(10.30 a.m.)

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I just want to say something to Mr Rampton, if I may, first off. Do you think it would be possible, Mr Rampton, to get an index prepared for these files that have come into existence during the course of the trial? I mean J.

MR RAMPTON: In hand ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.

MR RAMPTON: --- already.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because I am finding with the transcript so often you cannot actually discover where it is from the transcript and then you have to wade through.

MR RAMPTON: Yes, I quite agree, but that is in hand. Slowly a process is happening whereby each topic will have a separate distilled file.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am glad it is in hand. Thank you very much.

MR RAMPTON: I have nearly finished the one on history and then there will be others.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving.

MR IRVING: May it please the court. My Lord, three minor points to deal with before I resume the cross-examination of Professor Evans. First of all, the Defendants provided to me, or served on me at about 6.30, in other words after close of business on Friday, a 24-page glossary of

P-2

meanings of German words prepared by a Dr Longerich, who is going to be the next expert witness. I am not very happy about this way of doing things. They have been working on this case now for 18 months or more, and to have quite an important document like that provided to me at literally the last moment is awkward.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I sympathise with that because you have quite a lot on your plate already but, having said that, I think I would probably be able to guess at the contents of a good deal of it because we have been through a lot in the evidence, have we not, like Ausrotten and so on.

MR IRVING: It is perfectly proper that they should served such a glossary as that because experts are allowed to give evidence on the meaning of foreign words, as I understand it, and that is what this largely is. It is looking at various words in various documents partly pre-empting what I was about to say anyway. I am unhappy about the document being put to your Lordship in that form without your Lordship realising that it has only just been put to me. It is rather like the catalogue of extracts, a very handy reference form for your Lordship, rather like a printed index. I am just unhappy that it has been done at this very late moment.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will certainly bear that in mind.

MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship has not got one, so can I pass one up. It is really a most helpful document, I find. That

P-3

is in English. The original was in German. It is relatively uncontroversial, I would have thought.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be controversial, but nothing new?

MR RAMPTON: There is nothing new in it. It is a review of the usage of certain key words. That is all it is.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: As I understand it really, there is pretty much agreement that a lot of these words are either in themselves equivocal, they can mean something sinister or not, or in many cases the words are innocent, ostensibly innocent words are used to camouflage a sinister meaning. So in the end maybe not a great deal turns on it.

MR IRVING: It may be helpful in some respects, it may be contentious in others, my Lord. That is all I want to say before I actually start the cross-examination on that. It is neither fish nor fowl again. Like so much that has been done in this case, it is neither the expert report which should have been served last August, nor is it something being put to the witness in the witness box. It is kind of halfway in between.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I tell you, I will bear that in mind when we get to it. Mr Rampton, shall I put this into Longerich?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, would your Lordship put it in the front of Longerich, I would recommend.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: My Lord, the next point is of rather more

P-4

substance. This concerns the matter of the expert reports which have been withdrawn. I am sorry, they have not been withdrawn, but on which no cross-examination will be possible.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: Your Lordship and I have both raised our eyebrows over the possibility of putting in reports without the witnesses to back them up as far as expert reports are concerned. I am going to invite your Lordship to direct that the Defendants should produce a skeleton, in effect, setting out the authorities and statutes on which they rely, if they intend to put in the reports without the experts. I think that would be perfectly proper to enable me to argue the matter at a later date.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think I said, when Mr Rampton indicated that that was what they were intending to do, that it was the first time I had come across this being done in relation to experts' reports. I think it is reasonable that, subject to what Mr Rampton may wish to say, you should have chapter and verse presented to you for an entitlement to take that course with an expert, but I will hear what Mr Rampton says obviously.

MR IRVING: Obviously, if I am not going to be required to present evidence or to impugn those experts reports, I should be told as early as possible because that will halt a major amount of the work that is still ahead of me.

P-5

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think anyone is suggesting you are not entitled to impugn their reports by evidence or in other ways. The question you are really on is whether they are entitled to adduce the experts' reports under the Civil Evidence Act or not.

MR RAMPTON: I have to say, I do not think it is an enormous point. If we think we want to rely to any extent on the actual contents of the reports of the witnesses that we are not calling in person, then naturally we will have to persuade your Lordship that we are entitled to do that. Presently, my view is that almost everything that I need for cross-examination of this subject and for proof is to be found in Mr Irving's own words and in documents sent to him.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but if you are going to rely on the uncalled experts, then it may not take very long because I suspect the answer is that the language of the Act does not distinguish between expert and lay witnesses.

MR RAMPTON: I am almost certain it does not, but I am not going to commit myself.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There may be some authority on it. It does strike me as slightly unusual.

MR RAMPTON: I have not come across it before but that does not mean it cannot be done .

MR IRVING: It does certainly put me at a disadvantage, not knowing precisely what they are intending to do.

P-6

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we know what they are intending to do. There is a question whether they are entitled to do it.

MR IRVING: Mr Rampton, as I understood, has just said that he might rely on parts and he might not, which leaves us precisely where we were when I into court this morning. What I am really asking is that your Lordship should direct them, if they intend to rely on part, they must indicate what statutes and authorities they are going to rely on to open that particular door.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I will be a bit more specific about it. I think it would be helpful to have it in writing briefly.

MR RAMPTON: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there must be a brief written submission lodged by -- are we going to finish Professor Evans today?

MR RAMPTON: Professor Evans today -- can I say a little bit about how I see things going? Your Lordship may or may not agree with me, I do not know. Professor Evans I hope will finish today. Then there will be Dr Longerich tomorrow. I hope that he will finish either tomorrow or Wednesday. Then comes the question what happens next. There is a vast amount of material in part generated by what one might call the history of Mr Irving's own activities in these areas.

P-7

What Miss Rogers and I and others have been doing is to try and reduce all that vast amount of material to two files. Those files themselves are quite fat. First, I would not want to cross-examine Mr Irving on those files without his having seen them, and I do believe that the more time he could have to absorb -- it is all material which is in the wider range of files already. There is nothing new in it, but it has all been pulled together. In front of each section the intention is to have a little summary of what each section contains, which Miss Rogers has been doing with help.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: These are the people he has associated with, is that right?

MR RAMPTON: Yes, the people he has associated with, organisations and individuals.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: I began to read it over the weekend and it will be an extremely valuable set of documents. In the end, it will cut things down. My tentative proposal would be that, when Dr Longerich has finished, I would have some questions of Mr Irving in cross-examination on history, but I would leave that association cross-examination until the following Monday. Then, when that was finished, which would take maybe half a day or a day, I would then call Professor Funke.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are, effectively, suggesting that

P-8

Wednesday onwards should be time for Mr Irving to digest these files?

MR RAMPTON: Probably Thursday onwards because I will have some cross-examination. A combination of Dr Longerich and my further cross-examination on history should get us probably through all or most of Wednesday. Then what I am proposing is we should take the last two days of this week off so that Mr Irving can read these files, which he should get by, I hope, tomorrow night.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR RAMPTON: If he says he cannot do it in the time, then he will say so and your Lordship will hear what he has to say.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just revert to the written submissions? I think close of business tomorrow for the written submissions on entitlement not to call the experts but to rely on their evidence.

MR RAMPTON: I do not think it will take very long, I may be wrong. The new edition of Phippson has just come out, so I can have a look in that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Say close of business tomorrow for a short note of the submissions.

MR RAMPTON: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you will get it hopefully sometime towards the end of tomorrow. Mr Irving what about the suggestion Mr Rampton has just made about the way in which we deal

P-9

with the rest of the evidence? I am not going to do anything if you have sensible objections to it.

MR IRVING: I have no objection to that, my Lord. The timetable sounds very sound. If I was to utter a wish and I know my wishes count for very little in this court room, it would be that one of the spare days should be put before Dr Longerich rather than after, to able me to take Longerich probably advised, although I am prepared for him and, of course, I have read his entire report and have prepared a large bundle of material, which would in effect being tomorrow being free and Longerich being called on the following day.

MR RAMPTON: I embrace that enthusiasm, if I may say so. It would make our task in completing these files a lot easier if we did it that way. I do not any longer have to do any preparation for Dr Longerich, except that that will also give me the opportunity to finish the history file. Mr Irving certainly will need that and, if he can get it by close of play tonight, or even lunch time tomorrow, that will help.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am happy to do that, providing that we have the bundles available so that tomorrow can be used looking through your new material. I can use tomorrow.

MR RAMPTON: The history file he should have tomorrow, because that helps his cross-examination of Dr Longerich. I will tell your Lordship how it is proposed to compose it. On

P-10

one side would be in chronological order the German documents. So far as they are available, on the facing page will be an English translation of the key part. For the most part, that can be done just by removing. What I have done is to remove the page from the expert report and put it facing the German text.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: As long as that is going to be available by tonight.

MR RAMPTON: I will finish that tonight, it will be copied tomorrow morning and then distributed as soon as possible.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can than be accelerated? I think Mr Irving will want to use the whole of tomorrow, and indeed so will I.

MR RAMPTON: I have about another 30 pages to get through. When I have done that, it will go off and be copied. Whether late tonight or early tomorrow morning, Mr Irving will get a copy.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Early tomorrow, yes. That is what we will do then.

MR IRVING: I am very pleased to hear that, my Lord. There is one very minor point which then remains. I might either put it just as a factual point or put it to the witness in cross-examination. This is the fact that, very minor point, the 10 a.m. broadcast by Dr Goebbels as opposed to 4 p.m., I have been informed by Mrs Weckert, who heard it, that she heard it at her school. It was repeatedly

P-11

broadcast during the day. She heard it as a school child and the German school only operated from 8.00 am until midday.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you are going to say that, you can certainly put it. There is a technical objection to be taken that you cannot really put it unless you have Mrs Weckert available. She is alive obviously because you have spoken to her recently.

MR IRVING: A few days ago.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You could probably correct it by means of a Civil Evidence Act notice but, Mr Rampton, I think it is reasonable to put this.

MR RAMPTON: If Mr Irving says it, Mr Irving says it. Whether Mrs Weckert is to be believed is quite another question.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or indeed whether she can remember. I think that is a question in cross-examination and not a submission.

MR IRVING: Very well. Professor Evans?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, you have been waiting patiently. Would you like to resume, now? <PROFESSOR EVANS, recalled <Further Cross-examined by Mr Irving

MR IRVING: Good morning, Professor Evans. Are you aware of what time German schools operated during the war years? Was it on an all day basis?

A. To my knowledge, German schools have never operated on an

P-12

all day basis. They still do not.

Q. Am I right in saying they start very early and end about lunch time?

A. That is right, about 1 o'clock.

MR IRVING: That is the only question that I can usefully ask.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have not put the thrust of it yet. You should.

MR IRVING: I will have to then. In that case, if a Mrs Ingrid Weckert was to say that, as a school child, she heard the Goebbels broadcast as a school child, when it was broadcast to all the school children, on the morning of November 10th 1938, would you agree that in that case this would mean that she had heard it during the morning?

A. The question is whether one believe her 62 years after the event, and given the fact that she is not to be believed in almost anything thing that she writes or says about these events.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is she the amateur -- perhaps amateur is wrong.

MR IRVING: An amateur historian who is a right-winger.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who is accused of being anti-semitic by the Defendants?

A. Whose book has been placed on the black list by the German government, my Lord, as anti-semitic and liable to stir up racial hatred in its account of the events of 9th and 10th November 1938.

P-13

MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you rely quite heavily in your expert report on a book by a man called Dr Kogon. Is that right?

A. Not very heavily, no. I do cite it in a number of places. It is not solely by him. It is written by him in collaboration with others.

Q. Can I ask you to have a look at this little bundle of documents? Your Lordship also has this bundle, I believe.

A. I have not seen this before, have I, Mr Irving?

Q. No. It is a new bundle?

A. Thank you. I have to say it is rather difficult being handed substantial bundles of material every morning by Mr Irving without any prior warning.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure you are going to be able to cope, Professor Evans.

MR IRVING: This is the way it works, Professor Evans. I submit documents to you and invite you to comment on them. Is page 1 an extract from a report in the New York Times of December 26th 1987?

A. It appears to be. It is not a photocopy though it is not an original.

Q. Does it refer to the fact that a well-known renowned anti-Nazi writer and Resistance figure, Eugene Kogon has been listed by the United Nations as wanted for mass murder on the same list as lists Kurt Waldheim and various other Nazis?

P-14

A. It does. It goes on to say, "Hermann Langbehn, the co-author and long time associate of Dr Kogon said from Vienna this week that Dr Kogon had saved many prisoners at Buchenwald at great personal risk, and that the Commission's listing was a tragic error."

Q. Yes.

A. The New York Times story starts with a reference to inaccuracies and untested allegations in the files on which such listings appear to rest.

Q. Yes. My Lord, just so you can know where we are going today, your Lordship might wish to know that I will certainly complete cross-examining the witness on the whole of the report up to but not including the Adjutants. Quite simply, I am still not certain whether the Adjutants are being relied on by the Defence or not in this matter.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is fair because they disappeared from the picture at one stage and I think they have partially come back in.

