, given his character, he would have at least thought he had Hitler's approval.

Q. Yes.

A. The difficulty in dealing with Hitler is that he himself defines secrecy in four different categories, the top one being ideas that I have not myself finally resolved, and the next one being ideas that I do not communicate to anybody. Then there is the James bond like category, for .

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your eyes only, or, as Germans say, between four eyes, and then there is the normal category. It is in that area where the absence of evidence to my mind, it is a historical challenge but I do not think that it is conclusive in the way other people have assumed it is.

Q. Professor Watt, I do not to labour the point too much because, of course, it is well known that in my biographies of Hitler I have accepted that after October 1943, after Himmler's famous speech at Posen, the way I put it is that Hitler had no excuse for not knowing. Would this be a perverse reading of the situation, that he had no excuse for not knowing from that time on? He could not really get away with saying, I did not know what was going on? Am I wrong in suggesting that?

A. The difficulty is that Hitler's theory of the state, anything that was done in the state was done in his name. He would justify it retrospectively if he did not know about it. This is an area, I am talking here not having done the kind of detailed work which is in front of the court on this, and I am simply producing a judgment based on the work I have done on Hitler ----

Q. Professor Watt, if I was William Shirer writing a book about the rise and fall of the Third Reich, then quite clearly this was Hitler's fault, this was Hitler's responsibility. But, if you have a student who is writing an examination of Adolf Hitler's personal responsibility, .

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which is germane to the issues before the court, then you do come up against a bit of brick wall as far as acceptable evidence goes. You really have to start using what you yourself call your imagination. You imagine that Hitler probably, you cannot imagine that he did not, and this kind of thing, and that is very dangerous, would you not agree? It is a dangerous kind of basis. Imagination is a picking on a particular word I used here because I was trying very hard to present a review of your book, which did not descend into denouncing it as being contrary to what everybody knows.

Q. Mr Rampton, do you wish me to read any more of that paragraph?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. It would save me from doing so.

MR IRVING: "For myself, I found it initially not unpersuasive until I reflected on the character of Himmler"- this is yourself writing, Professor Watt. "I found it unimaginable that he could proceed on so vast an enterprise without obtaining his master's approval. Heydrich would have been another matter. There are very large areas in which we have only the slenderest of indications as to what was going on in Hitler's mind. Like Roosevelt, he said different things to different audiences but, like Roosevelt, he committed nothing of his own thoughts to paper. In such circumstances inference is a legitimate historical method." Is that enough, Mr Rampton? .

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A. Then I go on to say "But to infer Hitler's ignorance, to assume that Himmler and his minions went beyond the limits of what Hitler had approved, seems to assume something inherently improbable and out of keeping with all we know of Himmler's relationship to Hitler". What I am getting at there is that again, as in so much of this biographical approach, there is a kind of build your own Hitler, build your own Roosevelt, build your own Himmler, out of kits which are supplied.

Q. There are different images. There is the Madison Avenue image.

A. My feeling about Himmler was that he was a man who was almost incapable of originating anything himself unless he had what he thought was approval from above, that he was a man who was dependent on approval of those whom he idolised.

Q. Professor Watt, Himmler's brother actually told me the same. He said, I cannot imagine Heini would have done this on his own. He said he was a bit of a coward. I think I mentioned this also in my books.

A. Towards the end, he began to lose confidence in Hitler and he became open to the sort of arguments that were advanced by senior SS officers, the belief that the Allies would make a separate peace with him and so on, and he reached a point where Hitler believed that he was being betrayed, and there is an expression of his disbelief at this. .

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Q. But that is another story, as they say. Can I draw attention to the fact that the passages we read out were written by you in June 1977, in view of the fact that 23 years have passed and still no document has come to light to shake the notion which you considered at that time inherently improbable, would you consider that my notion has become slightly more sustainable?

A. I think I would be reluctant to change my mind about that. What I should say, however, is that the challenge that you then raise to the historical profession.

Q. The thousand pound offer?

A. I was not thinking of money. I was thinking simply of the challenge of putting forward the sort of views you did and basing them on historical research, rather than ideological conviction, or at least seemingly so, has directly resulted in an enormous outburst of research into the ----

Q. Holocaust?

A. - into the massacres of the Jews, into the Holocaust and so on, which is now so large an area of historical research that it can support journals, it can support conferences. I see that there are three scheduled in Britain this coming year and that I myself am appearing in one in America in March. This, I think, is a direct result of the challenge which Mr Irving's work and the consistency and the effort which he has put into maintaining it in .

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public, has resulted in somewhat similar ----

Q. Would you describe my notion as being perverse? Would you use that kind of word to describe it?

A. This is an argument about nominalism. I think that it is perverse in relation to the values of western society, as I understand them. I do not think it is perverse, speaking as a historian. I have seen more perverse arguments put forward, for example the gentleman who maintained that Stalin hardly killed anybody, who held an academic post of some importance in an American university. I gather that he has now changed his mind as a result of being shown the KGB records and is editing a book which is hastily changing his position. I think to maintain that America entered the Second World War as a result of the machinations of British security authorities in New York is perverse. I think that the views that Stalin was about to attack Hitler when Hitler attacked Stalin, which is a view that apparently commands a certain amount of support in America and Germany and Israel, is perverse. There are areas of perversity and indeed the late Alan Clark's support for an eminent British historian's views that Chamberlain could have made peace with Hitler in 1937, and that somebody else besides Churchill have made piece with Hitler in 1940, I regard these as perverse. There is a lot of perversity about, if .

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one is to use that word in historical terms.

Q. I hasten to say that those are not the issues that are before the court, Professor Watt?

A. I know, but one has to put this kind of argument, it seems to me, in the general context of what historians, I think Professor Evans and I share views on the responsibilities of historians to tell the truth as we see it, and to be extremely careful and professional in our use of evidence, but I cannot say that the evidence that we both confront in the writing of history generally altogether lives up to those expectations.

Q. Professor Watt, from what you know of my writings, do you believe that, if a document were now to be presented to me tomorrow morning in one of your plain brown envelopes, utterly confounding me in the issues that are before the court, I would hesitate for one moment to bring them to the attention my readers and that I would in some way suppress them, or do you believe, on the contrary, that in fact I would make them known immediately?

A. I have no knowledge myself of times when you have suppressed evidence. But then our paths have not lain together very often.

Q. We are nearly at the end of this examination-in-chief, Professor. You wrote a review, you may remember, some years ago of my biography of Herman Goring for the Sunday Times? .

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A. Yes.

Q. It was the principal review in the review section that week as indeed most of my books were reviewed very prominently in my hey day. You began the review with the words which I shall never forget, "David Irving is one of Britain's most disliked historians but ..." Do you remember writing those words?

A. I have not looked at that cutting recently, but I find it quite likely that I wrote it.

Q. Quite likely that you wrote it! You did not of course stand in Oxford Street with a clip board asking the passers-by who their most disliked historian was, so this was just a subjective value judgment?

