Irving v Penguin Books & Lipstadt1996-I-1113 (QBD)
Defendants’ closing submission
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Holocaust Denial on Trial, Closing Statement for Defendants: Electronic Edition

Holocaust Denial on Trial electronic edition, 2004

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1. The issue of meaning

Introduction

The test of what (if any) defamatory meaning words complained of in a libel action bear is: what would the ordinary, reasonable reader understand those words to mean. The court does not carry out an over-elaborate or legalistic analysis of the words and their meaning, but considers how someone reading the book in the ordinary way (at home, at college, in their study or office) would understand it. Where an innuendo meaning is in issue, then the meaning is considered by reference to a reader of the book who had knowledge of the relevant additional facts.

The words are considered in their context. In this case, the words complained of form a small part of the book Denying the Holocaust, published by D1 and written by D2. The passages complained of by P, if taken together, constitute less than 5 pages from a book of more than 200 pages; the passages being extracted from over the width of the book.

Meaning: the principal defamatory meaning

There is no issue that the words accuse P of being a dishonest historian, who falsifies history. The essence of the allegation against P can be put as follows (page 181 of Denying the Holocaust): “Familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda.”

The charges against P, who became a Holocaust denier in 1988, include (page 161):

As a spokesperson for Holocaust denial, one of the practices used by P was (page 181)

This meaning is clearly the most serious defamatory meaning. It strikes at the heart of P’s reputation. As P said (in his video Ich komme wieder in 1993): “For me, my reputation as a truth-seeking historian is more important than anything else” (K3/15A/6)”

In his evidence, P agreed that the allegation that he distorted evidence, misstated and falsified statistics, manipulated documents and so on (meaning (iii) in his Statement of Claim: A/1/6) was the imputation that caused him the most concern: 2:140:3-18.

There is no dispute about what the essence (or “sting” or gist) of the allegation Ds make against P is. The central dispute in this trial is whether the allegation is true. From section 5 below, it is clear that it is.

Other defamatory meanings

The book alleges, and Ds seek to justify, that P holds extremist views, has allied himself with other right-wing extremists, in particular, others who deny the Holocaust and has himself become “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.” (see sections 5(v) and 5(vi) below; files RWE1 and RWE2).

The book also alleges, and Ds seek to justify, that P broke an agreement with the Moscow archive by removing glass plates on which Goebbels’ Diaries were recorded from the archive (which he then took to London, where they were subjected to forensic test) and that by his conduct he gave rise to a significant risk of harm to the plates (see section 5(viii) below; file M).

In both instances, the dispute is not about meaning, but about truth.

The issue on meaning

There is only one substantial area of dispute on meaning and that concerns P’s contention that the book alleges that he consorts with, and agrees to speak on the same platform as, violent extremists.

Ds submit that P’s complaint misses the point of the book’s criticism, which is the nature and extent of his extensive associations with right-wing extremists, here and abroad. As is clear from the context, the book does not allege that P participated in acts of violence. The ordinary reader would start with the first reference to P (of which he makes no complaint) on page 8 of the book, which sets the tone: P is said to have be considered a “guru” by the far right and to be politically active not only in England, but also in Germany, where he has: “regularly participated in the annual meetings of the extremist German political party Deutsche Volks Union. In addition, he has frequently appeared at extremist-sponsored rallies, meetings, and beer-hall gatherings.” The truth about the nature and extent of P’s associations, including his appearances at such rallies and meetings, is in issue in this action.

The passage on which P founds this part of his claim appears on page 14 of the book, which refers to a cancelled conference, said to exemplify the: “confluence between anti-Israel, antisemitic, and Holocaust denial forces”.” The speakers listed to attend included the Holocaust deniers, Faurisson and Leuchter (with whom P, as part of his extensive associations with them, has appeared at the same meetings). What can be inferred from the fact that representatives of organisations such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Pamyat were said to be due to attend that meeting is that it was clearly going to be extremely anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and so on. But it does not follow that P was going to take up arms or become involved with an “Islamic fundamentalist terrorist organisation” (to quote P’s words: Para 12 of the S/C).

The ordinary reader would (rightly) see the passage on page 14 as part of the case as to P’s right-wing extremism. S/he would not leap to the conclusion that it was being alleged that this “historian”, whose historiography was being questioned so forcefully, participated in violence. Such a reading would be wholly unreasonable. It would require one small passage of the book to be taken quite out of context and then subjected to an artificial construction.

P is wrong in suggesting that the book conveys any such meaning. It may be that by putting this meaning forward, he hopes to divert attention from the grave – but true – allegations in respect of his methods and practices as an “historian”, which destroy his professional reputation.

2. The writings of P and his reputation as an historian

P is a prolific writer. His claim (Reply, ‘Preamble’ page 2: A/5/2-3) that his work as an historian has been acclaimed by other historians was examined by Professor Evans (Evans Report: pages 41-65). After reviewing the available material, Professor Evans concluded (p64) that P had a “generally low reputation amongst professional historians since the end of the 1980s and at all times amongst those who have direct experience of researching in the areas with which he concerns himself”. This is, however, beside the point.