MR RAMPTON: No, not really. Can I say I rely on the Adjutants this far and I have already made the point in cross-examination. Professor Evans has already made it from the witness box. I rely on the Adjutants to show what one might call an uncritical credulity where they are concerned as contrasted with what one might call a critical incredulity where witnesses say things that Mr

P-15

Irving does not like.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Particularly in Kristallnacht.

MR RAMPTON: Exactly, and on Auschwitz.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. So, in other words, you are not really going to put your case in any greater detail than already has been done?

MR RAMPTON: No.

MR IRVING: In that case, I do not propose to waste much time on him. It is very interesting what the Professor has written, but we do want to press ahead. (To the witness): Professor Evans, will you go to page 397 of your report, please?

A. Yes.

Q. You touch there briefly on the gassings at Belzec, Treblinka and Sobibor, and you say that these events are not disputed by serious historians.

A. I do not see that.

Q. 397?

A. 399. I say that in 399, yes.

Q. Yes on 399?

A. Yes.

Q. I am sorry, paragraph 8.

A. Yes, that is a very brief summary of what I take to be the existing state of knowledge as a background to what I say in this section of my report.

Q. Yes. I am not going to question you in any great detail

P-16

on those camps because, of course, for the purposes of this trial, we are accepting that gassings did occur in those camps. But again just going to the quality of your knowledge, are you saying that there is a broad consensus on these camps? This is another example of the broad consensus that you use sometimes as your guiding star?

A. It is really for the orientation for the court. It is not just on the camps. I describe in the paragraphs as rapidly and economically as I can ----

Q. Did you form an opinion about what ----

A. --- Nazi policy in occupied Poland in a general sense.

Q. Did you form an opinion about what kind of gas was used in those camps in your reading on the matter?

A. That is not -- yes, on the top I do mention this in relation to Belzec on line 3 of page 398, carbon monoxide.

Q. Are you aware that there has been dispute over that particular detail, whether it was carbon oxide or whether it was diesel engines or petrol engines or even steam being used?

A. I have not heard steam, I have to say, but in any case it does not really make a great deal of difference as to whether the gas was poisonous or not. The point is, of course, that if it was not poisonous, then asphyxiation was the cause of death.

Q. Has the position of the mass graves been fixed? There must be enormous mass graves of these, what, 1 million

P-17

people were killed in these three camps.

A. This is really just painting in the background. If you want to present me with documentation on this, Mr Irving, I will be happy to comment on it.

Q. I am just asking the state of your knowledge. Are you aware if there has been any kind of archaeological investigation of the sites because there are no remains on any of those sites, are there?

A. You would have to present me with documentation to show that there were no remains before I agreed with you.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am a bit puzzled by this in a way because you have accepted that I think hundreds of thousands of Jews were gassed in those three camps, so, in a sense, there is not much to be gained by asking about archaeological investigation.

MR IRVING: I was using that as an example really of exposing to your Lordship the rather shallow nature of the investigation made by this expert witness on matters of some moment, that I asked three or four questions, to each of which I got replies I can only describe as evasive.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but if there is no issue about it, really it is beside the point.

MR IRVING: It is not about the fact, but about the scale, my Lord, really, and that is how I would leave it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think hundreds of thousands you have accepted?

P-18

MR IRVING: Yes, of that order of magnitude.

A. The problem is, Mr Irving, I am not prepared to accept statements of your about archaeological remains and so on unless you can present me with documentation.

Q. The question I asked you was were you aware of any archaeological investigations.

A. Well....

Q. And I was asking purely about the state of your enquiries. We will now proceed, my Lord. We will make very rapid progress today. We are going to go to the Goebbels diary entry of March 27th 1942 which begins on that same page, 399, of your report, Professor Evans. I am going to ask you to look at page 400 of your report, Professor Evans, line 3. This is the part that matters. I am going to read out the translation that you have offered to the court of these three or four lines: "The Jews are now being pushed out of the General Government". What is happening here? Has Dr Goebbels received ----

A. The top line, yes.

Q. Has Dr Goebbels received a report from the SD or from some Nazi authority which he is summarising here, is this what has happened?

A. I am not saying -- he certainly has been informed about these events and he is putting down a summary of them.

Q. A summary of them. Is there any indication known to you that that particular report went to Adolph Hitler? I have

P-19

to ask that because that is an element of this trial.

A. Then you would have to provide me with a copy of the report and we would have to look at it in detail.

Q. If there had been an indication that it had gone to Adolf Hitler in the diary, then you would have referred to it, would you not?

A. Yes, indeed, yes. I mean, if, or, rather, if Goebbels thought it worth mentioning that a report had been the basis of what he is saying here and that it had gone to Hitler and he had mentioned it, then I would have mentioned that too, yes.

Q. You rely on this diary entry quite heavily as evidence that Goebbels was what, 100 per cent aware of the killings in the East, the killing of the Jews being pushed out of the General Government, that Goebbels was aware that this was going on?

A. Yes.

Q. "The Jews are now being pushed out of the General Government, beginning near Lublin, to the East", he writes. "A pretty barbaric procedure is being applied here, and it is not to be described in any more detail, and not much is left to the Jews themselves". I have no quarrel with that translation. You then continue: "In general one may conclude that 60 per cent of them must be liquidated, while only 40 per cent can be put to work". This is the sentence on

P-20

which you really rely, is it not?

A. Among others.

Q. Yes.

A. I mean, I quote a very lengthy chunk of this because you used this -- you suppressed a great deal of this in your own, in your own work.

Q. Now, Dr Goebbels is not stating this as a fact, is he? He is speculating. You have left a word out, have you not, in your translation? You left out the word "wohl". I draw your attention to line 3 of the footnote.

A. No, I am sorry. I have not. I have translated that as "In general one may conclude", not that "one must conclude" ----

Q. I draw attention to ----

A. And that, if I may finish, that formulation is intended to convey the sense of strong probability that the word "wohl" indicates.

Q. Does not "wohl" mean "perhaps"?

A. No, it does not. It means "probably".

Q. Even if it meant "probably" which I would participate ----

A. If he wanted to say "perhaps" he would have said "vielleicht".

Q. You have left the word out, have you not?

A. No, I have not left it out, Mr Irving.

Q. "In general one may probably conclude" or "one may perhaps conclude" indicates speculation on his part and not

P-21

knowledge.

A. No, I am sorry, Mr Irving. "Im grossen kann man wohl festellen", "in general, large scale", "kann" is "can", right, not "may", "man", "one can", "wohl festellen", very well, and it is "very well conclude".

MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Wohl" can be translated just as "well" here, can it not, "one can well" ----

A. "Conclude", yes.

Q. --- "suppose"?

A. I tried to render that slightly better, less awkward English by saying "one may conclude"; the "may" conveying the element of slight uncertainty in that use of the word "wohl".

MR IRVING: The meanings are, my Lord ----

A. I have not left the word out.

Q. --- "well" "indeed" "possibly" and "probably" in that order or "I dare say" which is a very nice one in this connection. "I dare say". "I dare say one can conclude that 60 per cent of them must be liquidated". Does this indicate and element of certainty?

A. It is probably. "Wohl" is stronger than "vielleicht". It indicates ----

Q. But you have left a word out, have you not?

A. No, I have not left a word out, Mr Irving. I have conveyed this, I think, accurately by indicating the element of slight uncertainty in the sentence by saying

P-22

"one may conclude" instead of "one can well conclude".

Q. He is not stating it as a matter fact; he is saying, "this is probably or possibly or I dare say one can say that this happening"?

A. He is saying, "This is probably happening".

Q. Is this not a very weak and rusty hook on which to hang page after page after page of what now follows?

A. It is not the only statement here and it does, I think, reflect the policy accurately even if the percentages can be argued about in the way they were put into practice.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you read Goebbels as talking about percentages in that sentence or about the fact of what is happening to the Jews?

A. Well, he says, "In general one may conclude that 60 per cent of them may be liquidated, while only 40 per cent can be put to work. It is those percentages, I mean, that is obviously again very rough and that again may well indicate the element of uncertainty that he is talking about. I mean, I think the "wohl feststellen" expresses his slight vagueness about these percentages. It might have been 70/30 or 80/20 or some other percentages, but he is saying that the probability is it is about 60/40. 60 will die, be killed, and 40 will be put to work.

MR IRVING: In other words, these figures are not contained in the report, are they, these percentages?

A. You would have to show me the report, Mr Irving, before I

P-23

could comment on that.

Q. But you have seen the diary that you are seeking to draw major conclusions from it of the state of people's knowledge, and I am drawing your attention to the fact that it is not knowledge at all, it is speculation. He is saying, "I dare say one can conclude" or even in the bare, stripped down version you have put, "one can conclude". He is making conclusions. In other words, he is speculating on what is behind it. He may very well be right, but I am looking at the fact that you have made no attempt to appreciate the meaning of that word "wohl". "Im grossen kann man wohl feststellen" does not mean any degree of certainty at all on his part ----

A. I do not put that.

Q. --- he is saying, "By and large I dare say one can conclude", is he not?

A. I do not say that, Mr Irving. I say "in general one may conclude" not "one must conclude" or "the fact is". I say "one may conclude". That is to say, the word "may" is permissive. It means you may conclude 60/40 or you may conclude something else. The probability is 60/40. It is what I would regard as a well informed estimate.

Q. Do you now regret not having put in the word "perhaps" or "possible" or "dare say" in that sentence?

A. Certainly not, I do not. I think my translation is perfectly all right there.

P-24

Q. Well, notwithstanding that you raise your voice and interrupt me, do you agree ----

A. Well, it makes a change from you raising your voice and interrupting me, Mr Irving.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Don't let us have you both...

MR IRVING: Do you agree that it would have been better to include a proper translation of the word "wohl" in that sentence?

A. It is a proper translation of that sentence. It is about the 15th time I have said that, Mr Irving.

Q. I have to say this because -- I am not going to move on -- of course, you do rely on that, you agree that you rely on that sentence and the burden of that sentence quite heavily, in refuting me and suggesting that I have manipulated, suppressed and omitted words myself, is that right?

A. Well, where is that in your description of these events which I deal with on the previous page?

Q. Over the next 27 pages you repeatedly hark back to this one sentence.

A. Can you direct me to where I repeatedly hark back to it?

Q. I have just said, over the next 27 pages.

A. Can you direct me to the exact pages and line numbers in which I refer to it?

Q. We are going to come to them bit by bit.

A. Then I cannot accept that statement of yours until you

P-25

actually do point me to the precise points where I rely and refer to that sentence.

Q. Do you agree that even in the stripped down version or truncated version of that sentence as presented by you ----

A. No, I do not agree that it is stripped down or truncated. It is an accurate translation, Mr Irving.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you interrupted the question, Professor Evans.

MR IRVING: Thank you very much.

THE WITNESS: I have to dispute the premise, my Lord.

MR IRVING: Do you agree that in the version of the sentence as presented by you, you are, even in that version it can be relied upon only as evidence against Goebbels and not as evidence against Adolf Hitler? It is the state of mind of Goebbels, not the state of mind of Adolf Hitler or the state of his knowledge or speculation.

A. This is the state, this is the state of knowledge of Goebbels, yes. Who has said that it is anything else?

Q. Is this purporting to be a conversation between Hitler and Goebbels ----

A. No. Nobody says that.

Q. This is Goebbels in Berlin reading a report that has been put on to his desk in Berlin, is that not right?

A. He appears to be reading a report from which he arrives at this estimate that one may conclude that 60 per cent of

P-26

the Jews pushed out to the East may be liquidated and 40 per cent put to work, yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say he has been reading a report?

A. Well, he says it seems to be that someone has informed about him about this, and maybe somebody has informed him verbally.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see.

A. I am sorry, I should not have said "reading".

MR IRVING: My version of Goebbels diary has vanished, my Lord, but I believe I am right in saying that the preceding sentence, that precedes the part quoted, said something like "I have received an SD report", or something like that.

A. If I could see a copy, I could comment on that, if it is important. Certainly somebody has informed him that he has gained some information from somewhere and he is writing down what he has heard.

MR IRVING: There is no indication in that diary because, as we said earlier, if there had been, he would have mentioned it, that Adolf Hitler had also received this report?

A. No, there is not. There is a statement here in which he goes on to link it to Hitler's views, by referring, as he so frequently does, and indeed as Hitler himself does, to the prophecy that Hitler issued on 30th January 1933, that, if the Jews, as he put it, started a new world war, they would be annihilated. He goes on to use the language

P-27

that indeed is Hitler's favourite language in referring to the extermination of the Jews ----

Q. You mean 1939, do you not?

A. Yes. Did I not say 39? I meant 39 -- a struggle for life and death between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. This idea of a bacillus is a very common Hitler terminology. Goebbels is taking it over here. Then he goes on and says, "No other government and no other regime could muster the strength for a general solution to the question". "Here too", says Goebbels, "the Führer is the persistent pioneer and spokesman of a radical solution which is demanded by the way things are and thus appears to be unavoidable". I take that to be the same kind of statement as is made about Lammers in what we have called the Schlegelberger memorandum. That is to say ----

MR IRVING: Please, can we keep very much to the questions?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not interrupt.