A. I think so. That would be fair comment.

Q. It is not, of course, a historian's job to be liked, is it?

A. I do not regard the public's general view of historical facts as something against which one cannot appeal.

Q. Professor Watt, would I be wrong in suggesting that the reason you used that sentence was because, on balance, you proposed to write a very favourable review of the book, which in fact it was, but you needed to purchase the right to so by saying something wicked?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have the review. I think it will speak for itself. I do not think that is a helpful question.

MR IRVING: It is in connection with the next point, which is .

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why I have had to issue a witness summons. I see your Lordship wagging your Lordship's head.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt was not anxious to come voluntarily. That must be the reason. There is so much we have to deal with, I just wonder whether those points are worth struggling with.

MR IRVING: In that case I will end the examination at that point. Professor Watt, thank you very much indeed.

MR RAMPTON: I have no questions.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Watt, thank you very much indeed for coming. < (The witness withdrew)

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to pause to collect your thoughts, Mr Irving? If you did, I would understand.

MR IRVING: I think a five-minute pause might be acceptable.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the transcriber would welcome that.

MR IRVING: Then how are we going to proceed, my Lord? With the argument or continue with the cross-examination? I would propose, if I may be so humble as to submit, that we should have the argument after lunch.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am prepared to fit in with whatever you would prefer, unless Mr Rampton tells me that is going to be very inconvenient.

MR RAMPTON: I have only one more evidence point that I want to deal with before I start on Auschwitz. I was going to start on Auschwitz today, not unless your Lordship tells .

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me I must, on the technical stuff, but on Mr Irving's own utterances about it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So Holocaust denial rather than Auschwitz.

MR RAMPTON: Auschwitz denial plus Holocaust denial. That is where I propose to start. Professor van Pelt has only just got here. I do not have the technical stuff in court with me, but I do have one more question in relation to Hitler's knowledge, Hitler's orders, which I could not ask yesterday because I did not have the document, but I have it now.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: How long will that take?

MR RAMPTON: Well, unpredictable, but it is about two questions. That is not fair.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: About half an hour. Shall we dispose of that and then have the argument and, if it is after lunch, it is after lunch. If it is slightly before lunch, so be it. We will have a five-minute break. (Short Adjournment) < MR DAVID IRVING, recalled. < Cross-Examined by Mr Rampton QC, continued.

MR RAMPTON: May Mr Irving be supplied with the Dr Longerich report, please?

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Rampton. For some reason which I do not understand, my Longerich has gone missing. We were looking at it this morning so it must .

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have got left behind. MR RAMPTON: It may be that we can manage without it, but I rather think not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is a spare, I would be grateful. Otherwise I will do my best. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, could you please turn to page 71 of the first part of this report? I will start on page 70. As usual, I always forget the context. I would like to start at 19.6 on page 70, my Lord. Now we are at the end of 1942: "For a report to Hitler on 10 December 1942 Himmler set up a handwritten list of the points which he wanted to bring up. Under 'II. SD and police affairs' Himmler specified as point 4 the following key words" -- I have added the S -- "Jews in France, -- 6-700,000, other enemies". Then on page 71 Dr Longerich writes this: "Next to these key words can be found a tick and in Himmler's own handwriting the word 'abolish' (abschaffen): Himmler had thus brought up these points with Hitler and received permission from him to 'abolish' i.e. to liquidate (says Dr Longerich) the estimated 600,000 to 700,000 Jews in France as well as 'other enemies'." I am going to read on, if I may: "After the meeting, Himmler sent a note to Müller, head of the Gestapo, in which he stated: The Führer gave orders that the Jews and other enemies in France should be arrested .

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and deported. This should take place, however, only once he has spoken with Laval about it. It is a matter of 6-700,000 Jews. "Two months later, in February 1943, Eichmann, on a brief visit to Paris visited submitted a maximum programme for the deportation of all Jews living in France including those with French citizenship. "At the meeting on 10 December 1942 Himmler presented Hitler with a proposal to set up a work camp for Jewish hostages from France, Hungary and Romania, for altogether 10,000 people. According to a handwritten note by Himmler, Hitler accepted this proposal. After the meeting, Himmler sent an order to Müller to concentrate these 10,000 people in a 'special camp' (Sonderlager). He stated: 'Certainly they should work there, but under conditions whereby they remain healthy and alive'". So far as the documentary references there are concerned, or citations are concerned, Mr Irving, do you quarrel with anything that Dr Longerich has written?

A. With very many things, yes. First of all, the figure of 600,000 to 700,000 is completely improper. I am not saying it is not a genuine document, but it is characteristic of the gross exaggeration that the SS indulged in. There were not 6 or 700,000 Jews in France. There were a total of 240,000 Jews, of whom about 40,000 had already been deported by the time this conference took .

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place, so it is an exaggeration by a factor of three or four. It is characteristic of what goes on. We were talking yesterday about this bus in Serbia with 90,000 people or 70,000 people being gassed in the space of 35 days. That would have meant 38 people being gassed every hour in each bus. That kind of figure is completely impractical. Q. Pause there. That is the first thing you do not like about this, but it is not a criticism of Dr Longerich's account of the document, is it?

A. You asked me if I had any comments and I gave you a very pertinent comment, that this is characteristic of the exaggeration which goes on when we come to numbers.

Q. I follow that. That is a criticism of Himmler, not of Longerich?

A. I do have criticisms of Longerich, of course.

Q. We will come to those in a moment. Let us deal with one thing at a time, otherwise we are going to be shadow boxing and I do not like that, Mr Irving.

A. You are relying here on the handwritten note. Of course, Himmler typed up a memorandum in which he used different words after this.

Q. Mr Irving, please do not second guess. Do not jump your fences until you get to them, please?

A. You asked me for comments, Mr Rampton. I am sure you do not like the comments I give you. .

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Q. I asked you for your first comment. I am now going to deal with your first comment, and I am going to deal with your comments, to use your word, seriatim. Could Mr Irving and his Lordship please be given these documents? This has a marking on it. The other document your Lordship can just throw away afterwards. It is only in case there is anything in it which Mr Irving wants to refer to. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where shall we put them? MR RAMPTON: The first one is probably going to go eventually into the core file, but it is a Longerich document which was, until last night, not there. I now have a copy of it. It could, my Lord, at the moment just go perhaps at the front or back of Longerich, part one, or, as I have done, hole punched on the other side opposite the passage in the text. The other two pieces of paper, my Lord, which I have stapled together so that it is clear they are separate are two pages from the Himmler Dienstkalender?

A. From this book?

Q. Yes, that is right, by Witte and others, the version of it. One reason to give your Lordship the Dienstkalender extract is that the way in which the words are printed in the Dienstkalender shows that this is a document which comes from the Berlin archive and not from the recently discovered Moscow archive?

A. I have had this one for a long time. I have had this one for 30 years. .

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Q. Yes, exactly. That is point number one. Point number 2, if one looks at the Himmler manuscript, at the very top right hand corner, somebody has written 10.12.42. Your Lordship need not look at it, but it is to be noted, I expect Mr Irving knows this, that the editors of the Dienstkalender say that that has been written in by an unknown hand? A. It was not on it when I had it because that is not on my photocopy.

Q. Exactly, so I am not asking anybody to accept that that is Himmler's dating.

A. No, the date is 10th December. I had a lot of trouble -- these are all loose pages in the original file but, using internal evidence, you can put them back into the correct sequence.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us get into the minutia if we do not need to be.

