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Fat chance. He provides no further
explanation of what has stopped the
debate. 
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December
28, 2004 (Tuesday)
London
(England)
IMPERIAL college students, in
South Kensington, have invited me to lead a debate
on Free Speech on January 17.
Back in 1956, I attended Imperial College (IC)
at London University. I left under a cloud in 1959,
and after a year in Germany and Spain (latterly
employed as a clerk-stenographer for the US
airforce Strategic Air Command, paid 1,900 pesetas,
around ten pounds, a month) I transferred to
University College.
 To
pay my way through the physics course at IC's Royal
College of Science, I worked for John Laing Ltd on
the construction of the new Physics Building on the
corner of Prince Consort Road. Ill-fed, and always
exhausted, I worked mornings and weekends in the
concrete gang, and attended lectures in the
afternoons, sitting next to better-off and
certainly less evil-smelling gentlemen from the
colonies. The lime-green building is still
standing, I might note.
Imperial College had a record for free speech,
which was not necessarily clear. It stood proudly
aloof from the rest of London University, and from
the National Union of Students, which it refused to
join. That was alright by me. IC also had a fine
and fearless weekly newspaper for its 3,000
undergraduates and postgraduates, Felix, and
a magazine, The Phoenix, founded and first
edited by H G Wells, a previous student at
the Royal College of Science and one of my
favourite sci-fi authors.
I also edited that magazine for two years. It
caused the final ructure with the college, when I
designed a scurrilous front cover portraying the
Rector, Sir Patrick Linstead, FRS, reading a
copy of The Phoenix (editorial: "The First
Cuckoos of Spring"); the cover of the copy he was
reading showed Linstead reading the magazine, very
angry indeed; on that smaller front cover, he was
even angrier, and on the smallest cover-within-
a-cover, like receding mirrors, he was just
perceptible tearing it into pieces, jumping up and
down. I was required to leave IC for that (and
other) reasons.
At least I had had my say -- recording among
other things, in my first article, "Hitler's
Paymaster was a Guildsman," that among pre-war
undergraduates at IC's City & Guild's college
was a certain Nazi millionaire Fritz
Thyssen, who had provided much of the finance
for the rise of the National Socialist party in
Germany. His wartime memoirs, I Paid Hitler,
were published by British publisher Hodder &
Stoughton Ltd. From Hodder's I obtained a print of
a photo showing Fritz Thyssen, Albert
Vögler, and other Ruhr steel magnates
showing Adolf Hitler over their giant steel
plants in the Ruhr.
It is a small world. Hodder & Stoughton
later (1977) published my biography, Hitler's
War, and made it a best-seller. Prior to
that I had worked as a steelworker, at, yes, the
Thyssen steelworks in the Ruhr. I no longer have a
copy of the magazine; the entire set was seized
with all my possessions in 2002.
I AM still scanning old negatives, and find more of
Josephine; sad, but it is good to remember her this
way. -- Josephine's first tricycle, and the arrival
of Pilar Junior in 1964.
January
1, 2005 (Saturday)
London
(England)
Up at 10:20 a.m. Quiet morning. Mozart. Walt
Martin is selling
his trove of Robert Kempner papers. At 9:07 pm
I send this this email to the Bundesarchiv's Dr
Lenz, "Ich weiss nicht, ob Ihnen dies bekannt ist
oder nicht, aber ... Die Sonderakte Barbarossa (KTB
Sonderstab Oldenburg) wäre von Bedeutung. Habe
ich Ihnen ja schon vor Jahren gesagt."
Evening: I have opened an old biscuit tin of
negatives from the 1950s; they are mostly from
Brentwood school, and the pranks we got up to. What
a journey back in time, as I scan them onto digital
file. They are scarred and stained, but come up
well: modern technology. I recognise half the
faces, they come back to me over the fifty years as
though it was yesterday.
January
4, 2005 (Tuesday)
London
(England)
Imperial College students have cancelled the
invitation to me to debate Free Speech, which was
not unanticipated. At 12:11 pm an email comes from
Imperial College
[sheraz.qureshi@imperial.ac.uk]: "I am
sorry - we have had to cancel the event. Thank you
for being interested anyway. Sheraz
Qureshi."
I reply: "Kindly inform me, as a courtesy, of
the reasons for the cancellation."
The old story, no doubt. They do not answer,
brave folks, so at 11:41 pm I send this email to
the Imperial College newspaper The
Reporter:
Please find out why I was invited to
debate on Free Speech at the IC Debating Society
on January 17, and today without explanation the
invitation was cancelled. Free speech? Huh! I
have asked for an explanation. No reply.