A. That is to say, it is a statement about a number of occasions on which Hitler has said this thing, or revealed himself to be the persistent pioneer. So it is clearly talking about a number of occasions. It is not talking about a specific occasion on which he is shown a report to, or talked about it to, Hitler. That is what I would describe as the link between this diary entry and Hitler.

MR IRVING: You do admit of course that there are other passages in these same diaries which show Hitler in

P-28

anything but a homicidal mood towards the Jews?

A. Point them to me, please.

Q. I am not going to keep on falling for this game throughout the day, Professor Evans, because we have to get through a great deal today.

A. Mr Irving, I cannot accept what you are saying without seeing the documentation, I am afraid. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid it is. It does slow things down but I think, if you put a proposition to the witness, he is not inclined to agree to it unless he see the document you rely on, then he is entitled to ask you to look at it.

MR IRVING: Turn to page 404 of your report, please. You will see several such passages referred to by you yourself. Goebbels diary April 26th, May 29th, 1942, Hitler's table talk May 15th, July 24th, 1942. Are those non-homicidal passages, if I can put them like that?

A. What I say is that you rely on them to show that Hitler did not know about the extermination of the Jews while Goebbels himself did.

Q. Yes. We are going to come to that in sequence, but you asked me to point you to those passages. I have now pointed you to them.

A. I am pointing to the use you make of them, which is a slightly different thing.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we are coming to them in due course, then

P-29

let us wait until we do.

MR IRVING: You are not claiming to be an expert on Goebbels and his relationship with Hitler, are you?

A. We have been through the nature of my expertise right at the very beginning, Mr Irving.

Q. You are not claiming to be an expert on Goebbels and his relationship with Hitler, are you?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think in these pages he necessarily is claiming that.

MR IRVING: Very well. Are you aware of how often Dr Goebbels was with Hitler each year around this time? Would it be five or ten or 20 times a year?

A. I have not counted, Mr Irving. You tell me.

Q. The answer is you have not any idea, have you?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is gratuitous. Put the number of times.

A. It seems from the diary entries that I have read to have been fairly frequent over the years.

MR IRVING: Fairly frequent. What do you mean by fairly frequent?

A. Would you like to put to me a number? I have not counted, Mr Irving. What I am doing here is writing not so much about Goebbels and Hitler but about your account of Goebbels and Hitler. That is the purpose of my report.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if it is your case that Goebbels was hardly ever seeing Hitler at this time, then I think

P-30

you ought to say so and, if necessary, give the number of times they would have net, or presumably spoken on the telephone, I do not know.

MR IRVING: Can you accept that Dr Goebbels, in the year 1942, saw Adolf Hitler about ten times all told? I mean in private.

A. Ah, that is a different matter.

Q. As opposed to at mass meetings or something like that?

A. I do find it difficult to accept anything you say, Mr Irving, without looking at the documentary basis for it.

Q. That makes life easier for you, does it not, but can you just answer the question?

A. It does not. It makes life a lot more difficult, actually.

Q. You do accept that I worked for 35 years on the Adolf Hitler book and I worked for nine years on the Goebbels biography, so that I am something of an expert on both people?

A. The question is how you worked, Mr Irving.

Q. Well, I am asking you a simple question. How many times do you think Goebbels actually visited Hitler in 1941 and in 42?

A. I have and I am giving the answer. I have not counted. My purpose here is to look at your account and your manipulation of this entry of 27th March to support your

P-31

argument that Goebbels was concealing information about the extermination of the Jews from Hitler. That is my purpose here.

Q. Is it not the fact that, from 1939 onwards until 1944, after the bomb attempt on Hitler's life, their relationship can at best be described as distant?

A. No. I do not really think that is true.

Q. In view of the fact that Dr Goebbels as the Minister of Propaganda visited Hitler only about ten times per year during those years, is not that a distant relationship?

A. We do not know how many times they spoke on the phone.

Q. Have you seen any references in the Goebbels diaries to telephone calls from Adolf?

A. Or to Adolf, no. I think Goebbels had a good knowledge of what Hitler knew and talked about. It occurs frequently in his diaries.

Q. If you express that opinion, you must have a pretty profound knowledge of Dr Goebbels, is that right?

A. Not necessarily, no. I have read plenty of diary entries in which account -- these are the diaries entries I read in order to check up on the use you make of them. That is what I have done here.

Q. Have you and your researchers read the entire entries of Dr Goebbels' diaries?

A. Of course not. That would have been absolutely impossible. It is an enormously long collection of stuff

P-32

and that is not what we had to do. Our task was to look at the use you make of certain specific diary entries.

Q. Are you familiar from the correspondence that has been shown you in Discovery that I invited various Goebbels experts, including Dr Fröhlich and Dr Friedrich Kabermann and others who have worked on the Goebbels diaries like myself, whether they have come across one single entry which explicitly shows that Adolf Hitler was aware of the homicidal killings of the Jews in the Goebbels diaries?

A. Yes.

Q. The answer is no, there is no such entry?

A. I do not accept that.

Q. Have you not seen this correspondence?

A. No, sorry. The correspondence yes, but I do not accept the conclusion that you make of it.

Q. You accept that they have read the diaries, unlike you, in their totality, but you do not accept what they say?

A. Ah, sorry. I thought you were saying that is what you said. Then in that case you have to show me a letter in Dr. Fröhlich says that he has never seen such a----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us short circuit this. Are you aware of any explicit acceptance, or document which shows explicit knowledge on Hitler's part of the extermination programme?

A. Well, I think there is evidence in the diaries that he did know. In this particular entry, when Goebbels says, "The Führer is the persistent pioneer and spokesman of a

P-33

radical solution", what else can he mean, except some degree of extermination, 60 per cent extermination, or more? He cannot mean at this stage, March 1942, that a radical solution is simply deporting them to the East.

Q. You read that entry, just to summarise it, as Goebbels saying that what Globocnik is up to is in accordance with what the Führer wants done?

A. Hitler indeed has been a pioneer, persistent pioneer, of this radical solution.

MR IRVING: Do you agree ----

A. One can also look at the entry of 30th May 1942, which I cite at length in the letter of revision to my report that I sent on 10th January this year. Here again, I think there is a clear indication that this is recording a meeting of Hitler with Goebbels, a meeting between Hitler and Goebbels, where at the first paragraph Goebbels says that he presents the Führer with his plan to evacuate the Jews out of Berlin with none remaining, Hitler is completely of his view, says Goebbels, and goes on to give orders and so on. "I plead once again for a more radical Jewish policy", this is on 30th May 1942, "whereby I am just pushing at an open door with the Führer".

Q. You have left out quite bit, have you not?

A. Well, I will read the whole passage if you really want me to. I am trying to short things a bit. He goes on in the next paragraph to then say, "An extermination of criminals

P-34

is also a necessity of state policy", thus implying quite clearly in the previous paragraph that he has been talking about the extermination of Jews. So that is another indication to my mind.

Q. As you have raised this particular entry, will you go to the bundle I gave you this morning and turn to page 2?

A. Yes.

Q. It is sometimes quite helpful that you go off on these excursions. Is that pages of the Goebbels diary?

A. Yes.

Q. My Lord, do you have this particular document?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do, yes. Thank you very much.

MR IRVING: Is this diary a typescript diary on the large Adolf Hitler typewriter, or the large face typewriter?

A. It is certainly large, unless it has been enlarged.

Q. So this time Dr Goebbels was dictating the diary to his private secretary, Richard Otte, is that right, the stenographer?

A. Yes, I think so.

Q. He did so since July 1941, did he not?

A. That is right, yes.

Q. So this is not in any sense a private diary any more full of top secrets. It is an official diary he is keeping?

A. No, I do not think it is an official diary. I think it is a private diary. There are certain things that he might feel he cannot say in it, which he could say when he was

P-35

writing it down in his own hand, but it is still a private diary.

Q. Was the Final Solution in its homicidal sense something that was top state secret, and not to be written down in private diaries or official diaries?

A. Which do you mean? Official diaries or private diaries?

Q. Look at the first page, page 2 in my little bundle. You will see that it starts off with, "Yesterday the military situation:".

A. Yes, he always start off like that.

Q. It does not look like a private diary, does it?

A. He always starts off with the military situation. It is a private diary. He keeps tabs on the military situation.

Q. On page 3, the last three lines, "The Führer has returned from his headquarters to Berlin to speak to an officers' course in the Sports Palace". So Hitler has come to Berlin and Goebbels grabs the opportunity to have one of his rare meetings with him?

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. The next page is the part you then began reading?

A. Yes.

Q. Page 4, line 3?

A. Yes.

Q. "I briefed the Führer once more on my plan, to evacuate the Jews completely from Berlin"?

A. Yes.

P-36

Q. Why does he have to do it "once more"? Why did not Hitler leap at it and say, "Yes, sure, why are we waiting, what are we waiting for?" Why does Goebbels have to keep on putting this to Hitler if there was any eagerness on Hitler's part to deal with the Jews?

A. Because some were remaining, and it is a new situation which seems to have emerged which has alarmed Goebbels, and which he goes on at some length about later in the entry.

Q. Then he continues. "It is entirely my opinion", gives Speer the job, "to take care as quickly as possible that the Jews who are working in the German arms factories, arms economy, are replaced by foreign workers"?

A. Yes.

Q. Then he continues with a piece you left out, "I see a major danger in the fact that there are still 40,000 Jews in the capital of the Reichs who would have nothing more to lose, who are running around free".

A. Yes.

Q. Is there not a provocation, and is it not just asking for assassination attempts, if that kind of thing happens, then you cannot sleep safely in your own bed? That is roughly what it says, is it not?

A. That is right, yes.

Q. If I turn the page, we have now leapt forward.

A. Yes.

P-37

Q. I think this is probably the part that you then begin quoting again. Halfway down, "The Germans take part in subversive movements only when the Jews lead them astray to it. That is why we have to liquidate the Jewish danger, cost what it may. How little the Jews in reality can fit in or assimilate to the Western European life you can see from the fact that, when they are sent back into the Ghetto, they very rapidly become ghettoised again". So he is talking about a geographical movement, is he not, they are in Western Europe and we are going to have to kick them out?

A. Yes, but this appears to be taken from Table Talk. The point about this entry is that it really subsumes two different conversations. The first of these appears to be a private conversation between Goebbels and Hitler, where he says, "I once more present the Führer with my plan to evacuate the Jews out of Berlin".

Q. What makes you think that this is ----

A. Sorry, this is quite explicit. The bit you left out I will go on: "Once these outrages or assassination attempts break out, then one's life is no longer safe". I will carry on reading. "The fact that even 22 year old Eastern Jews took part in the latest fire bomb attack speaks volumes. Thus I plead once again for a more radical Jewish policy whereby I am just pushing at an open door with the Führer. The Führer has the opinion that the

P-38

danger will become greater for us personally the more critical the war situation becomes. We find ourselves in a similar situation to that of the second half of 1932 where bashing and stabbing were the order of the day, and one had to take all possible security measures to escape from such a development in one piece". Then he goes on in a new paragraph, still this conversation with Hitler: "The extermination of criminals is also a necessity of state policy".

Q. Yes, we have had that already.

A. Let me give the German. The German gives actually a very strong feeling. Auch die Ausmerzung der Verbrecher: Literally also the extermination of criminals.

Q. What does "Ausmerzung" mean.

A. Here it means the extermination -- he goes on to say exactly what he means.

Q. What does "Ausmerzung" mean?

A. Literally "extirpation". It is quite clear what it means here. He goes on to say, "Should the war situation become very dangerous at any time the prisoners will have in any case to be emptied through liquidations so that the danger does not arise at their one day opening their doors to let the revolting mob loose upon the people". That is quite clear there that he means by "Ausmerzung" it is linked to liquidations and those two are linked to the previous paragraph.

P-39

Q. I appreciate why you are putting all this material in, but can we now come back to my question?

A. Yes, because you do not like this material being brought to anyone's attention do you, Mr Irving? You left it out in your work.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, you are reading from a translation. Where are you reading from?

A. I am reading from pages 8-9 of the letter I sent on 10th January, my Lord.

MR IRVING: I would prefer if we adhere to my cross-examination.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause a moment, Mr Irving. Your letter of what date?

A. 10th January 2000, with amendments to my report.

Q. Yet another file which it is not very easy to find one's way through. Can anyone help me? I am looking in what is called Evans 2.

MR RAMPTON: I think your Lordship might have put this, because it is amendments to the original report, in the front or the back of the main report. That is where I have put it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Quite right.