MR RAMPTON: No. I do not need to know the history. I just need to know whether the date ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The figure of 600 to 700,000 Jews is challenged as being a wild exaggeration.

MR RAMPTON: Against that entry, on the manuscript "Juden in Frankreich 6-700,000 sonstiger Feinde", is the word, is it not, in Himmler's spidery Gothic, "Abschaffen"?

A. Yes, in green crayon actually - "Abschaffen". Can we look in your Langenscheidt dictionary? .

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, because if we are agreed that is what it says, let us move on. MR RAMPTON: No, will you stop asking me questions, please, Mr Irving. A. I am not asking questions. I am stating that it is the wrong translation by Longerich. He said quite happily "Abschaffen" means "abolish" which he then by a quantum leap says "exterminate". Q. You must give me credit for having had some foresight about what you are going to say. Give us, please, your version of the word "Abschaffen"?

A. Well, why don't we just see what Langenscheidt, the dictionary, says?

Q. No, tell me what you think it means.

A. "Abschaffen" means ----

Q. Get rid of?

A. Well, I mean, even "get rid of" in this kind of context is difficult, but we are aided by the fact that there is another version of this document which you have not put before the court, Mr Rampton.

Q. I have not got it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us do one thing at a time. What do you say "Abschaffen" signifies? Do not worry about the translation of it, but what do you say that Himmler had in mind when he wrote "Abschaffen" against the French Jews?

A. "Remove". .

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Q. "Remove", right. A. It is a neutral word, in other words, my Lord, with no kind of -- yes, you have. MR RAMPTON: The root of the word -- I am doing a little bit of etymology myself, Mr Irving, if you will forgive me ---- A. I thought that was butterfly clothing. Q. --- the root of the word is "create". So the word means literally "dis-create", does it not? A. I disagree. "Schaffen" is one of those words like "get". It is a word which has any number of different meanings, like get in, get out, get up, get hot, and so on. It is a multi-purpose word, a multi-purpose root.

Q. You quite like my little schoolboy -- it is not mine, it is my son's -- Langenscheidt, do you not?

A. You are going to ambush me, I can sense it.

Q. You actually put your head in the noose yourself, Mr Irving. You asked for it literally. "Abschaffen", verb transitive, abolish, discontinue, repeal, abrogate, redress, suppress, do away with, get rid of, give up keeping, end of definitions?

A. I like the tenth meaning there, "do away with". But we are helped, fortunately, as I have mentioned, by the fact that we have a typed version of this document also.

Q. And?

A. On that it says "Abtransportieren" which means "transport away". .

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Q. Yes. That is exactly my point, as you probably understood, Mr Irving. When Himmler is sitting in private with Hitler, in response to his request for information or instructions what to do with these French Jews, and I am coming to the number in a moment, these 6 to 700,000 French Jews, he writes down, not the word "Abtransportieren", or whatever it is, he writes down the word "Abschaffen". A. Yes.

Q. Now, when it comes to the point about what is to go into the official record and how the orders are to be transmitted onwards via Müller, it translates itself as a necessary first step towards extermination, "arrest and deportation"?

A. Well, if we leave out the bit about "as a necessary first step towards deportation", yes, that is absolutely what it says, but the rest was your personal interpolation.

Q. Of course, but, you see, Mr Irving, do we find this anywhere in your books, this ----

A. Yes.

Q. --- Himmler log entry?

A. Yes.

Q. And you ----

A. I am the first person to have found it and have used it, if I can keep on making that point.

Q. I have not the references so maybe you will tell me and .

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I will look at them later. How in those books do you translate the word "Abschaffen". A. Bear with me for a moment. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is it, "Hitler's War"? A. It will be in "Hitler's War" in all the editions. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us look at 1991, shall we? Are you on '91? A. Well, I only have the bound volume of the original edition.

Q. No, all right. Let us use '77.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think in 1991 it is likely to be in part 2 because the book is written more or less ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but Mr Irving has the 1977 version, so shall we use that? It will be part 2 of that too, will it not?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. (To the witness): Can you tell us, roughly speaking, where 1943 starts in Hitler's War 1977?

A. About page 450.

Q. Thank you. So it will be volume 2 of that, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we are looking for it, we will take a lot of time. Do you think we might come back to this?

A. My Lord, I will come back to it.

MR RAMPTON: I would be grateful. It is my fault, but the index does not help.

A. So your point is that Himmler writes down the word that may actually have been used between the two of them. .

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Q. Yes. A. Yes. Q. May have been. I quite agree it may not be verbatim Hitler's word, but Himmler has certainly written down, has he not, what he thinks Hitler's intention is, has he not? A. Yes. Q. Then when we get what one might call the bureaucratic type version, that word is transformed ---- A. Unambiguously.

Q. Well, as you say -- into another form which is deport?

A. Yes.

Q. Yes?

A. Yes.

Q. And, of course, as one must expect, there is then an order from Himmler to Müller that they should be deported?

A. Yes.

Q. You grumble about Himmler's exaggeration of the numbers. Have you noticed a suggestion -- it is in that Witte -- that in that figure he was including all the Jews in the French colonies, particularly those in North Africa?

A. That is not what the document actually says. It says Jews in ----

Q. You will find that in note 44.

A. --- Jews in France. I know that the French consider those colonies, or some of them, to be part of the metropolitan France, but I think that in this document that would be .

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stretching the point. I am not going to quibble about that. I just wanted to draw attention to the tendency to exaggerate figures. Q. It might not be an intentional exaggeration, might it? It might be -- I am not saying whether it was or not -- I quite agree with you there were never 600,000 Jews living in France at this time. A. Let alone 700,000. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure it really matters very much.

MR RAMPTON: It does not matter at all. But then what happened next, leave out paragraph 19.8 of Longerich, apparently on the same day (and I am afraid I do not have this document) "Himmler made a suggestion or proposal to Hitler that there should be a work camp set up for Jewish hostages from France, Hungary and Rumania", three different countries, "for a total 10,000 people"?

A. Yes, except we are not be given the actual quotation or document or it is just ----

Q. No.

A. --- summarised.

Q. Do you know of that document?

A. This is an important point, because there are other documents that he does not refer to.

Q. This is in the IfZ, this document.

A. It, presumably, comes from one of the Himmler microfilms.

Q. Yes. You do not recall seeing this document? .

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A. Yes. Q. You do. After the meeting, he goes on, Dr Longerich: "Himmler sent an order to Müller to concentrate these 10,000 in a 'special camp' (Sonderlager). He stated: 'Certainly they should work there but under conditions whereby they remain healthy and alive." You notice the way I read it? A. we are moving ahead at very great speed on this. Q. We are still on 10th December 1942.

A. Yes, but we have already gone past the paragraph 19.7 at the top of page 71 of Longerich and I did want to draw the court's attention to this very bold and adventurous leap from the word "Abschaffen" with the neutral connotations in only one line's length to using the word "liquidate" which is certainly not used between these two top Nazis.