What is in issue in this action is not what P’s reputation is – but what it should be. His writings, and his public statements, have been subjected to criticism. His historiography has been on trial. As is clear from the subsections 5(i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (vii) below, whatever the position may have been in the past, it is now clear that P cannot – and should not – be regarded as a reputable historian.

3. P’s claim for damages

Ds’ position on this issue is simple: what they published about P was true. P is not entitled to damages.

In putting forward his claim for damages, P has made a series of allegations based on an anti-Semitic premise: that there is a Jewish conspiracy which exists to crush gentile activities considered inimical to their interests. P’s proclaimed ‘proof’ is nothing of the sort. He has made irrelevant and unfounded allegations which, had he been represented, could not have been put forward in this public forum. He has failed to show that either D had any connection with the allegations he has made.

Finally on this aspect of the case, P has sought to depict himself as the victim of a campaign to suppress freedom of speech. This is a very odd claim for a claimant in a libel action to be making. It has led to some confusion in the public arena. The Ds are not pursuing P through the courts; to sue for libel was his choice. Ds included P in Denying the Holocaust because of what P had publicly written, said and done. Ds, exercising their right of free speech, expressed the view that P had become a Holocaust denier, who falsified historical truth in order to spread lies. The Ds stand by what they published.

4. Justification: principles

It is not anticipated that there will be any dispute about the principles of law in this action.

In justification, the burden of proof lies upon the Ds, on a balance of probabilities. D has to prove the substantial truth of what was published – the ‘sting’ of the libel – not the last detail of every single word.

In this case, the gravest defamatory allegation concerns P’s conduct as an historian: see section 2 above and, for the matters relied upon in justification, see subsections 5(i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (vii) below. A related defamatory allegation concerns P’s own extremist views (notably, anti-Semitism and racism: section 5(v) below) and extreme-right wing associations (see section 5(vi) below). The relationship between these two allegations is dealt with briefly in section 5(x) below.

Finally, there is the defamatory allegation concerning P’s conduct in removing plates from the Moscow archives without permission (see section 5(viii) below).

Ds maintain that there is a complete defence of justification in respect of each of the defamatory allegations mentioned.

Common sting

P suggests that there is a separate, unjustified, defamatory allegation concerning violence. As set out in paras 4.1-4.5 of section 1. above, this is not the case. The ordinary reader would have found that the passage on page 14 of Denying the Holocaust shared a “common sting” with other parts of the book, that is, that it was directly related to the allegation concerning P’s extreme right-wing views and associations and nothing more.

Section 5 of the Defamation Act 1952

This section states: “In an action for libel..in respect of words containing two or more distinct charges against the plaintiff, a defence of justification shall not fail by reason only that the truth of every charge is not proved if the words not proved to be true do not materially injure the plaintiff’s reputation having regard to the truth of the remaining charge.” This speaks for itself.

Ds submit that, in this case, all defamatory charges made in the book have been shown to be true, so that section 5 has no application in any event.

5. Justification – facts: including in relation to each of the issues listed below, introductory or ‘topic’ section, then case for Ds followed by the response of the P.

5(i) Ds’ historiographical criticisms of P

Introduction

Of the following subsections, all except (l), (m) and (n) (as to which, see 3 below) and (p), (q), (r) and (s) (which do not directly involve Hitler), concern P’s repeated attempts to exonerate Adolf Hitler of responsibility for the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis (see, generally, Evans sections 4.2 and 4.3, pages 217-222).

Thus the principal question in each case is not what Hitler’s culpability was, but how P has dealt with that issue. This is not to say that in considering the latter question, a persuasive answer to the former may not be found (it probably will be), merely that it is not our main aim to seek it (we are not trying to write history!).

It is not proposed to deal with the topics in subsections (l), (m) and (n), first, because they all concern late 1943 or 1944, by which date P has always accepted that Hitler knew about the fate of the Jews (or, at least, had no reason not to), and, second, because (m) and (n) do not bear upon the question of P’s historiography, since he has never mentioned any of the speeches there referred to.

5(i)(a) Hitler trial 1924

P deals with the Nazi putsch of 9 November 1938 in Chapter 3, pages 54-67, of Göring (1989). On p59 he writes: “‘Meanwhile, Hitler acted to maintain order. Learning that one Nazi squad had ransacked a kosher grocery store during the night, he sent for the ex-army lieutenant who had led the raid. “We took off our Nazi insignia first!” expostulated the officer – to no avail, as Hitler dismissed him from the party on the spot. “I shall see that no other nationalist unit allows you to join either!” Göring goggled at this exchange, as did a police sergeant who testified to it at the Hitler trial a few weeks later.’ ” As the source for this episode, P gives only this (p518): “My version is knitted together from the eyewitness evidence at the trial.”

In xx (12:60:23-24), P accepted that his source was in fact the evidence of one Hofmann and said this (12:61:7-10): “‘I knew nothing of Hofmann’s background that was not before the court. I read the entire court transcript.’ ”

In fact, Hofmann was a long-standing Nazi, who had been appointed by Hitler as head of the political section of the Nazi Party Intelligence Unit and who had taken part in the putsch: Evans Report p229.