MR IRVING: I really have to protest about these time wasting tactics of the witness throughout the last week.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, it does not help. This is in fact my fault if it is anybody's fault. I am trying to recall

P-40

where the translation is.

MR IRVING: It disrupts the flow of the cross-examination, and I am sure this is not the intention of the witness but it is certainly the effect.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You will have to bear with me for a moment. Yes?

A. Then may I just go on very briefly, my Lord?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

A. I was about to point out the passage in the third paragraph of the Goebbels diaries after the again rather revealing sentence, "Therefore one must liquidate the Jewish danger", there is that word "liquidate" again. Then it appears to be almost identical to an account in the table talk for the same day. So Goebbels seems then to be switching over to summarising what Hitler is saying in a much larger circle, during a meal, and about how little the Jews can assimilate themselves to West European life, and so on and so forth. There of course then he engages, as Hitler customarily does in the table talk, in a much less direct kind of language, and a more vague kind of description. Hence he then starts to go on about settling the Jews in central Africa and so on.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving.

MR IRVING: I am being enormously patient. We will come back to the line of cross-examination. Can I refer you back to page 5 of the little bundle? We just looked at the

P-41

passage, you will remember (44 at the top, handwritten 5 at the bottom). I will continue: "That is why you have to liquidate the Jewish danger, whatever it may cost. How little that the Jews are able to assimilate themselves to western European life you see from the fact that, as soon as they are sent back to the ghetto, they very rapidly become ghettoised again". I do hope we are not going to have any more discursions or excursions now.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Carry on with the question.

MR IRVING: Yes. Over the page: "Western European civilisation is for them just an external veneer". Then he goes on to talk about the fact that among the Jews there are elements who go to work with a dangerous brutality and vengeance: "This is why the Führer also does not want that they are sent to Siberia, that they are evacuated to Siberia". The word "evakuiert" there is quite clearly geographical, is it not, not homicidal?

A. Not necessarily, no. The word evakuiert is quite frequently used.

Q. You cannot say "killed to Siberia," can you?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: In that context, it must be in its literal meaning----

A. Evacuated to Siberia, the word "evacuation" can sometimes mean by this time it can be a camouflage, or the whole phrase "evacuating to Siberia" and all the talk about----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but Mr Irving's point is not here.

P-42

MR IRVING: But under the harshest conditions of life they would certainly become a virile element again, would they not, as he says? He would most of all like to send them to Central Africa. How do you translate "am liebsten"? He would rather send them to Central Africa?

A. He would prefer to send them, or he would most like to send them.

Q. If it was "prefer", it would be "lieber", would it not? "Am liebsten" is most of all he would like to send them to Central Africa?

A. Most of all he would like to send them, he would most like to.

Q. Most of all, above what? Above Siberia? Above the East? Above Riga and Minsk? Most of all he wants to send them to Central Africa? Is this what Adolf Hitler is really about, as reported by Goebbels?

A. Yes. He seems to be saying that, and he says exactly the same in his table talk.

Q. You rather toned it down in your translation by saying he would rather send them to Central Africa, did you not?

A. I do not think that is toning it down at all, Mr Irving. It is clear from my translation what his preference is, or what he claims his preference is rather, in this rather camouflaged conversation at the dining table.

Q. There they would live in a climate that would certainly make them strong and resistance or resistive again. At

P-43

any rate it is the Führer's aim, and I am translating very loosely as I go along, at any rate it is the Führer's aim to make Western Europe completely free of the Jews?

A. Yes.

Q. Here they may not have a national home any more?

A. That is right.

Q. So he is talking purely geography, is he not? He is not talking gas chambers, if I can put it like that. He is talking geography. He is saying well, the East, Siberia, Africa, anywhere but Western Europe.

A. Yes I think this is----

Q. This is real Hitler. This is not Goebbels. This is not his gloss, is it?

A. Well, nor is the previous account of what Hitler is saying. As I say, he is here at the dining table and he is really camouflaging. This is camouflage language. Quite a number of subjects, as you have said yourself, Mr Irving, were taboo at the dining table. Hitler talked in very vague terms and on pages 10 to 11 of my letter of 10th January I quote the table talk for that day at some length, which is almost exactly ----

Q. You quote everything at some length.

A. I am sorry?

Q. You quote everything at some length.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not a helpful intervention.

MR IRVING: We are very short of time, my Lord, and this has

P-44

taken far longer----

A. The problem is, Mr Irving, I have to quote things at length because you leave so much out that is inconvenient to your thesis.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us skip the argument and get on with the questions and the answers.

MR IRVING: Do you agree that the Final Solution was top state secret in its homicidal sense, that all the SS documents and the documents generated by the SS gangsters were top state secret?

A. Those are two rather different questions, or points.

Q. What I am asking about is this. Is this diary being dictated to a Civil Servant, a lowly Civil Servant, and every day Goebbels is taking him out at the beginning of every morning and spending, sometimes it is 150 pages long for one day, this diary?

A. Yes.

Q. Is one likely, therefore, to be able to put, with any safety, a homicidal interpretation on any passages in the diary if it was top state secret?

A. One assumes that, like all secretaries, he was pledged to confidentiality.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you a slightly different question because I am not sure I understand this. The original part, the first part, of this diary entry you say is private diary entry in the ordinary sense of that term?

P-45

A. Yes.

Q. Suddenly in the middle of it you say Goebbels sort of flips into reproducing the table talk of the 29th May?

A. It is not reproducing, my Lord. He is really summarising two different conversations, one he has had with Hitler alone it appears, or in a very small group of people, and the second one simply goes on seamlessly.

Q. That is what is so odd about it, why should he go on seamlessly to do that when it is inconsistent with what is in the earlier part, which you say is straightforward diarising?

A. It seems strange, but I think there are similarities between what he says there in the second part of that, and the table talk. They are too striking to allow of any other conclusion.

Q. I accept that, but what strikes me as odd is that he should reproduce in his diary camouflage language used by Hitler in his table talk.

A. These are the golden words of his Führer. He will put them down because he has heard them to preserve them for posterity.

Q. But they do not mean what they say?

A. No.

MR IRVING: You are saying that the whole of this talk about Siberia and central Africa and so on is hog wash?

A. Yes.

P-46

Q. Do you have any evidence for that kind of thought? Is that just your speculation again?

A. The evidence is what is going on at the same time. We are talking now the end of May 1942 ----

Q. And the killings have started, have they not?

A. They had more than started, gassings and death camps are in full swing.

Q. So either Hitler is totally in the dark as to what is going on, or he is the biggest hypocrite there has been?

A. I would go for the second of those two alternatives, Mr Irving.

Q. Do you have any evidence for that apart from your own gut feeling?

A. It is quite clear.

Q. Even one line, even one document?

A. Yes, I have already quoted two. Again, comparing the two halves of this diary entry, when he links the extermination of criminals, the liquidations of prisoners, to his earlier talk about the evacuation of the Jews. Even here Goebbels is using words like evacuation, but it is a give away in the second paragraph.

Q. Yet at about the same time at the end of March, early April, we have had Schlegelberger document, Hitler wanting everything postponed until the war was over?

A. We have already been through this document at great length, Mr Irving, I do not accept what you say about the

P-47

so-called Schlegelberger memorandum.

Q. Was it not typical of Hitler's desire to postpone tricky things until the war was over, until the fighting had stopped? Did he not do that with several problems?

A. I do not see this in this diary entry.

Q. Will you please look at page 7, and then you will see it?

A. Page 7 of what? Yours?

Q. Numbered page 60 at the top.

A. Right.

Q. I will read to you the middle paragraph in English. We briefly then touch upon the church question. Here the Führer has reached a decision which is absolutely irreversible. He tells me to take care that nothing is done, that there is complete silence about the church question.

A. Public silence.

Q. The hour would come when we would then be able to speak more clearly than ever. Is this not another example of Hitler saying, "hey, put that on the back burner, too"?

A. I think this derives from the problems which they had in the previous autumn with Cardinal von Galen. After some discussion, it was decided, Cardinal von Galen's protest about the euthanasia, the Nazi leadership decided that during the war it would be too upsetting to morale to make a serious attack on the church and start arresting cardinals and the like.

P-48

Q. I refer you to page 404, to footnote 22 ----

A. This is my report?

Q. Of your report.

A. Yes.

Q. Page 404, footnote 22, of your report where you show the kind of problems the Final Solution was causing, mixed marriages, you remember the Gottschalk case, the suicide of the entire family and so on, and Hitler saying to Goebbels try to avoid causing problems?

A. Yes. We already discussed this at length in talking about the so-called Schlegelberger memorandum that, while I think the Nazi leadership had little problem in deciding what to do with the vast majority of Jews in Europe, i.e. kill them, they had a lot of difficulties in deciding what to do with Jews in mixed marriages, married to non-Jews and with half Jews, and mixed, so-called mixed race Jews. That is quite clear. It runs through all the documentation connected with the so-called Schlegelberger memorandum, and here it is again.

Q. You rely in your reply to this Goebbels entry on page 402, paragraph 5, you refer to a July 1941 statement by Hitler about the Jewish family becoming a breeding ground for bacilli, do you remember that?

A. Yes, "Bazillenherd fur eine neue Zersetzung".

Q. But you agree that at that time, of course, there was no plan to liquidate Europe's Jews, it was still a

P-49

geographical solution, so that is totally irrelevant in this context, is it not?

A. I do not think it is irrelevant, no. It is a general statement, rather like his statement in a speech of 30th January 1939 ----

Q. You put it in as a bit of a red herring.

A. Well, it is a very conditional statement.

Q. Hoping that ----

A. It is an "if" statement.

Q. --- we would not remember that your argument is that Hitler's speech to the Gauleiters in December 1941 was the trigger point. So July 1941, that is totally irrelevant to the argument about Hitler's homicidal intent?

A. I do not think it is irrelevant to Hitler's general hatred of the Jews. I am using it there because of this popular, this favourite phrase or word of "bacilli".

Q. The next question is on page 403, two lines from the bottom, and I ask this with great trepidation because it may unleash another torrent, you say: "Why did include", why did Goebbels include, "so many passages in his diaries which showed that he himself favoured the mass extermination of Jews?" Where are these many passages, which ones are you referring to? I cannot think of the "mass extermination of Jews" referred to in many passages in the Goebbels' diaries.

MR RAMPTON: I think Mr Irving should ask questions and not

P-50

make speeches, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well ...

MR IRVING: Is this ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The question you are being asked is where do you say Goebbels shows himself to favour the extermination of Jews?

MR IRVING: "Mass extermination of Jews". The fact that he said, "We cannot have Jews running around Berlin who may assassinate me", that kind of thing, is readily proved, but it is these throw away lines that are put into the report without footnotes or source notes that concern me.

A. Well, I will treat that as a question even though in a way it was not. It is on page 400, again talking about 60 per cent of the Jews being liquidated. Now, that seems to me on any measure mass extermination.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because you say he is quite clearly approving what he is describing?

A. Yes. It seem to be pretty clear, and he goes on to say that Hitler approved of it as well.

MR IRVING: I guess the question ----

A. Let me have, let me have another ----

Q. --- I am really asking is, is there another passage apart from that?

A. All right, well, let us just go...

MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is very unfair. This is not a memory test. This gentleman has written a detailed

P-51

report. He summarises what he is talking about on pages 410 to 416 of his report. I am sorry that he did not remember it, but, I mean, really!.

A. I just got to there. I think I will just direct you to the Goebbels diaries entries on page 412, 414, Jews experiencing their own annihilation, I mean, I really do not want to read all of these out.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do please, if you do not mind, 412, 414?

A. 14, then the pages 8, 9 of my letter of 10th January, so these are some ...

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, what is not clear at the moment to me, partly because of that question, is whether you are contesting the fact that Goebbels knew perfectly well what was going on.

MR IRVING: What I am contesting is that there are many passages in his diary which showed that he applauded the mass extermination of Jews which is the wording used by this witness in his report, but I will now move on ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now would you answer my question? Is it your case that Goebbels did not know about the mass exterminations that were going on at this time?

MR IRVING: He had visited the Baltic states. He had actually heard about executions that had gone on there, just briefly. That was November 1941. He had received this SD report. He had received the Wannsee Conference report which was ambiguous. He had received this SD report on

P-52

March 27th 1942 which gives him cause to speculate on what is obviously happening, if I can put it like that.

THE WITNESS: But in Hitler's War 1977, Mr Irving, you write: "The ghastly secrets of Auschwitz and Treblinka were well-kept. Goebbels wrote a frank summary of them in his diary on March 27th 1942, but evidently held his tongue when he met Hitler two days later".

Q. Yes.

A. And you talk again in that 1991 in a similar way so...

Q. Can I draw your attention, therefore, to a passage in Picker, Henry Picker, on April 4th 1942 which you are probably familiar with. I will read it to you. It was "characteristic that the upper classes who had never shown the slightest sympathy for the suffering and plight of the German émigrés", and he uses the word "aus wanderer", and you will understand why I am emphasising that?