Q. "Dispose of" is what you use, I think?

A. Thank you very much, yes.

Q. Yes. That is not a very benign word, is it, "disposal"?

A. No, but ----

Q. This is on page 462 of 1977.

A. One has this terrible problem when translating German, when you have these multi-purpose words, to strike the right nuance without leaning too far in one direction or the other.

Q. You see, in 1977, for want of a better word, you believed still in the Holocaust, did you not? .

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A. I believed in the factories of death element of the Holocaust. Q. Yes. You had no difficulty in 1977 in reading the word "Abschaffen" as Führerwunsch, if that is the right thing, that these 6 to 700,000 Jews should be disposed of, not removed from France, that has to happen first, obviously? A. Well, "disposed of" also does not necessarily imply killing, but contains -- it is one nuance in that direction from the dead centre neutral meaning of the word, and I believe Miss Rogers will be able to establish that I then continued by stating immediately afterwards what the typed version of the document says which is "transport away".

Q. That may be so. I do not know. She is trying to find the reference in 1991.

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may not be there at all?

A. Well, it certainly is, my Lord.

MR RAMPTON: It is there, but in a footnote.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: She will find it eventually. Let us press on in the meantime.

MR RAMPTON: But do you agree that the translation "disposed of", I accept that that is a fair translation of "Abschaffen"?

A. Yes, I think it is exactly the right nuance.

Q. And the nuance -- construct for me, Mr Irving, if you can, .

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an English sentence in which, according to natural, ordinary meaning, "dispose of" as applied to a person or people does not have a connotation of fatality in it? A. Oh, yes, it happens in large companies the whole time, downsizing. Additional staff are disposed of. That does not mean to say they are sent to the gas chambers. Q. No. Disposed of? A. Yes. It is exactly the right nuance that I applied to that word. That is my submission.

Q. So, "These Jews are merely redundant and we have to let them go"?

A. That is right.

Q. I see. Probably with some nice payment or other?

A. That is a rather cheap remark, if I may say so.

Q. I know, but, really, Mr Irving, do you really think that is what Himmler meant when wrote "Abschaffen"?

A. I remind you that this is a private note being written by Himmler for his own private files.

Q. Precisely.

A. He had no reason to use euphemisms. If they had said "liquidate", as we have seen on other occasions, they quite frankly talked about "keine Liquidierung", did he not? So why would he use a euphemism here?

Q. I am suggesting there is absolutely no difference between "dispose of" and "liquidate".

A. Well, why would he have used ---- .

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, in a way, I have the point. I understand the basis. A. That is an important point. Why would he use a euphemism here when he is quite happy to use the plain, blunt language elsewhere in his own handwritten notes, particularly in view of the fact that when he dictated the actual memorandum to Müller, so there could be no dispute, he then used "Abtransportieren", to transport away. MR RAMPTON: Yes, of course, and to the East, no doubt?

A. No, indeed. They were being transported away to barrack encampments being built in the Reich. We have the documents on that which your Professor Longerich has not shown the court.

Q. What happened to them next?

A. We do not know, but, unfortunately, Longerich has not introduced into his report the evidence that there are encampments actually being built for them, reception centres.

Q. Sorry, where was the Sonderlager which is referred to in paragraph 19----

A. Those were the special camps being set up for them.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But when you say "they" were being transported to the Reich, are you talking about the 10,000 or are you talking about -- whether it was 60,000 or 600,000 does not matter for present purposes?

A. Off the top of my head, I cannot say, my Lord. .

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Q. It may be quite important ---- A. I agree. Q. --- because one interpretation -- let me put this to you and see if you agree -- is that the 10,000 people for one reason or another were valuable to the Reich, maybe because they whether qualified in some way? A. Yes. Q. Whereas the rest were not and that was why they were going to be "Abgeschafft" or whatever the word would be?

A. I will remind your Lordship of the fact that on this very same day, Himmler and Hitler on another page which is not before the court in this passage were discussing selling off Jews for hard currency. That may very well be what is going to happen to the 10,000 in the Sonderlager. But the French Jews, in fact, ended up to a very large degree working in underground aircraft factories and so on inside the Reich. From my extraneous knowledge, I know that from the biographies I have written of Field Marshal Milch, and so on. I have read the records of the Air Ministry conferences so we know what happened.

Q. Is it or is it not a legitimate inference that if that was what was going to happen to the 10,000, something more sinister was going to happen to the other French Jews?

A. No, it is not, my Lord. It could be they were going to be sent to work, as I say, in the German arms industry or building fortifications or whatever which I happen to know .

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actually happened. A very large number of these French Jews from my own work that I have done previously on the biography of Field Marshal Milch who, as Göring's deputy was in charge of German armaments, in charge of the aircraft factory, construction industry. It cannot be ignored that I have a lot of expertise, if I can call it like that, from other records and other books that I have written. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I have found one of these documents, but I do not at the moment know which one it is. My Lord, it is in H4 (ii) at footnote 183. I think it is at 182 that I do not have. Have you got that, Mr Irving?

A. Yes.

Q. It is a typed document. Again it looks as if it has been taken from a microfilm, does it not?

A. Yes.

Q. It is from Himmler because it says so at the top left-hand side and there are his initials at the bottom of the page, are there not?

A. Yes.

Q. On the right-hand side it says "Feld-Kommandostelle", what does that mean?

A. "Field Headquarters".

Q. 12th December 1942.

A. I am sorry. It just says "December 1942".

Q. You are quite right. I am sorry. I misread that. .

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A. I would draw attention to that because this was Himmler's way of doing things, that he would always handwrite the day in. In other words, this is an authentic document. We are not challenging that. But there is a reason to draw attention to that because of something that comes up in later documents. Q. Yes, I follow, and it has the top security classification? A. "Geheime Reichssache", yes. Q. For an SS document?

A. Yes.

Q. It is written to Müller. Now I need your help -- you are very good at this -- can you please translate the text for us?

A. You are too kind. "I ordain that from now on the Jews that are still on hand in France and also of the Hungarian and Rumanian Jews, all those who have influential relatives in America, are to be concentrated in a special camp. There they are, indeed, to work but under conditions that they remain sound and alive. This kind of Jews are valuable hostages for us. I am thinking of a figure of around 10,000" ----

Q. Yes.

A. --- "in this connection".

Q. 10,000 from all three countries?

A. Yes.

Q. There are special Jews who are preserved because they have .

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skills? A. That is right, yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or because they have influential relatives in America? A. That is right. MR RAMPTON: Even suppose we divide 10,000 in three equal parts and subtract it from 600,000, we have the best part of 600,000 still left who have nothing whatever to do with this piece of paper, do they?

A. Yes.

Q. This is one camp?

A. Yes.

Q. Einem Sonderlager?

A. Yes? The hostages' camp.

Q. Tell me about the other camps which you say in Germany ----

A. Yes.

Q. --- which is the destination for the remaining whatever it is, 597,000?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure he did say that.

A. Well, I certainly did not say those figures. I do not think we accept the figures.

MR RAMPTON: I said I was challenging the proposition that "Abschaffen" meant "transported" and I think Mr Irving said, "And, what is more, we know where they were being transported to, camps being built in Germany". .