January
5, 2005 (Wednesday)
London
(England)
I am clearly in crotchety mode this morning. At
10:47 am I repeat this to the Imperial College
gentleman:
"Yesterday I asked for an explanation for the
discourtesy of the withdrawal of the invitation to
me to speak at a debate."
At 12:24 pm the Imperial College student
Qureshi
replies: "I apologise for the way in which the
invitation was withdrawn. It certainly wasn't my
intention to go about it in that way. When I wrote
the email -- I wasn't thinking coherently, I'd just
come off the phone to the NUS [National Union
of Students] and various people from my student
union and people from my own debating society.
I was scared, I had no idea how
strongly people would disapprove and after being
told that the event couldn't go ahead -- I was
given a deadline to cancel the event by, hence
the panicky / short nature of the email you
received -- and for that I apologise, as I
certainly didn't mean to appear as rude.
Again -- I am sorry, and I didn't mean to
cause you any inconvenience. Again, thank you
for showing interest in the event, and I am
sorry that it can not go ahead -- Sheraz"
I persist: "That still does not explain
why it was cancelled, though! I thought it
was about Free Speech?" I add: "You must be aware
that when I accept such invitations, I begin
drafting and preparing what I am to say, at once.
An explanation seems called for. Please now
provide one. "
He comments: "Well in that case -- even if it
isn't possible for you to come and do the event,
you could email me what you have written, and I
could either post it on our forum or send it out to
our mailing list ?"
Fat chance. He provides no further explanation
of what has stopped the debate.
AT midday two German journalists of the rightwing
Deutsche Stimme come. I curse, I have better
things to do than waste time on people and outfits
like them. Nice enough gents, and I waffle to them
all afternoon. They ask me about the coming of a
rightwing Germany. I say that yes, it may happen,
but that is not a Germany I shall want to
visit.
In the middle of the interview a BBC producer
phones with questions about Goebbels; I ask him to
phone later (he doesn't); and there is a call from
Prof Dr. L, my new lawyer in Kiel. -- The corrupt
publisher there, Dietmar Munier (Arndt
Verlag), is obviously a great deal cleverer than I.
I would not like to be that "clever." He is issuing
the old (1963) edition of my Dresden book, but
advertising it in his catalogue under the new
(1996) title: Apocalypse
1945: the Destruction of Dresden; that
spares him new translation costs; he has not only
not paid for the licence to publish it, but has
actually stopped payment on the cheque he sent to
Parforce UK Ltd, once he had received the necessary
photo materials. In England that would be fraud; in
Germany, says Prof Dr L., it is just within the
law. But there are still steps I can take, and
shall.
The US State Dept has just issued a report
on global antisemitism, in which I am mentioned
by name as a "Holocaust denier" -- in the Hungary
section! -- and as having made disparaging remarks
about Jews. It is amazing how these stories just
get passed on, unverified, now with the imprimatur
of the US St Dept. -- yes, those same reliable
folks who assured the United Nations Security
Council on Feb 9, 2004 that Saddam Hussein
had those weapons of mass destruction.
Yes indeed, I did have a few indelicate, indeed,
critical, remarks to pass on, during my 2004
lecture tour in Hungary, about Matyas Rakosi,
Ernö Gerö, Farkas, and Revai,
the Communist ministers, murderers, and torturers
during the years of the Red Terror. They were all
Jews -- as Churchill
once pointed out in 1920, most of the Eastern
European communist regime torturers and murderers,
like the notorious Bela Kun, happened to be
Jewish. I make no comment on that. That would be
anti-Semitism.
Their reign of murder and violation in Hungary
was what gave the 1956 uprising its initial pogrom
character, as the people rose against the (largely
Jewish-officered) secret police. The CIA historians
also determined that the uprising was principally
motivated by popular fury at the Jewish leadership
of Hungary. "Anti-Semitism?" I shall protest to the
US State Dept.
Six pm, down to Peter Jones in Sloane Square at
the last moment with Jessica to buy her a
regulation gray school overcoat. School resumes
tomorrow. Out of stock in her size.
Seven pm to M.'s for a dinner. Hitler-like, her
guest of honour arrived late and left early, thank
goodness; a diplomat from the Croat legation.
Aaargh. Endlessly opaque discussion; but it could
have been worse, he could have been from
Transylvania -- some of those folks take the
biscuit for the ability to bore about their own
troubles and injustices. So I suppose that makes me
anti-Croat and anti-Transylvanian too. Tell the
State Department.
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David Irving