A. Yes.

Q. "... now claim to show sympathy for the Jews, although the Jews had their accomplices around the entire world and were the most climate hardened species there were. The Jews prospered everywhere", he said, "in even Lapland and Siberia". Does this not also show that on April 4th 1942 Hitler is talking purely in terms of his geographical solution? It may have been a pipe dream.

A. No, no, it does not. I mean, there are murderous

P-53

statements here. He is attacking the so-called bourgeoisie, and even here it says, "If for reasons of State, one renders a definite racial pest harmless, for example, by beating him to death", very nice, "then the entire bourgeoisie cries out that the State is a violent State. If, however, the Jew", and here, well, "the Jew with judicial chicanery robs the German person of his professional existence, takes his house and home from him, destroys his family and finally drives him to emigration, and the German person then loses his life on the journey to his emigration destination, then the bourgeoisie ... (reading to the words) ... entire tragedy has been played out within the context of the possibilities offered by the law." And earlier on, of course -- that, of course, describes in a kind of upside-down way precisely what the Nazis were doing to the Jews themselves. And on talking about -- another bit that you left out, Mr Irving, he is talking about Hitler (again absurdly) that "the Bourgeoisie did not concern itself with the fact that 250,000 to 300,000 German people were emigrating from Germany a year", that meant, I think, in the late 19th century, "and about 75 per cent of the German emigrants to Australia already died during the journey". That is more even than Goebbels 60 per cent. Emigration here, in Hitler's mind ----

Q. So what conclusions do you draw from these lengthy

P-54

passages you are reading out?

A. Emigration in Hitler's mind here is quite clearly connected with mass death.

Q. That is the conclusion? Purely that emigration is connected with mass death?

A. It seems be in this passage, yes.

Q. So you agree that Hitler was considering geographical emigration every time he mentions these passages at this time?

A. Well, connected with mass death. I mean, you take Jews from France or Serbia or Greece and you take them to Poland, that is mass emigration, but that is not all that happened, is it? They were killed when they got there. The two things are connected.

Q. So you are saying that when Hitler is talking about them emigrating to Lapland or Siberia or Central Africa, or all these other places he is talking about, or Madagascar, what he is saying is he will arrange that they get killed when they get there? What is the point of the emigration then?

A. No. There is also an element of camouflage in simply using the term "emigration" or "transportation", so ----

Q. So your entire case depends on the fact that when he says one thing he means another ----

A. Wait a minute, Mr Irving. I mean, also the notion that in the middle of 1942 that Hitler was actually serious

P-55

about ----

Q. Madagascar?

A. --- transporting Jews to Madagascar is absurd because he had already personally ordered the stop to the Madagascar programme at the beginning of the year and, as for Lapland, that is even more ridiculous or Siberia. I mean, this is just camouflage in his case.

Q. Why would the Madagascar plan have been absurd then?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have been through that many times.

MR IRVING: My Lord, we have one more document I wish to show him, my Lord. Would you please go, therefore, to page 23 of the bundle? Do you know who Hasso van Etzdorf was?

A. You tell me. I cannot see him mentioned.

Q. Hasso van Etzdorf was the later Ambassador to the United Kingdom after the war. So he was not a neo-Nazi, was he?

A. I do not -- where is this?

Q. I just say that in advance.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 23.

MR IRVING: Does your Lordship have it?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

MR IRVING: It is the transcript of Hasso van Etzdorf.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is van Etzdorf's notes?

MR IRVING: My Lord, Hasso van Etzdorf's notes are actually in this blue volume I am holding in my hand. This is from my own archive. Hasso van Etzdorf took handwritten notes as the liaison officer between Ribbentrop and the German High

P-56

Command, so he was informed on an immediate basis of all the latest developments and secret happenings. Two paragraphs from the bottom, he had a paragraph -- this is the transcript of his handwritten notes, April 4th 1942 -- "A Japanese enquiry whether they will be permitted to occupy Madagascar", completing, no doubt, the triangle Singapore, Columbia, Madagascar, "has been answered in a positive sense. We would not take part in the operation. We are looking for a joint coalition warfare in the Persian Gulf" -----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry. The significance of that totally escapes me.

MR IRVING: Well, I shall ask some more questions. Was Japan an ally of Nazi Germany?

A. Yes.

Q. So if Japan had occupied Madagascar, as was envisaged by this joint operation by this top level discussion between the German High Command and the Japanese High Command, then, of course, it would have been perfectly feasible to have completed the Madagascar plan?

A. I think that is rather a large leap, Mr Irving.

Q. So the talk of the fact that ----

A. That depends.

Q. --- Madagascar in May 1942 was occupied by the British is neither here more there?

A. The point here is on 10th February 1942 (and we have

P-57

already been through this some days ago) the Foreign official who proposed the plan for deporting the Jews to Madagascar wrote that "Gruppenführer Heydrich has been charged with the Führer of carrying out the solution to the Jewish question in Europe. The war against the Soviet Union has opened up the possibility of placing other territories at our disposal for the Final Solution. Accordingly, the Führer has decided that the Jews should be pushed off, not to Madagascar, but to the East. Madagascar, therefore, does not need to be foreseen for the Final Solution any more".

Q. You are familiar with that document?

A. That is absolutely clear and explicit about the ----

Q. Can I ask you some questions about who wrote that document?

A. -- that is from Rademacher.

Q. Who wrote the document?

A. Rademacher.

Q. Did Rademacher ever once in his life have a meeting with Hitler?

A. He says here, "The Führer has decided" ----

Q. Will you answer my question?

A. Time and again, Mr Irving, if you do not like a document, you start saying, "It is a product of his imagination". This is quite clearly ----

Q. Answer my question.

P-58

A. --- this is not a top Foreign Office official. It is quite conceivable that Ribbentrop or somebody else has told him that this is Hitler's decision. It does not need to see Hitler to have this decision here. Hitler has decided in February 1942 that the Madagascar plan is out. It is quite clearly not practical.

Q. It is very difficult to conduct a cross-examination if you do not answer my questions. Did Rademacher ever see Hitler?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is Professor Evans does not know, but the point he has made (and you may not accept it, Mr Irving) is that does not need to have seen Hitler in order to know and to say that Hitler has time and again said "Madagascar is off the menu". That is what he said.

MR IRVING: May I by my questions now elicit the probable source of Rademacher's information? In view of the fact that the Rademacher document is in the same file as the Wannsee Conference report, right?

A. Yes.

Q. Is it not likely, in fact, that Rademacher had simply read the Wannsee Conference report in which precisely this concept was stated by Heydrich that they are now going to be shipping them out to the east, and that Rademacher is doing no more than just putting into another document what he has read in the Wannsee report. It is nothing to do

P-59

with direct information from Hitler. This is now third or fourth hand information?

A. I not say it was direct information from Hitler, but, nevertheless, I do not think that people in Third Reich spoke so or wrote so, explicitly wrote in memos so explicitly about Hitler's orders and decisions unless they had very good reason for doing so.

Q. And yet you cannot ----

A. They did not invent these things.

Q. You cannot wish away that July 24th 1942 table talk by Hitler in which he says, "We are going to send them to Madagascar". So Madagascar is wrong and this table talk is right or is it the other way around?

A. It is the other way around. The table talk is quite clear camouflage. Hitler has commented on the table talk on 13th May 1942 that England is not going to surrender Madagascar. He knows that perfectly well ----

Q. There were all sorts of places that England was not going to surrender ----

A. It is a total fiction. It is a total fiction.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are talking over the witness and I personally think Madagascar is a bit of a side track, and I think we have had enough on Madagascar.

MR IRVING: I strongly agree, but the suggestion that England could say, "We are not going to surrender", do you remember a place called Singapore which was surrendered to

P-60

the Japanese.

A. It is rather a different matter.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It did not happen in Madagascar, Mr Irving. Why do we not get back to what you were on before which is really more, I think, central?

MR IRVING: I agree, but occasionally these little excursions are inflicted on me. Page 405 of your report, please. You are stating that, "I did not publish the passage from Goebbels diary" -- this is towards the end of paragraph 1.

A. Yes.

Q. "'We speak in conclusion about the Jewish question. Here the Führer remains, now as before, unrelenting. The Jews must get out of Europe, if necessary, with the application of the most brutal means'"?

A. Yes.

Q. What inference do you draw from that -- a homicidal inference?

A. At this time, in March 1942, it is very difficult to draw any other inference than that.

Q. It was not the midnight knock of the Gestapo and instructions to get packed within two hours and you are only allowed to carry 28 pounds with you, and bring all your money and valuables -- was that not pretty brutal and unrelenting?

A. Pretty brutal, yes.

P-61

Q. Pages 405 to 6 ----

A. The question, Mr Irving, is really about your omission of the statement that the Führer is unrelenting.

Q. But I also omitted the part where it says that the Jews must get out of Europe which would have counterbalanced it ----

A. "With the application of the most brutal means".

Q. At the top of page 406, you quite rightly point out that I have a date, March 20th, when it should have been March 30th, is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. Will you concede that that is immaterial?

A. No, I will not, most certainly not.

Q. Why is it not immaterial?

A. Well, because, let me go back to what you say in 1977, Hitler's War: "Ghastly secrets of Auschwitz and Treblinka were well kept. Goebbels wrote a frank summary of them in his diary on March 27 1942, but evidently held his tongue when he met Hitler two days later for he quotes only Hitler's remark, 'The Jews must get out of Europe. If need be, we must resort to the most brutal methods'.". So, you maintain that he made that statement about, which I just quoted, two days after Goebbels wrote this summary on March 27th. In fact, what you are trying to do is to give the impression -- let me just find where I am on my notes.

P-62

Q. Would it surprise you to hear that the error has been ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please let the witness answer.

A. What you do is to quote Hitler, "The Jews must get out of Europe" from the diary of 20th March as if it was from 30th March, in other words, he made that statement before Goebbels made a frank summary. It is true that Goebbels made a frank summary of the extermination in March, but it is not true that he concealed it when he met Hitler two days later because the quote that you use to support your view that Hitler did not know about it after this frank summary on 27th March is lifted from a week earlier in the diary and not from two days later where it is not there. So I do think this is a clear piece of manipulation. This diary is written in chronological order. It is very difficult to get that date wrong.

MR IRVING: Would it surprise you to hear that the error has been corrected in the later editions completely ----

A. I know that the error has been corrected in the later edition.

Q. Will you not interrupt me -- completely painlessly and without the slightest damage to the arguments that I have advanced?

A. It has been corrected in the later -- in the 1991 edition, but, of course, there you omit all mention of the "ghastly secrets of Auschwitz and Treblinka" because you do not believe they existed, these secrets any more, whatever

P-63

they are, and it makes it easier in 1991 for you because you deny the gas chambers and also it has all been done on the initiative of Himmler and Goebbels, so ----

Q. Can we try to keep to the actual question that I am asking or we are not going to cover the ground today. Would you look at page 408, the footnote -- 407, the footnote?

A. Well, in order to answer the question about your changing the text in 1991, one has to give the context. Here again what you do not omit is the idea that Goebbels was concealing this information from Hitler. This time you, in fact, make it more general. You uncouple it from any specific meeting.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid I must have a look at that? Have you got the page there?

A. That again is in my letter of 10th of ----

Q. But have you got the page reference in ----

A. Hitler's War.

Q. --- 1991 of Hitler's War?

MR RAMPTON: It is page 464. It is in the second part, my Lord.

A. 464.

MR RAMPTON: It is a paragraph which starts: "Dr Goebbels, agitating from Berlin". It goes down to the end of the paragraph at 465.

A. Here it says, "Although he held", that is Goebbels, "his tongue when meeting his Führer" which suggests on every

P-64

occasion that he met him he held his tongue about, well...

MR IRVING: What he knew?

A. What he knew, yes.

Q. Do you have any evidence otherwise?

A. Well, we have already been through this.

Q. Well, do you have any evidence in any of the files that Goebbels told Hitler: "Mein Führer, there is something I have to tell you that I have found out"?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have had that, and I think the answer is there are two documents to which you point Professor Evans to support his contention that Hitler knew, had been told by Goebbels.

MR IRVING: No, Goebbels telling Hitler which is something slightly different, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: There are those two documents. We had this point a little while ago, did we not?

A. Yes, we have dealt with it.

MR IRVING: Which arguments are you referring to, Professor? I have to know what I am answering here. Which documents are you referring to? Goebbels telling Hitler about the Final Solution ----

A. Do I really have to go through this again?

MR IRVING: --- in a homicidal sense.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: If can find it, I will just -- if you know the dates of the documents, we are not going to go through them again, but I do not have them. One is 30th ----

P-65

A. 27th March and 30th May, I think, from memory.

Q. 30th May is one and 27th March?

MR IRVING: The one that I gave you as the facsimile, your Lordship?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can go all over it again, Mr Irving, but we have ----

MR IRVING: I do not really want to, but I cannot allow this court assumes that this final gap has been bridged by the bald statement that there are ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: The court is not assuming anything; it is listening to what Professor Evans has said and he has said that one document is 30th May ----

MR IRVING: Which is the ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- and the other is 27th March. You know which those two documents are. You may not agree with what Professor Evans says, but you know why he says what he does.