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did we not then ask when French Jews he was talking about was going to Germany? MR RAMPTON: Perhaps he would answer that question? A. The balance ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you elucidate because we are really concerned with the other French Jews and I think I have put the question already. MR RAMPTON: The balance were to be departed to Germany, but that is not a reference to those other Jews, that document, is it?

A. Well, Professor Longerich has given us a rather thin gruel of documents on which to draw our conclusions, but I am familiar with the documents that I have read and I am quite happy to bring them to the court on Monday, that special camps were being erected at this time to receive these French Jews who were being deported, not just one camp, but more than one camp. Eichmann is involved in the construction, if my memory is correct -- it is about two or three months since I read these documents -- and from my own personal knowledge, large numbers of French Jews were put to work in the German Arms industry.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So they all went to camps in Germany, these other, balance of the French Jews?

A. My Lord, I am not going to say "all".

Q. The vast part?

A. That would be something I could not swear to. .

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Q. The vast part? MR RAMPTON: I would be very grateful and I am going to leave it there for the moment. A. I shall bring the documents and I will make a note to. Q. If you bring the documents, then it is no good my poring over documents; may I copy them and given them to my experts to look at? A. Yes. I will fax them over the weekend, the ones that we intend to rely on.

Q. Would your Lordship forgive me for one moment? Mr Irving, could you find page 462 of Hitler's War 1977?

A. Yes.

Q. And page 511 of Hitler's War 1991. If you would look, page 462 of 1977 falls neatly into two halves. I do not need you to read it out and I am not going to either. Could you read that last paragraph on 462?

A. "When Heinrich Himmler came to headquarters" ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think to yourself.

MR RAMPTON: No, just to yourself. The people in this courtroom are going to get tired of hearing our voices, I would imagine, Mr Irving.

A. Yes.

Q. Thank you. Now would you read to yourself in the same way the middle paragraph on page 511?

A. I am not happy with reading these things to myself because the court transcript does not know what I am reading to .

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myself. MR RAMPTON: I see. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It can be determined later what was being read. So can we proceed in this way for the time being? It just saves time. A. Yes. MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is the middle paragraph on 511. A. Yes. Q. It does save time.

A. The parenthesis in brackets you are looking at which has vanished between the two volumes.

Q. I am looking at two things. In the text of 462 the word "Abschaffen" is translated by you as "remove"?

A. Yes.

Q. In the footnote it is "dispose of"?

A. 462, you mean the end note?

Q. Sorry, I call them footnotes. That is very clumsy of me. Yes, the end note.

A. I have given the German and the translation that I propose, yes, in each case.

Q. But in the text you have, what shall I say, edged away from "disposed of" and replaced it with "removed"?

A. I have not edged away from anything, Mr Rampton. I have just used the word "removed" and in the scientific end note I have then given the original German in both versions, once "Abschaffen" which I have translated as .

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"disposed of" and I have said: "In his subsequent memo to the Gestapo Chief Müller, however, he used the milder words 'Verhaftet und abtransportieren' "arrested and transported away". Q. But, Mr Irving, you see the word has now been through two processes. It starts off in German. Fair enough, it has to be translated. When that happens in the end note, it is "disposed of". Now it has become "remove"? A. Mr Rampton, are you familiar with the concept that sometimes one word in one language can only be given, you can only get the meaning by giving its three alternative meanings in another language if you do not have an exact synonym between the two languages.

Q. But you do not want to go back to the Langenscheidt, to my primary meanings; you have been into that trap once already this morning.

A. Well, Langenscheidt is probably not concentrating on the fact we are talking about people. They are probably talking about Abschaffen of a government or Abschaffen of a condition or a situation.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: 511 of what? I am so sorry. I am lost.

MR RAMPTON: Of 1991 Hitler's War, my Lord. I was just going to compare the two versions. Then at the bottom, still on 1977, Mr Irving, 462, at the bottom of the page, you have got a parenthesis which you have already spotted, in brackets, "Hitler's notes do not indicate that he .

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mentioned to Hitler the alternative fate of the others". You and I can disagree about that, but my question is this, or first question is this. What did you mean by "the alternative fate of the others"? A. We do not know because he did not mention it. Q. I see. A. That is not a weasel answer. I am just saying that there was an alternative fate clearly adumbrated, but we are not told what it was, whether it was being sent for slave labour or sent to the gas chambers or what.

Q. Notwithstanding that at this date you still believed in the mass murder of the Jews, including a lot of French Jews?

A. I am being very cautious the way I write. This was a very sensitive subject, as you yourself said. I am extremely cautions the way I proceed phase by phase when I write these narratives.

Q. When we have got to 1991 on page 511, by which time, on your own admission, you have become a hard core disbeliever so far as the Holocaust is concerned, that little parenthesis has gone, has it not?

A. Yes.

Q. Why?

A. Very simple. First of all, the 1991 edition is an abridged edition. I do not know if you have ever abridged a book, but you go through it cutting out lines which are .

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superfluous. My editor, Tom Congdon, as I mentioned on a previous day, taught me the basic or retaught me the basic principles of book-writing. One of them is, don't say what somebody didn't do; say what they did do. This is a classic example of me saying what somebody did not do which is totally superfluous to our knowledge. Q. No, no, Mr Irving. A. So I cut out the reference to what somebody did not do. A classic example of what somebody did not do being cut out because the book has to be shortened by one-third.

Q. The truth of the matter, Mr Irving -- it must be really pretty obvious -- is this, is it not? 1977, you still believe in the Holocaust. I use that as shorthand because I do not like to use a whole lot of words where two will do.

A. Well, the factories of death.

Q. In 1977 you believed in the factories of death. That is four words, I think?

A. Yes.

Q. In 1991 you do not. You have removed the parenthesis because you fearful that your readers might think that you meant, as indeed you did in that parenthesis, that the fate of the other Jews, the alternative fate of the other Jews, was going to be death?

A. You have no basis for making that suggestion other than the purposes of this action which is you are looking, .

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I think, I will not say desperately, but you are looking for everything you can seize upon ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, the answer is no. MR RAMPTON: The answer is no. A. The equally and far more plausible suggestion is that we are cutting out what we possibly can out of the book to trim it down to make room for fresh material. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, it will not be for either you or I [sic] to say whether your answers are plausible at the end of this case.

A. Well, I venture to suggest that this is the least perverse explanation. You are trying find room to put in an extra 200 pages of material into a book that we were already trying to shorten. So if we put in a paragraph here, a parenthesis, which says something did not happen, then that is an obvious candidate for the chop. There are very many sentences cut out on every page if you compare the pages. I would also add the fact that much of the editing was not done by me; it was done by the American publishers or by an assistant who I hired specifically for the job.

Q. I am sorry. I have been given something, Mr Irving. I am not being discourteous. I am trying to read it very quickly to find out if I need to ask anything about it. I think not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, can I just ask you this, .

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"Abschaffen", you say, is relevant to Hitler's knowledge? MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And is also an example of distortion? MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, it is three things. It is relevance, not just of Hitler's knowledge, but probably of a Hitler, some kind of a, one of these utterances -- well, it is more than that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand how you put it.