MR IRVING: But 3rd May is the Siberian one and that is the exact opposite?

A. Sorry...

MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. We will go through it all over the again.

A. 29th May, yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: 29th May.

MR IRVING: 29th May?

A. Yes. That is the diary entry of 30th May for the previous

P-66

day.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you give me the page reference in your report?

A. This is pages 8 to 9 of my supplementary letter, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What do you want to ask about that, Mr Irving? 30th May 1942.

MR IRVING: 30th May 1942, is this?

A. Yes.

Q. This is the passage that we went through about 20 minutes ago.

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is exactly what I have just suggested, that we have actually been through these two documents in some detail. Do we need to go back and go through them all over again?

MR IRVING: No, I do not because I would not accept that this is evidence of Goebbels telling Hitler about a homicidal Final Solution.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow you do not accept it, but Professor Evans says the opposite, you see.

MR IRVING: But this is what I call the Siberia reference which showed is exactly the opposite sense, and unless one assumes that evacuating Siberia is a euphemism for killing?

A. I am very loath to go into this all over again, my Lord. I think it is clear.

P-67

Q. Can you just state simply ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the benefit? We have been through this. I can go back and get it up on the screen, but we have been through this document in some detail.

MR IRVING: We have indeed, but can I just ask ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know what you say about it, I know what Professor Evans says about it and, in the end, I have to decide what a sensible, objective historian would make of it.

MR IRVING: Professor Evans, one simple question then and I hope you can answer yes or no, is your belief that the phrase evacuating to Siberia and evacuating to Lapland are euphemisms for killing when used by Hitler?

A. I cannot this yes or no because that is not the key passage in this entry of 30th May 1942. The key passages come earlier.

Q. Then we will move on. Will you now look at the footnote on pages 407 and 408?

A. Yes, I apologise for the glitch in the word processor there.

Q. It actually begins five lines from the bottom, does it not?

A. Yes, it has repeated a whole lot.

Q. On the second line from the bottom, you find the words "auswanderten" and "Auswanderer", is that right?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are you, Mr Irving?

P-68

MR IRVING: In Professor Evans' report.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You must remember that I have to follow what you are putting.

MR IRVING: I am moving too fast, my Lord. 407 to 408. We are looking at the footnote that begins on the foot of page 407. My simple question is two lines from the bottom, does the witness see the words "auswanderten" and "Auswanderer" and it follows over, two lines down on the same footnote on the facing page, "Auswanderung" and "Auswanderungsziel".

A. Yes.

Q. How would you translate the root "Auswanderer" there, "emigrate" or "kill"?

A. We have already been through this.

Q. Well, just a simple answer will ----

A. No, I cannot give a simple answer because it is a loaded question. That is the problem with your questions, Mr Irving. I have already been through this document and I have noted that when Hitler states that Germans emigrated, which is the meaning of the word "Auswanderer", from Germany in the 19th century, in his view 75 per cent of them died. It is a deadly process. We have no evidence for that. It is a completely absurd idea, they did not, but that is his view of emigration. There is a clear connection there.

Q. Yes, but do you ----

P-69

A. And then he goes on to talk about the way in which he thought that Jews drove Germans to emigrate in a way that describes exactly the way, in fact, that the Germans drove the Jews to emigrate.

Q. This is purely and etymological exercise, Professor. How would you translate then "Jewish emigration" in the emigrating sense, not the killing sense?

A. Yes, I mean, you enter reservations about the point of indulging in purely etymological exercises ----

Q. Can you just answer the question? Would it be "Juden Auswanderung"?

A. --- given the misuse that you make of them. But, of course, it means "emigration". I have said that repeatedly. That is the literal meaning of the word "Auswanderung".

Q. What German word would you use for "Jewish emigration"? "Juden Auswanderung"?

A. Something like that, yes, "Jüdische Auswanderung", whatever.

Q. Is that not precisely the word used in the September 1942 document that we are going to be looking at later?

A. Well, let us have a look at it.

Q. Can we tackle things in sequence, Professor ----

A. Well, you are the one who introduced the September document, Mr Irving, I did not.

Q. --- otherwise we are not going to complete today. We will

P-70

come to that document in sequence and in the order that I dictate and not the order that you dictate.

A. You have just said you want to discuss it now, Mr Irving.

Q. I am discussing it now.

A. Now you are accusing me of bringing it up out of sequence. This is ridiculous.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is all degenerating.

Q. I am discussing it now ----

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, do not be provoked and, Mr Irving, can we try to get on?

MR IRVING: Yes.

A. It is very hard, my Lord.

MR IRVING: My Lord, the reason I did it here is because in this one footnote the word "Auswanderer" is used five or six times in the clearly emigrating sense.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have been over this many times. "Auswanderung" can be used euphemistically, but it is not always used euphemistically.

MR IRVING: It is a rubber word.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But can I ask just about a general question which I think can be answered quite briefly? The table talk on page 407 of your report and the Goebbels diary entry on page 408 talk in terms of getting the Jews out of Europe?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you regard either of those documents because that is

P-71

what they are, as being on their face sinister?

A. Yes, I do, my Lord. I mean, I think by this time ----

Q. Because it is euphemistic or for some other reason?

A. It is euphemistic and particularly in the table talk in May 1942 this linkage of mass death with emigration, not to mention the statements about beating racial pests to death. I mean, they are wrapped up -- he is, of course, trying to be euphemistic and then spins these ridiculous fantasies about the climatic, supposed climatic, resilience of Jews and so on. But they are both rather sinister, particularly when you take into account what was happening in the extermination camps at this time.

MR IRVING: With respect, I suggest the word "sinister" is wrong. "Homicidal" is probably what his Lordship meant.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was using a euphemism as well, if you like, but I thought everybody understood what the term meant.

A. Yes, I certainly did.

MR IRVING: But would you not expect precisely this kind of conversation to happen around the dinner table if somebody said, "Adolf, we are getting word from the BBC and from Voice of America, whatever it is, that killings are happening and that the Jews are dying like flies in the East", whereupon Hitler says, "So what! Look at the way our people suffered"? Is it not exactly that kind of conversation that you are looking at here? It is a "so what" conversation, is it not?

P-72

A. I am not sure I follow the argument there.

Q. Is it not Adolf Hitler being tough, talking tough to his dinner table people saying, "Show these people no mercy. Look at how our people suffered when the boot was on the other foot"?

A. He certainly is saying that, yes.

Q. So, in other words, although it is tough talk, it is not necessarily Adolf Hitler saying, "Yes, we are killing them too like flies"?

A. That does not follow at all, Mr Irving.

Q. Yes, thank you very much.

A. When I say "it does not follow at all", I mean your conclusion does not follow at all. Let us get that quite clear what I mean by that. I think you might have misunderstood it. I do not think that because he is talking tough, it is just tough talk, that there is a reality behind it with which he is quite aware.

Q. Yes, but there is no evidence for that in these lines. I do not want to start nit-picking, but it is just tough talk that is recorded at this dinner table conversation?

A. Well, this is the leader of ----

Q. Ugly talk?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can go through it, Mr Irving, if you want to, but I have the witness's answer and I know you do not agree with it, but I have the witness's answer.

A. The question is that Goebbels, of course, was quite aware

P-73

that resettlement meant that the Jews were being killed -- 60 per cent of them were being killed, he says in his diary -- and so why would he have described Hitler's views as being radical and unrelenting if that had only meant emigration? The fact that he knew it involved killing must, surely, have meant that Hitler's views were in favour of yet more killing.

MR IRVING: On page 410 of your report -- we are slowly chewing our way forward -- line 3, you say there is a large number of instances where Hitler spoke openly about exterminating ----

A. In my letter of 10th January -- I am sorry to interrupt ----

Q. You have withdrawn that, have you?

A. --- I have withdrawn the word "openly", yes. That was rather careless.

Q. Very well.

A. It is open to misinterpretation.

Q. Three lines from the bottom of that same page, you quote the Goebbels diary: "It would end with the annihilation of the Jews". Once again we have that old, familiar, rubber word "Vernichtung", do we not?

A. Yes, I think "annihilation" is an exact etymological translation of that. I tried to be careful to render it in that terms. "Nicht" means "nothing", so "Vernichtung" means "making nothing of" or "annihilation", in other

P-74

words.

Q. On page 412 of your expert report we have all those old words again. On line two you have the destruction of the Jewish element, which again is the "Vernichtung" is it not? That is in the Mufti conversation.

A. Yes. That should mean annihilation then.

Q. You did not give us the German text of that, did you?

A. No, I did not.

Q. But you will find that I provided you with the German text now?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: To save time, are you prepared to accept that is "Vernichtung".

MR IRVING: At page 33.

A. Let us have a look at the German text, my Lord. This is very easy.

MR IRVING: Page 33 of my bundle. I went to the original microfilm last night and transcribed the passage in German, so it is "Vernichtung" there again?

A. Yes, that is "Vernichtung". I am quite happy to render that as annihilation.

Q. On December 12th, the indented passage two lines down, they would experience their own annihilation. We have "Vernichtung" again.

A. Indeed, yes.

Q. By way of variety, three lines from the bottom, "the extirpation of Jewry", that is now "Ausrottung"?

P-75

A. Yes.

Q. We have the whole kaleidoscope of words being used there by the Nazis?

A. By Hitler, not by the Nazis.

Q. Over the page, page 413, line 4 of the indented passage, we have once again January 25th 1942. That is just five days after the Wannsee conference, is it not?

A. Yes.

Q. All Hitler is saying is the Jews have to get out of Europe. Four lines lower down, "I am just saying, he has to go". It does not really very homicidal to me.

MR RAMPTON: Well, read on.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

A. Let me read out the whole passage.

MR IRVING: Then comes the tough talk.

A. Of course. When it gets tough, it is just talk. When it is not tough, then it is real. That is your view.

Q. He is not saying we are setting about- he said if they die on the way --- ?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let the witness read it. Please do not let us have this batting backwards and forwards.

A. Hitler says in this table talk 25th January: "If I take the Jews out today, then our bourgeoisie becomes unhappy: what is happening then with them? But have the same people troubled themselves about what would become of the Germans who had to emigrate? One must do it quickly, it

P-76

is no better if I have one tooth pulled out by a few centimetres" -- he does say centimetres but I think he means millimetres -- "every three months, when it is out, the pain has gone. The Jew has to get out of Europe. Otherwise we get no European understanding. He incites the people the most, everywhere. In the end: I do not know, I am colossally humane. The Jews", carries on Hitler "were maltreated at the time of the Pope's rule in Rome. Up to 1830 eight Jews were driven through the city every year with donkeys. I am just saying, he has to go". That is, the Jew has to go. "If he collapses in the course of it, I can't help there. I only see one thing: absolute extermination, if they don't go of their own accord. Why should I look at a Jew with other eyes than at a Russian prisoner of war? Many are dying in the prison camps because we have been driven into this situation by the Jews. But what can I do about that? Why then did the Jews instigate the war?" So he is threatening absolute extermination if the Jews do not go of their own accord, and he is talking about the Russian prisoners of war, many of them dying in the same context as he is talking about Jews. The murderous character of that conversation could hardly be clearer.

MR IRVING: What is the phrase for "absolute Ausrottung"? You are quite incorrigible. What is the German he uses?

A. You just said.

P-77

Q. "Absolute Ausrottung"?

A. Yes.

Q. You translated that as "absolute extermination"?

A. Yes.

Q. Quite clearly it is absolute rooting up, is it not? Have you never had to uproot?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again, we have had that point. I am well aware of the argument.

Q. It is these tendentious translations on which he relies.

A. I do not think it is a tendentious translation. "Ausrottung" means extirpation, uprooting, rooting out or total -- if you look up "extirpation" in the Oxford English dictionary, you will to try and it will mean----

Q. And you translate it every time ----

A. Let me finish, Mr Irving. If you look up "extirpation" in the Oxford English Dictionary, which you obviously have not done, then you will to try and the translations include "total destruction". If you look it up in the Cassell's 1936 English German dictionary, you will to try and "Ausrottungskrieg" is translated as a "war of extermination". It is a perfectly legitimate translation. There is nothing tendentious about it. In connection here with all the things he is saying about killing Russian prisoners of war, deaths in the prison camp, and so on, it is quite clear what it means.

Q. He says they are dying, he does not say they are being

P-78

killed, does he? He says they are dying in the prison camps.

A. Yes, that is right.

Q. You are calling this extermination. You take the third or fourth meaning of the word.

A. I think it is a reasonable conclusion to draw, that the Russian prisoners of war, of whom 3 or 4 million died in the prisoner of war camps in the Second World War, are being exterminated by the Nazis. Why they are dying in the prison camps? Hitler knows perfectly well, because they are not being given food or sanitation. They are dying of typhus and starvation. He is aware of that.

Q. Can I give you another example of your tendentious translations of another word? Page 409.

A. I do not accept they are tendentious.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Wait, Professor Evans.

MR IRVING: Page 409, please, halfway down. Have you got this passage: "In his table talk, Hitler even hinted at the violent fate of the Jews when he referred to 'racial pests' being beaten to death".

A. Yes.

Q. What is the actual document there? Can we have a look at the actual passage that was used?

A. Yes, pages 407 to 8, footnote 30. It is "Wenn man vom Staats wegen einen ausgesprochenen Volksschädling unschädlich mache, zum Beispiel totschlage".

P-79

Q. So how did you manage to translate "Volksschädling" as "racial pests"? It is in the singular, is it not?

A. I think it is quite clear that he is talking in the singular, "der Jude". He says, "Wenn aber der Jude den deutschen Menschen" -- you think he is talking about one single Jew there? It is all collective.

MR IRVING: Does your Lordship have the passage?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is translated in the singular at page 407.

A. Yes, it is. Page 407.

MR IRVING: Halfway down page 409: "In his table talk, Hitler even hinted at the violent fate of the Jews when he referred to 'racial pests' or 'Volksschädlinge'". What entitles you, first of all, to translate the word "Volksschädlinge" as "racial pests"?

A. Well "Schädlinge" is derived from agricultural biology.

Q. We know that. What about "Volks"?

MR IRVING: Let the witness to.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Will you let the witness answer, Mr Irving? It is impossible for me to follow it. Every answer is interrupted.

MR IRVING: I apologise.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Schädlinge" means what?

A. It is a sort of agricultural biology term meaning a kind of pest, of crops, or something like that, a sort of small animal that devours crops, I think.

P-80

MR IRVING: It is the other half of the word I am looking at, "Volks". Would you call a Volkswagen a race car, racial car? A Volkskuche is a racial kitchen? A Volksseele is a racial soul?

A. A Volkswagen is a post 1945 term, even though the car was not.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us worry about Volkswagens. Would you like to put what you think the correct translation of "Volksschädlinge" would be, Mr Irving? It is marrying up two concepts and I think it would be helpful.

MR IRVING: Public pest.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Public pest?

MR IRVING: It is a reference to a public pest. Is this not because Adolf Hitler was constantly issuing death sentences with summary procedures against rapists and train robbers and people like that, and you refer to them as the "Volksschädlinge"?

A. Yes. It is not a public pest. Public is "öffentlich" and that word does not appear here. That is a totally tendentious mistranslation of this term. Volksschädlinge is a term which the Nazis used in indeed dealing with criminals, because they considered that criminality was basically racial in character. That is to say, either through inherited racial characteristics of some sort, whether the criminal was German or not. I think it is quite clear what they mean. How would one translate the

P-81

word "Völkisch", which is the adjective? You would translate it as "public", I suppose? I think that is completely illegitimate.

Q. The word "Völkisch" is an extremely difficult word to translate, as you are familiar, is that not right.

A. It is the adjective of "Volk", and as used by the Nazis I think it means in most cases "racial".

Q. Is not the correct translation of "Eine Volksschädlinge totzuschlagen" to bump off a public pest?

A. No, it is not.

Q. He says, "if we are entitled to bump off a public pest, then".

A. No. To start with, almost everything is wrong there, Mr Irving, totzuschlagen is to beat to death, no ambiguity about that at all. "Volksschädling" I translate as a "racial pest". That is my view of what it means in this context as used by Hitler, and one comes across this in a lot of the legislation courts decisions and memoranda of the Ministry of Justice which I am familiar with. That word "Volksschädling" is legally defined, indeed, in the Second World War. It means, to my mind ----

Q. So this is another example ----

A. In my translation it is a "racial pest". To put a gloss on it, it is a pest who is damaging the German race. That is really what it means.

Q. It is another example of a euphemism, right? You have to

P-82

translate it. It is a word which means one thing but you say this is euphemism for the Jews?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think that is what----

A. No. I do not mean that at all, no. Not necessarily at all.

MR IRVING: How you would you translate the words "public pest" into German?

A. Something like "öffentlich ••ergonist(?)", something like that. Public nuisance is "öffentlich Unfug". The use of the word "Schädling" comes from the racial ideology drawing a parallel between growing crops and farming and human beings.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: A sort of agricultural bacillus?

A. Yes, my Lord.

MR IRVING: You are aware that Adolf Hitler personally had to issue the death sentences against train robbers, rapists, and people like that. He would be the one who sent the word down the phone lines, saying "Execute"?

A. I do not think he had to, Mr Irving. What he tended to do was -- I cite this in the book that I wrote -- he quite frequently, on at least 18 occasions listed by the Ministry of Justice during the early part of war, was reading the Nazi newspaper, and would see a report of some criminal whom he considered had too lenient a sentence for robbery or whatever, would exclaim, "That person ought to be shot", and immediately Schaub or somebody else would

P-83

leap up, get on the phone to Munich or wherever it was, and have the criminal shot while trying to "escape".

Q. Do not I say exactly the same in my book, Hitler's War, now that you have mentioned that fact, that a simple phone call to Schaub sufficed and the man was already sent to be executed. Do you remember the passage in my book, Hitler's War, where I said that in the Kaiser's time the condemned man had the right to see the Kaiser's signature on the death warrant, but in Hitler's time it was done more informally?

A. Yes, I remember that.

Q. Not a very flattering passage about Hitler, is it?

A. In order to comment on that I would have to see the passage.

Q. Yes, I thought you would say that. Will you now go to page 408?

A. I am sorry, I would have to.

Q. At the foot of page 408, the very last line of the footnote, you criticise me for failing to translate the last sentences. "In his translation of this passage, Irving fails to translate the last sentences".

A. Yes.

Q. If you look at the last sentences referred to, which is just above it in that footnote, it is not in the subjunctive, is it? So it is Goebbels, not Hitler.

A. No, I do not think that follows. You yourself said,

P-84

Mr Irving, that Goebbels wrote a rather colloquial slangy sort of German so one would not expect him to stick absolutely consistently to the formal means of reported speech.

Q. Does the last sentence add at all or subtract at all to the story? Is there some criticism? Is there some reason why you criticise me for leaving out those sentences? Obviously I have left out a huge number of sentences, I have left out millions of sentences in writing my books. It is part of being a writer.

A. It is not a major point, Mr Irving.

Q. Yes. "Absolute Ausrottung" on page 413 is offset against going of their own accord, is it not? Either they go off their own accord or there is going to be "absolute Ausrottung"?

A. Yes.

Q. So it is clearly a going and not a killing?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have cross-examined about that.

MR IRVING: Yes. I just came across my rather nice way of putting it in my notes, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It had struck me.

A. Yes. What he is saying is that he will totally exterminate them if they do not go of their own accord, which of course by this time, January 1942, they were not going of their own accord because the Nazis had forbidden emigration of Jews from Germany in the previous October.

P-85

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the point Mr Irving is making is that going and not going, as it were, are being contrasted.

A. Yes.

Q. Which suggests Ausrottung is----

MR IRVING: Going voluntarily and not going voluntarily.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

A. How he thinks that Jews could have gone voluntarily at this point, I really do not know.

Q. Did large numbers of Jews leave Germany more or less voluntarily between 1938 and the end of 1939?

A. Yes, driven out by the enormous hostility of the Nazi regime, particularly in the Reichskristallnacht.

Q. Were they carried to the port or the airport and dumped on a plane?

A. No, they made the decision that life was unbearable in Germany and they left.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is 1942, that is the point.

A. This is 1942.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us move on. I think we have had enough of that particular bit of table talk.

MR IRVING: Page 416, in paragraph 22 and paragraph 1, I am sorry, the top paragraph of that page, what you are effectively saying is that the Nazis are using a code, are they not? They are using special words when in fact they mean something different.

A. Yes.

P-86

Q. Does not the use of a code presuppose some kind of code document or list that has to be both ends? People have to know. It is not just a nod and a wink in something as important as this. Would you not expect to try and some kind of little list that, when I say evakuiert, I really mean kill?

A. No, I do not think so.

Q. Is there not a danger then that you send a train load of Jews to Minsk, you evacuate them there and the person at the other end, Joe Bloggs, thinks they are just going to be evacuated, and he has them evacuated without realising he is supposed to kill them?

A. Or the reverse, as we know happened in Riga. One cannot expect it to be entirely consistent, but I think it is clear that people knew that there was a euphemistic language. It is not consistent. There is a variety of different terms used.

Q. But does not this whole scenario raise the obvious objection that any conspiracy theory has, that as soon as you are presupposing a major conspiracy with everybody knowing what is going on, everybody who is in the know, there must be some kind of documentation of the fact of the conspiracy, the code list or the list of names, and, apart from one or two scattered references like Heinrich Himmler's Posen speech, we do not actually have the equivalences, do we, spelled out?

P-87

A. That is such a convoluted question I am not how to answer it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is the same question you were asked before. Would you expect some sort of list or code, and you have said no.

A. I do not expect some sort of list, no.

Q. Page 417, line 4?

A. Yes.

Q. The oath of secrecy which was taken by people involved in Operation Reinhardt, I think we agreed that there is such an oath because I have seen at least one. Do you remember what it consisted of, the three or four points what they swear to secrecy on?

A. Remind me. I quote it somewhere.

Q. Do they swear to preserve secrecy about what is going on in the evacuation?

A. I am sorry. I would have to see a copy of the oath, I am afraid.

Q. You asked me to remind you.

A. Yes.

Q. Do you ----

A. I think I quote it somewhere, I am trying to try and it.

Q. Let me put it like this. Was it not to protect the plundering character of Operation Reinhardt from unauthorised eyes?

A. In fact, I have it on page 609 of my report, the

P-88

fundamental order No. 1. Is this what we are referring to?

Q. No.

A. 25th September 41. It is certainly what I am referring to there.

Q. No. The oath of secrecy that each person involved at Auschwitz or somewhere like that had to sign on pain of death?

A. I cannot comment on that without seeing it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is very easily got hold of. It is document 112, is it not?

A. This is not the fundamental order No. 1 in September 1941, but something different.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What are you referring to then? It is a document that camp officials at Auschwitz had to sign? Mr Irving, is that right?

MR IRVING: Yes, there was but, in view of this, let me move straight on to talk about the document which he has produced.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.

MR IRVING: You refer to this Hitler secrecy order on page 417, line 2?

A. Yes.

Q. As the famous Hitler secrecy order No. 1?

A. Yes.

Q. You date it for some reason September 25th 1941.

P-89

A. Yes. Is that wrong?

Q. What inference do you draw from that and have you drawn from that?

A. It is all right? The date is OK, is it?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the date suggested to be wrong, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: That is question two, my Lord. I am asking question one at this stage. What inference do you draw?

A. I do not draw any inference in the report from the date.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is document 112.

MR RAMPTON: I am going to try to find the document.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think it might be worth doing.

MR IRVING: Do you not say at line 4 that this order for secrecy clearly covered the operational details of the Final Solution? Is that not the inference you draw from it?

A. It was in effect, unless you are telling me it was issued in 1945 or 44, then I think that follows.

Q. No. You are implying that this order, unless I have totally misunderstood you, in which case I apologise, was drawn up as part of the security measures to protect the ugly details of the Final Solution?

A. Ah no, I am not. I do not think that follows there at all. It certainly did cover all of that.

Q. Does not even the most incompetent historian know that the famous Adolf Hitler secrecy order was dated January 11th

P-90

1940 and it was issued as a direct result of the famous Mechelen incident when a German plane landed carrying secret documents?

A. Provide me with documentation, Mr Irving.

MR RAMPTON: Can we just to try and the document?

MR IRVING: Probably one of most famous orders Hitler ever signed.

MR RAMPTON: I am sure Mr Irving is right about everything but I wish he would give me a moment to try and the document.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got document 112?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is file H1 (ix) and it is page 238. We will provide your Lordship, and somebody will do it for the witness.

A. Could I have a copy, please?

MR RAMPTON: Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could I have a copy too?

MR RAMPTON: Yes. I will pass this up.

A. 238?

MR RAMPTON: 238 is a stamped page number.

A. Yes, on the bottom.

MR RAMPTON: The right hand corner is said to be document 112.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got this, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: My Lord, I know all about Hitler's top secret order and I do not need to see this thing. This is a subsequent reissue of it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a reissue of the same document, is it,

P-91

Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: That I do not know, my Lord. The original January 11th 1940 version says nobody under any circumstances who has no need to know is to be informed of any secret operation. It is a basic need to know document on which a lot of other governments have modelled their own secrecy laws since then.

A. This is where I got it from.

Q. So you have never heard of the original basic order No. 1 which was issued on January 11th 1940? I thought every historian knew of it.

A. If you can point me to a copy of it, I am quite happy to accept your dating. It does not really affect what I say at all.