MR RAMPTON: It is an instruction. That is No. 1. 2, it is evidence of a developing distortion. The distortion is already there in 1977 with the word "remove". We can see that, in fact, from the footnote which uses "dispose" and the parenthesis. In 1991, in the eighth line down in the middle paragraph the word "remove" has been "extract" and the parenthesis has gone.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.

A. To which my response is, of course, that I have given no fewer than three different translations for the word "Abschaffen" in the one volume so the reader can pick his own way, my Lord.

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, for the moment, until I see Mr Irving's other documents on Monday, that is as far as I need take that question today.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we have a discussion about Auschwitz now rather than? .

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A. We could try to -- I think we will dispose of it before lunch. MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you found that a problem and you want more time, just say so, but why do you not go back to your seat? < (The witness stood down) MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I will sit down because I would like Mr Irving to take this argument. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: My Lord, if I can get to the legal precedents out of the way first, it is Edgington v. Fitzmorris with which I am sure your Lord is familiar, the statement by Bowen LJ that the state of a man's mind is as much a fact of the matter as the state of his digestion. What is very material in this case is the state of my mind when I am writing the books. We are partially examining in that, in the materials that we have been going over over the last few days in the proper manner, but I do not think that the state of Auschwitz or the state of what happened during the war years is nearly as material to the issues as pleaded as the state of my mind, if I can put it like that. The issues as pleaded, in my view, bear a strong resemblance to the law in tort, the distinction with which your Lordship will be familiar between deceit and .

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negligence. The defence that the Defendants have pleaded is, basically, one of deceit, that I have had documents before me at the time I wrote the books, that wilfully or perversely attached to those documents meanings that no reasonable man could say they could bear. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is part of the Defendants' case. MR IRVING: That is part of the defence. But they go beyond that, my Lord, in a manner which I would aver a Plaintiff would be tempted to do if he has pleaded initially the case in deceit and, in finding that he is not making that case, he then ventures to throw in negligence as well, although he has not pleaded it. He is not allowed to do that without amending his pleadings and this is a very serious matter for the court to consider. If you find, my Lord, that the Defendants in this action are trying to plead negligence, if I can put it like that, as they have been saying.

MR RAMPTON: No.

MR IRVING: Mr Rampton --

MR RAMPTON: We are not.

MR IRVING: If they are saying, in effect, Mr Irving is a rotten historian, he did not do his job properly. He spoke about Auschwitz, he wrote about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. He ought to have known better, then this is a plea of negligence. They have not pleaded negligence in the pleadings as yet before the court, my Lord, and, of .

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course, it is perfectly open to them to go to your Lordship at any time and seek your Lordship's leave to amend their pleadings. It would be a very grave step for them to take because I would immediately ask your Lordship order that all the costs up to that point should be borne by the Defendants. MR JUSTICE GRAY: They have not done it yet, so... MR IRVING: No, my Lord, they are still attempting to plead, effectively, deceit, and I suggest that they have not yet established a substantial case in deceit, but that is outside the realm of this argument. What is far more important is; what is the purpose of looking at what happened in Auschwitz and in the camps of Belzec, Treblinka and elsewhere if it was not known to me at the time I wrote the book. It may be of the utmost interest to history and for the purposes of historiography and it has not escaped me and I am sure it has not escaped your Lordship reading, as you say you do, the press accounts that people hope that this will draw a line under the Holocaust and we shall establish what happened at Auschwitz and so on. That is not the purpose of this case.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, at the moment I am with you to this extent, that it seems to me that if you are able to say of any particular piece of evidence relating to Auschwitz, well, it was not available to me at the time, I find it .

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difficult at the moment to see how that really is going to assist the Defendant's case. Because their case, as I understand it, is that what you have said about Auschwitz flies in the face of the evidence, and that the inference they ask me to draw is that you must have known that it flew in the face of the evidence. MR IRVING: I ought to have known. There is a subtle difference, my Lord. Must have known -- if they wish to prove I must have known it, I submit that they had to establish that that material was at some material time before me when I wrote either or any of the editions --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think "available to you". I think it is not just a matter of whether it was, in fact, before you, because if you knew it was there and you, as it were, put your telescope to your blind eye and ignored it, then that is as good as having seen it, and decided to suppress it, as they would put it.

MR IRVING: My Lord, material may very well be there in Moscow or on the far side of the Fiji Islands for all I know but there is a limit to what a reasonable person can expect one historian in my position to do by way of research into a subject which is beyond the purview of the books which he is known to write.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree with you, it is a question of degree.

MR IRVING: It is a question of degree, my Lord. It is quite possible that the very capable researchers (and I have to .

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admire the effort they have put into this case) who are backing learned counsel in this matter for the defence, would have found documents after the expenditure of very considerable sums of money, as they have, in the defence of this matter. But no reasonable person can hold that against me that I did not find these documents or come to those conclusions based on those documents and certainly not 30 years ago at a time when none of these documents was available. So it is an argument in negligence which they are trying to make, my Lord, and I am asking that you bear that firmly in mind at the very least. And I have drawn up -- your Lordship will see three guidelines that I would ask your Lordship possibly to accept, possibly with amendments. They are on the first page.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: Does it go to the proof of wilful deceit, the evidence that the Defendants are adducing? What materials were before the claimant, myself, at the time I wrote the book or books referred to because, of course, we are not just going to refer to Hitler's War. I understand other books are going to be the topic of discussion by the defendants. I respectfully submit that ephemeral spoken utterances particularly extempore, unscripted talks are less material to this action than books and I would like to hear your Lordship's view on that. .

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you are talking about eyewitness evidence here? MR IRVING: No, my Lord, no, I am sorry, you misunderstood me there, that if they are holding to me a talk I have given in Los Angeles or something like that, or an answer I given at a press conference, this should be given less weight than what I have written in the books. The talks are ephemeral, they are here today and gone tomorrow. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a comment you can make, but supposing you went on on the record at an IHR conference.

MR IRVING: Yes. Does that become a book?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: With some extreme remarks about Auschwitz, let us assume that, it seems to me that they entitled to rely on that as an instance of Holocaust denial as they would label it.

MR IRVING: It is a matter of weighting, my Lord. That I would ask you to weight each of these utterances and say, well, here he is writing a book which is going to go in libraries and used as a reference work by other historians. Clearly, far more weight should be attached to these than off the cuff remarks he makes at an press conference. I am not thinking of any specific remark. I am not saying that is my own defence pre-emptively, I am just saying that I would just ask your Lordship to weight them accordingly.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hear what you say. .

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MR IRVING: Yes. Have they established -- the second point -- beyond the balance of probabilities, as I understand it, it is in a civil action like this, that the Claimant faced with various alternative interpretations and following as the Defendants wrongly represent an agenda to exonerate Adolf Hitler put fraudulent meanings on these materials before him, i.e. meanings that were so perverse that no reasonable and unbiased man informed by the same materials and expertise could have arrived at those meanings.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think that is putting the case, or asserting that the case against you has to be established at a far higher level than it seems to me that it actually does have to be established. I think what they have to show, or what they may have to show, I have not heard Mr Rampton yet, is that you have misrepresented the facts and that you have done so because you are working to your own ideological agenda.