Q. The question is: You do not know of the January 1940 one?

A. I found it here. I quoted it as the date given here. I do not see what the point is you are trying to make, Mr Irving.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Nor do I.

MR IRVING: The point I am trying to make is, firstly, once again there appear to be gaps in this expert witness's knowledge of the Third Reich.

A. I am sure there are gaps even in your knowledge of the Third Reich, Mr Irving.

Q. Secondly, the inference which you invited the reader to draw from your expert report, that paragraph at the top of

P-92

417, that there was some sinister connection between the issue of the order and the Final Solution evaporates?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not read it as saying that so I think we can move on.

A. I do not draw that inference at all. That is just reading far more into there than is actually there.

MR IRVING: Good. Line 5, you quote Henry Picker as saying, "Over state secrets Hitler was totally uncommunicative. He told us nothing in his table talk about the extermination of the Jews in the concentration camps". Does this not render nugatory every clever translation you have made of "Ausrottung" and "Vernichtung" in the table talks up to this point and beyond?

A. No. I do not recall any mention of the concentration camps.

MR IRVING: No, the "Ausrottung" and the "Vernichtung"?

A. No, we are talking about the concentration camps here. I do not see any mention in the table talk of the concentration camps. That is what he is talking about here.

Q. So you believe Henry Picker is being clever when he is saying, "OK, he told us about all the other extermination of the Jews going on but not about what was going on in the concentration camps"?

A. That is what he is saying. He says, "he told us nothing in his table talk about the extermination of the Jews in the

P-93

concentration camps." It may be clever or not, I think it is probably true. What he goes on to say his (Hitler's) conversations nevertheless revealed his deep rooted and fanatical hatred for all other races. That I think is also a true observation.

Q. What about Adolf Hitler's other private staff, his stenographers, the people who took down every word he spoke from September 1942 onwards, people like that, the Adjutants, the private secretaries?

A. Oh goodness. You want to go all through all the whole section on the Adjutants now?

Q. I do not, but what I am going to draw your attention to is page 36 of the little bundle I gave you and invite you to look briefly at pages 39 and 40. Just run your eye over that letter from a lawyer to me dated 1974, when I was writing Hitler's War. He says that he carried out interrogations of all Hitler's Adjutants, stenographers and people like that in American captivity, and he has all their statements, and what should he do with them, if my memory of the letter is correct.

A. Yes.

Q. If you go back now to page 36, in the meantime he has now given them to me and I am listing them. That is a little index of them.

A. Yes.

Q. Page 37 shows that I, like a total idiot, give them to the

P-94

archives in Germany, where I can no longer get them now. Is that right?

A. Yes.

Q. I can only draw your attention therefore to the summary in this listing. If you look down the page numbers on the right of that page 36, there is a statement by Ludwig Krieger, who was one of Hitler's stenographers, his extraordinary impression of Hitler, and Hitler never mentioned the Holocaust of Jews. Right?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you see that one?

A. Well, without actually seeing the written statement, of course we do not know whether that summary of it and account of it is correct.

Q. Ah. We will come to that.

A. What exactly he means by that is unclear.

Q. If you look at the item listed as page 23, Hitler never discuss concentration camps, the statement of another stenographer, Heinz Buchholz ----

A. Page 23? Down the list?

Q. Yes, down the list?

A. Yes.

Q. I think it is true he did not discuss concentration camps. I do not think one sees the word "Auschwitz" anywhere in the Hitler table talks.

Q. Your experts have had total access to my records,

P-95

including of course those particular interrogation reports, have they not, in my papers in Munich?

A. Yes.

Q. Did they look at those interrogations, do you think?

A. I would have to check, but I do not see what the relevance of that question is. I do not think we used them, put it like that.

Q. Do you accept that I used them in my books?

A. Yes.

Q. And that, if I had statements by members of Hitler's private staff, not only questioned by me but questioned by others and by people far cleverer than myself, all of whom elicited precisely the same information that the Holocaust was never discussed by Hitler or at Hitler's headquarters, is that not a significance?

A. Well, there are a number of problems there. First of all, what some of these say is that Hitler never discussed the concentration camps, and that is true. What I say in my report is that he used a generalised language of racism, exterminatory racism, towards the Jews. You can read that in his table talks and in the Goebbels diaries, but he did not go into any details. That does seem to be the case on reading through the table talk. He did not talk in any detail about gas chambers in Auschwitz or the actual processes. The second thing to say is of course that ----

Q. These are all Nazis?

P-96

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Will you let him finish?

A. Yes. A lot of these people of course were concerned to exculpate themselves, and therefore were being very cautious in what they admitted about what Hitler did or did not say to them. The third thing to say is of course the fact that Hitler did not talk about these things does not mean that he did not know about them, and a number of his entourage who said that Hitler did not talk about the extermination of Jews went on to say that they thought it was very clear that he did actually know about it.

MR IRVING: Is there even one member of Hitler's staff who has stated from absolute certainty that Hitler had discussed this to your knowledge?

A. All right. We shall have to go through the whole section on the Adjutants in that case which I thought we were not going to do. .

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would be interested, though, if you could tell me and, if you cannot do it from memory, have a quick glance at your report, who are the members of the entourage who you say believed that Hitler did know about the extermination? You do not have to go into the detail of it, unless Mr Irving wants to ask you questions.

MR IRVING: I will ask about specific people.

A. Right.

Q. Did Otto Günsche make a statement?

MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I do not think this is a satisfactory

P-97

way of dealing with it. Because I had said that I was not any longer much interested in the Adjutants, I dare say Professor Evans has not committed them all to memory over the weekend. I do not know because I have not spoken to him.

A. I have been repeatedly assured that this was going to be ditched so I have not.

MR RAMPTON: I do think it right that, if he is going to answer this perfectly proper question, he should be given time to read the adjutants section of the report, or skim it anyway, so that he can bring it back to mind.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We have all got time pressure slightly in mind. I therefore was inviting him just for my reference, then I could read about it later, to identify the names of some of those.

MR IRVING: It is purely the fact that Otto Günsche, who I think is the last surviving Hitler adjutant, told my Düsseldorf lawyer five days ago that the first he heard of it was when he was in the Lubyanka in Moscow. Although he has made statements differing from that, he now accepts that the first he heard of it was when he was in Russian captivity, the first he heard specifically of the Holocaust and of Auschwitz. He was with Hitler from 1936 until literally he was the man who burned Hitler's body. I have a letter from my Düsseldorf lawyer to that effect reporting this conversation.

P-98

MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is up to you, Professor Evans. Would you rather come back to this, maybe at 2 o'clock?

A. I think I would, my Lord, yes.

MR IRVING: If we have time.

A. If we have time. It has caught me on the hop, I am afraid.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is totally understandable. Do you mind moving on, Mr Irving?

MR IRVING: Yes. Page 421, Professor Evans.

A. This, as you realise, has been superseded by my letter of 10th January.

Q. Paragraph 4?

A. Yes.

Q. I was just going to comment that you are effectively going to leave the debate to Longerich.

A. I have withdrawn that page.

Q. You are hoping that Professor Longerich is going to cure that little snag?

A. I have withdrawn that page and the previous page, and the top half of the following page and replaced them with a new section, which is on pages 8 to 12 of my letter of the 10th January.

Q. Page 425, I am hoping this is going to take less than 15 seconds, ••Magnus Brach (?) says that the Madagascar plan was a pure hypocrisy, a verbal smoke screen born out of thought games. I am looking at the phrase "thought games",

P-99

would you agree that this is the same as saying it is a pipe dream?

A. He is not -- we are not talking about the Madagascar plan, but about the Hitler table talk of the 24th July mentioning the Madagascar plan, when, as we know, Hitler had long since abandoned it. He says "pure hypocrisy", I had better give the whole quote. "The talk on the 25th July by Hitler about sending the Jews to Madagascar was pure hypocrisy, at best a verbal smoke screen of Hitler's born out of thought games, a smoke screen with which he took up a known topic which had also once been the subject of concrete planning in order not to call the measures which are actually going on against the Jews by their name."

Q. Page 426, paragraph 1, which is the lower paragraph 1 on the page, an examination of?

A. Yes.

Q. I may have a mistake here. I have a note here, you say that I omit the reference when in fact --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, if you do not, we should look at it.

A. It must be a different page or something.

MR IRVING: Must be looking at a different page. In fact, I have commented, it is, in fact, printed in full. Where am I accused of omitting a reference? But let us move on. In other words --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take your time, do not rush, Mr Irving.

P-100

MR IRVING: In that case we will have a look. 388. "It is a life and death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus" is the reference I am accused of omitting.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure what are you looking for. The allegation against you by Professor Evans is that you did not --

MR IRVING: I left out --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Presumably in the Goebbels book refer to the passage which Goebbels has talking about Hitler as being a persistent pioneer and spokesman of radical --

MR IRVING: Here, too, the Führer is the staunch champion and promoter of a radical solution, and I am accused of having omitted it and in fact it is on page 308 of the Goebbels biography?

A. Which page of my report is this?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 426.

MR IRVING: Ah.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, at least that is where I assumed you were.

MR IRVING: Yes. Yes, it is staring me in the face, three lines from the bottom of the main text.

A. Right.

Q. It has also been shown how Irving manipulated the diary entry in order to omit the Goebbels' reference to Hitler as the persistent pioneer and spokesman of a radical

P-101

solution to the Jewish question"?

A. Yes.

Q. If you look at page 388 of Goebbels book it is there.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: 388 or 308?

Q. 388, it is there.

MR RAMPTON: To be fair to the witness, this is a reference back to -- I do not see a reference to the Goebbels book here.

MR IRVING: Hitler's War.

MR RAMPTON: I think it is a reference back to Hitler's War?

A. Yes, I was about to say that, my Lord. I do not deal with the Goebbels book in this section.

MR RAMPTON: No, I think that is right.

MR IRVING: But you agree that it is in the Goebbels biography because this, page 388, and it is relevant as concerns Goebbels, but not very relevant as concerns Hitler; is that a fair statement?

A. But you omit it from Hitler's War.

Q. Yes.

A. Yes.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, do you accept it is not very relevant as far as Hitler is concerned?

MR IRVING: Do you accept that the entry incriminates Goebbels, but does not incriminate Hitler?

A. No, I do not, no.

Q. In law, would it incriminate Hitler?

P-102

A. I am not a lawyer, Mr Irving, I am an historian.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: What do you mean by "in law", Mr Irving? Do you mean as hearsay as regards Hitler?

MR IRVING: In a criminal case, would that be accepted?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it matters whether it would or it would not. We have to look at hearsay in an historical context. We have spent most of the morning looking at it.

A. Particularly in the so-called Schlegelberger memorandum. It is hearsay twice removed. You rely very, very heavily on that.

MR IRVING: Professor Evans, when were faced with an abundance of documentation and materials and you are obliged to write a book that does not contain eight pages of sludge every now and then would you agree that the first kind of thing that you would chop out would be the hearsay and you would leave the hard core stuff in like the police decodes and material like that?

A. But you do not do that, Mr Irving. There is masses of hearsay. As I said the so-called Schlegelberger memorandum is nothing but hearsay twice removed.

Q. I will ask the question again.

A. If it suits you, Mr Irving, you will put this hearsay in. If it suits you to discredit it because it is hearsay because it does not conform to your arguments you will leave it out. You have double standards in dealing with

P-103

this evidence.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the question, I will ask it again is; as a historian, Professor, do you agree that if you are cutting down a published work for a new edition, the first thing that goes is hearsay evidence?

A. I cannot agree with that as a general, global statement, my Lord. It depends on what you are writing about, and, of course, it depends on what the quality of other evidence bearing on this particular problem is. There are occasions when we have to rely on hearsay evidence, though one would perhaps rather not.

MR IRVING: Page 427, please, the last sentence. You say there is a number of documents and sources which strongly suggest that Hitler knew all along. So at the end of all this all can you do is say the document strongly suggests something; is that right?

A. Yes. It seems to me a reasonable statement. I think history is about balances of probability, I think.

Q. It is a rather damning statement for the defence in this action though because what you do not say, and apparently you can not say, is that there is a number of documents which prove beyond reasonable doubt that Hitler knew, or even prove on the balance of probabilities. It is just saying you strongly suggest it, after all this huffing and puffing and after 55 years of searching through the archives and after millions of dollars which your defence

P-104

assistants have spent the most you can say is "strongly suggest"?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that meant to be question?

MR IRVING: It is. Well, there was a --

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You know what I am getting at, Mr Irving.

MR IRVING: Well, sometimes the answers are also long, my Lord.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: True.

A. Am I supposed to try and answer that?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think you have answered it.

MR RAMPTON: So do I.

MR IRVING: In other words, there is nothing better than just strongly suggest that is how far we have reached?

A. I think they do strongly suggest and the point is, of course, that these documents, which do strongly suggest to the objective historian that Hitler knew all along, are not directly confronted by you and taken into account by you, but they are manipulated, misrep