MR IRVING: Wilfully represented, not accidentally or negligently.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not accidentally, yes, I am cautious about the "wilfully" because that may not help.

MR IRVING: They will have to establish the element of deliberation in that, my Lord, otherwise it does fall under the ambit of "negligence", which they are not pleading.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, and No. 3. .

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MR IRVING: What about the element of reasonable doubt, my Lord? Or the balance of probabilities? You say you are not prepared to accept that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I have not said that. MR IRVING: But which is the part of paragraph 2 which you find difficult to accept then? MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is you asserting that the Defendants have to show that you put as you described it "fraudulent meanings" on the materials --

MR IRVING: As opposed to negligently doing it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I was -- I accept the point you make on negligence -- suggesting to you is that they may not have to establish quite that, but I am inclined to accept that they will have to establish that this was a non-accidental, false interpretation placed on documents for the reason that you had your own political agenda, and that I think --

MR IRVING: My Lord, for example, the word "haben" and "Juden" is a typical example; was this a deliberate misreading of the word or was it an --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very good example.

MR IRVING: A negligent --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: A very good example, yes.

MR IRVING: Thirdly; have they established -- have the Defendants established beyond the balance of probabilities that I wilfully and following that political agenda .

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mistranslated or distorted such materials. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not find much to disagree with about that. MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, Mr Irving, this is all helpful in a way, but I understood we were going to be having an argument about the Auschwitz evidence I am not sure I understand -- MR IRVING: This comes up -- MR JUSTICE GRAY: How this impacts on that.

MR IRVING: If they are going to be introducing a lot of evidence about Auschwitz which will no doubt be of the utmost interest to everybody in this court, and at the expense of the person who pays the costs of this action, or persons, I think that your Lordship should rule repeatedly on what falls within the issues as pleaded and pleaded under the ambit of "deceit" rather than of "negligence".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But thinking of the evidence, which is not at the top of my mind at the moment, but thinking of the evidence that the defendants have adduced in relation to Auschwitz, one could put it into various categories, as indeed the Defendants do in their summary of case, it seems to me that most of what they are relying on was probably known to you, but if not known to you was certainly readily available to you; was it not?

MR IRVING: I think that is very bold perception, my Lord. .

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MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you tell me, what -- MR IRVING: I would certainly challenge that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: -- categories of evidence you say you really have no knowledge of? MR IRVING: For example, the entire records in Moscow. I am not an Holocaust historian, my Lord. I thought I had brought this matter across to your Lordship satisfactorily that I am know as an historian and a biographer of the top Nazis and that the Holocaust is very much a section of that material. But one cannot, after all because one is writing about the atomic bomb learn nuclear physics. One would not be considered to be negligent that one had not become a Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist before writing about the history of the atomic bomb, if I may say so. I am asking your Lordship to keep this negligent element before yourself and you say to yourself, this does not go to issues as pleaded, and this is just an attempt to bring in material for the newspapers, put it like that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me ask you this question, and do not answer if you do not want to, but if I were to come to the conclusion that there is a whole range of formidable evidence of one kind and another.

MR IRVING: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Camp officials, eyewitnesses, scientific evidence, evidence of construction at the gas chambers and the like; all of which was there, but you paid no .

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attention to it, is that something you would accept? Is that the way you put your case? That you went for broke on the Leuchter Report. MR IRVING: It depends upon the degree of intensity which would have been appropriate. If I was intending to go on, for example, a BBC talk show and I was likely to be asked about Auschwitz should I therefore spend $5 million on sending researchers into the archives around the world? It is a degree of proportionality which comes into it, my Lord. I am sure your Lordship appreciates that point and bear it constantly before yourself.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I am not sure you have really quite grasped the nettle of the question; is it your position that the Defendants really are not entitled to rely on the body of evidence that I have just listed for you because, although it was available you did not refer to it; you did not familiarise yourself with it?

MR IRVING: I am not interested to hear Mr Rampton justify doing precisely that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think he will find it difficult to do so unless you have made clear what your position in relation to these various categories of evidence is. If you are saying, "yes, I accept it is there and I simply did not attach any weight to it"; then he may say, "well, what is the point of calling the evidence?" That may not be right, but he may say that. That is why I am asking .

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you. I am trying to get you to come clean, as it were, what your stance is in relation to this evidence. MR IRVING: I am mortally wounded by the suggestion that I am not coming clean on this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not mean that in any pejorative sense. You see because this is really what the argument is, is this evidence relevant? If you say, "well, I do not quarrel with it, I hear what you say about it all being there, but it just did not feature in my thinking about Auschwitz", well and good.

MR IRVING: My Lord, what I have had to do, because Auschwitz has bulked so large in the Defendants' case I have to become something of an expert. I have had to get involved with consultants and discussed the issues with them and learn all sorts of things that I had no need to or desire to learn at the time I wrote these books, or at the time I made the utterances. I do not think that should have been necessary. I would have hoped that your Lordship would have ruled at a relatively early date in this trial -- and we are still at an early date in this trial that you will not hear evidence, my Lord, I would ask you to bear this in mind, that you will not hear evidence that goes only to the imputation of negligence and that you will only hear evidence that goes to the imputation of deceit.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you see, you say it comes only into the category of negligence, but if you are making .

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pronouncements about Auschwitz in what the Defendants say are offensive terms of denying the gassing happened; are not the Defendants entitled to say, well, that really flies in the face of the evidence and anyone who is prepared to make those pronouncements is not just negligent, he is deliberately deceiving himself. MR IRVING: Very well. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know whether that is the way they put the case or whether it is not. I think it may be.

MR IRVING: I accept that but then the element of proportionality comes into it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: To make that kind of pronouncement one is not then required to spend $5 million research, one is required to inform oneself to an adequate degree. But I still ask your Lordship to be on the alert every time that Mr Rampton either implies or actually says he ought to have known this, to say to yourself, yes, but on the basis of proportionality should he really have gone to that degree? Should he really have done that depth of research? Was he really expected to fly to Moscow and bang on the door and say "let me in"?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do not think I am not taking the point you are making.

MR IRVING: Because that goes purely to the negligence issue and not the deceit issue, which is the only one they have .

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pleaded. My Lord, I must emphasise the fact they have not pleaded negligence. It was open to them to plead negligence at the time that they drew up their pleadings. I am not criticising learned counsel at all for the way they have drawn their pleadings, but if they intended to plead negligence the way that they have been hinting at throughout the first six days of this trial, then they should have pleaded it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I want to take a bit of time on this because I think this may be really quite important to try and see where we are actually going, but just on Auschwitz and tell me if you are not able to deal with this, but just take the category of "Camp Officials" I cannot immediately put my ...

MR IRVING: The eyewitnesses?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I was thinking more of the camp official eyewitnesses, but take them, and I think there are probably about ten or maybe a dozen of them, something like that.

MR IRVING: My Lord, we shall be --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now, the last thing we want to do is plough through each individual account if that really is not being to be necessary. Are you saying in relation to them, by way of an example, well, I appreciate that they have said what they are recorded as having said, but I did not know about it when I said what I said in Australia in .

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the 1980s or the States in the 1990s, and, therefore, the worst you can say is that I was negligent; is that the line you take in relation to that particular category of evidence? MR IRVING: Finely couched though your Lordship's words are I would not use them in precisely that form. I would say that at the time I made the utterances or wrote the books I was not informed to the degree that I am now am by virtue of having had to prepare for this case. In 1988 I saw certain evidence which you will be discussing later on, which obliged to me to change my mind about what I had accepted without having gone into it in any detail up to that point. As a result of this case I have now gone in much greater detail into the eyewitness statements by the camp officials to which your Lordship alluded. I still have less reason to accept them as being reliable than has the defence, and we shall go through these statements with forensic methods when the time comes to cross-examine Professor van Pelt.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, well, I have certainly got your point. Shall I invite Mr Rampton to tell me --

MR IRVING: That may be useful.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What his position is.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, it is really very simple. We had these last days been dealing with the way in which Mr Irving on our case, distorts history, deliberately, .

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wilfully distorts history. In 1988, as your Lordship remembers, there was on trial in Canada a man called Zündel. He was on trial for something like inciting racial hatred by publishing an Holocaust denial book. Mr Irving went to Toronto to give evidence for Mr Zündel, in the course of that exercise he got to read -- I think he met Mr Leuchter either then or earlier that year -- and he got to read the Leuchter report. He came home and he held a press conference the following year, in which he said: "The buildings which we now identify as gas chambers in Auschwitz were not. I cannot accept that they had gas chambers there. There was no equipment there for killing people en masse. I am quite happy to nail my colours to the mast ... Jews cannot have been killed in gas chambers at Auschwitz". From there on, until 1993, which is the relevant date, he goes into public, into the public arena, and repeatedly makes utterances of that kind. Had he not done so he would not have appeared in the book which forms the subject of this libel action. One of the meanings which Mr Irving complains of, my Lord, this is paragraph (vii) on page 6 of the Statement of Claim: "That the plaintiff after attending Zündel's trial in 1988 in Toronto, having previously hovered on the brink now denies the murder by the Nazis of the Jews." That is Mr Irving's -- this is the most .

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elementary stage of the whole thing -- that in Mr Irving's case is a defamatory statement by Professor Lipstadt and Penguin Books, who published the book. That alone would allow as the defence -- the Lucas-Box particulars of the defence indicate that they will do -- that alone would allow the Defendants if they wished to do so to prove that he was wrong as a matter of fact. That is paragraph 6.1 of the Lucas-Box on page 2 of the defence, that the plaintiff has on numerous occasions denied the Holocaust, the deliberate planned extermination of Europe's Jewish population by the Nazis and denied --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I have thought about that, because I do not think either the meaning you have just cited from the statement of claim, or paragraph 6.1 of the Lucas-Box, really are defamatory meanings at all.

MR RAMPTON: That may well be, but as I say that is the elementary -- that is stage one. As the pleadings stand I could do it. I do not, as your Lordship knows, put the case like that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.

MR RAMPTON: What I say is this: it is not negligent, negligence is no part of this case, I am not the least interested in the qualities or efficiency of Mr Irving's research or anything like that; what I am concerned about is two things. He dignifies himself, and Professor Watt, for example, was no doubt called for this purpose, perhaps .

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by some others, as an historian. He then lends his considerable weight, if that be right, to repeated and I have to say from time to time very offensive Holocaust denial statements. He does that, not as he would if it were Hitler that he was interested in researching, he does that upon the basis, the flimsiest possible basis, the Leuchter Report. Along down the road as your Lordship will hear, he thinks of other reasons why there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. But Leuchter is the foundation of his denial. For a man to do that, who glorifies himself as an serious historian, is morally wrong. Now that is defamatory. One of the aspects of this case is that he has done it because of his political "with a small P" sympathies and attitudes. He is, we have pleaded, a right-wing extremist, and he feeds this Holocaust denial into audiences of right wing extremists.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: And he done it deliberately, in other words, it is not negligent.

MR RAMPTON: He has deliberately not been to Auschwitz and looked at the archive, never mind Moscow. I have been to Auschwitz, I have not been to Moscow. I have seen many of the documents in the archive and they are -- well, they are what they are. Professor van Pelt deals with them.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Go back to the camp officials, that does mean, does it not, that if your case is that Mr Irving deliberately shut his eyes to that corpus of evidence. .

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MR RAMPTON: He did not even care about it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And his case is, well, I was not an Holocaust historian, maybe I knew that some of that evidence was there, but I did not think it was any part of my function to go and trawl through it. MR RAMPTON: Then he should have -- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we do not need to trawl through it in this trial, do we? MR RAMPTON: My Lord, if he will accept that his denial is false. If he will accept that it happened as described by Professor van Pelt and dozens of other people; that the eyewitnesses are telling the truth, those reports of Höss, the commandant, are perfectly well-known to Mr Irving, for example. He knows all about the Vrba and Wetzler Report that came out during the War. No doubt he knows all about Jean-Claude Pressac's book. They are there for anybody to read.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure whether I see why you are now saying, rather contrary to what you have been saying before, that we have to make a finding of fact as to what happened in Auschwitz.

MR RAMPTON: No, absolutely, I have never said that. I am not saying that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why should he accept that those camp officials are telling the truth when they say they saw what they say they saw. .

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MR RAMPTON: Because then, my Lord, it is very easy, if you will not accept then that I have to lay out the evidence which would have been accessible to him if he had bothered to look before opening his mouth. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but only in the sort of general sense of, let us put it as you might cross-examine, Mr Irving, are you aware that there are statements made by ... and then we can list them and name them and give them positions within Auschwitz, Höss and all the rest of them; did you read a word of their evidence?

MR RAMPTON: That is right, the answer will be "no", what you did do, Mr Irving -- one has to know that this is his position.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, that is why I tried to --

MR RAMPTON: I know, well, he has not come clean, to use your Lordship --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I disavow that expression now.

MR RAMPTON: If that is the position, that is fine, Professor van Pelt can go back to Canada, specifically though Mr Irving has to accept, before that can happen, that the Leuchter Report is indeed bunk and very easily detected bunk, because what a responsible historian cannot do, unless he is motivated by some sinister ulterior motive, is nail his colours to the mast, as he said he did, without critical review of the mast to which he is nailing his colours, namely the Leuchter Report. And that is .

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exactly what he did. If he will concede that that was, to put it neutrally, a complete mistake, because Leuchter is bunk, if he will concede first that a lot of the other evidence is freely available to anybody who bothers go and look at it; a lot has been published in books. But that he did not care to look at it. But nonetheless went about his Holocaust denial in these various forums, why then we can close down the evidence, apart from what he said in these various places.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you very much, Mr Rampton. Mr Irving, I do not think we will be able to quite conclude this argument, but I think the ball is in your court, because the admissibility of this evidence and how much detail we need to go into in regard to it seems to me to depend, to an extent, what you are going to say about it.

MR IRVING: Which your Lordship does not know yet, of course.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which I do not know yet and you do not really have to tell me, we can deal with this on the hoof as we go through your cross-examination. It may have to come to that. But I have to have an eye on how long this trial is going to last and it seems to me --

MR IRVING: Well, I threw a lifeline to