For this reason, he was excused from giving evidence on oath: Evans 20:200:20-24.

At the end of Hofmann’s evidence, the presiding judge congratulated him for having spoken out on behalf of his Führer. As P put it in xx (12:71:14-15), “I am sure he [Hofmann] wanted, as the judge said, to get Hitler off the hook.”

The information set out at 2.2–2.4 above is all contained in the record of the evidence at trial, Evans 20:200-1, the whole of which P said he had read (see 2.2 above & 12:62:15-19).

P must have known all of this: Hofmann’s testimony is only 5 pages long: 20:205. Yet he suppressed it. The reason can only be that it would have revealed that Hofmann’s account of the incident he described was likely to be suspect.

P also invented the assertion that Göring was present during the incident and ‘goggled’ at it – and that Hofmann did the same. In xx, P first said that this was based on Hofmann’s testimony: 12:63:4-11; then that it was ‘author’s licence’: 12:63:13ff

P described the robbery of half a billion Reichsmarks from a Jewish printers by Nazi thugs, on Hitler’s instructions, as the “requisitioning” of funds. In xx, P accepted that it was requisitioning in the sense in which the Great Train Robbers ‘requisitioned’ funds: 12:71-73 (at 12:73:2-4) That would not have been apparent to the reader. P’s only explanation was that he might not have written with as much dexterity as usual, but had intended to put a ‘light touch’ on it: 12:74:8-10.

P’s reasons for these suppressions and inventions is clear: he wanted to lend spurious veracity to his assertion that ‘Hitler acted to maintain order’.

5(i)(b) Reichskristallnacht 9-10 November 1938

P’s account of this is given in Chapter 32 of Goebbels (pages 271-277). The essential features of that account can be summarised as follows:

Leaving aside (advisedly) the post-war testimony of former Nazis, the principal contemporary sources cited by P for this account are:

Not only do those sources, when examined in full and in their proper context, not support P’s account, they utterly destroy it.

Goebbels’ diary entry of 10 November 1938: (see L2/3/2)

On pages 273-274 of Goebbels P writes this: “‘Events that evening, November 9, are crucial to the history of what followed. As Goebbels and Hitler set out to attend the Nazi reception in the old city hall, they learned that the police were intervening against anti-Jewish demonstrators in Munich. Hitler remarked that the police should not crack down too harshly under the circumstances. ‘Colossal activity’, the Goebbels diary entry reports, then claims: ‘I brief the Führer on the affair. He decides: Allow the demonstrations to continued. Hold back the police. The Jews must be given a taste of the public anger for a change.’”

Thus he gives the impression:

This is a grave distortion of the truth. The relevant part of the diary entry is set out on page 240 (German) and 241 (English) of Evans. It shows that, contrary to the impression given by P (but accepted by him in xx: 12:82:6-10), ‘the affair’ on which Goebbels briefed Hitler was ‘big demonstrations against the Jews in Kassel and Dessau, synagogues set on fire and businesses demolished’; and, therefore, that Hitler’s decision to let the demonstrations go on and to withdraw the police had much wider implications than P’s account allows. It also shows that P had further sought to reduce the effect of Hitler’s decision by deliberately mistranslating ‘zurückziehen’ – ‘withdraw’ – as ‘hold back’ (which would be ‘zurückhalten’) (also accepted by P in xx: 12:80:6-9).

Therefore, the diary entry, properly read, so far from providing evidence, as P writes (p274), that Goebbels ‘issued his own instructions’ (emphasis added) to instigate a nationwide pogrom, without police interference, is on the contrary good evidence that this is exactly what was authorised by Hitler.

That this is so is corroborated by a message which P ignores in his text and relegates to a footnote, without mentioning its contents (n38, p613). At 11.55pm, on 9 November 1938, Heinrich Müller of the Security Police sent a telex to police officials from Berlin announcing that: “‘Actions against Jews, in particular against their synagogues, will very shortly take place across the whole of Germany. They are not to be interrupted.’” (Evans p265, para 9; L2/1/2-3)

Müller was the subordinate of Heydrich and Himmler, not Goebbels; and, as P accepted in xx (12:105:9-13), but did not mention in his book, Himmler was observed to be in close conversation with Hitler before the party dinner at the Alten Rathaus on the evening of 9 November 1938. Moreover, as P also accepted in xx (12:106:9-14), Müller had had authority to repeat Hitler’s instruction to Goebbels that the police were to be held (pulled) back.

Further corroboration is to be found in an order which the leader of SA Brigade 50 received from his superior, the SA Group Leader in the Kurpfalz, Herbert Fust, at 3am on 10 November 1938: “‘On the orders of the Gruppenführer all Jewish synagogues in the area of Brigade 50 are immediately to be blown up or set on fire. Neighbouring houses which are inhabited by the Aryan population must not be damaged. The action is to be carried out in civilian clothing. Mutinies and acts of looting are to be forbidden’.” (L2/1/46; translated in Evans p248 (para 4)). P refers to this order on page 275 (where he misdescribes Fust as ‘Lust’): “‘Every synagogue in Darmstadt was destroyed despite orders to the contrary from Mannheim’s SA Gruppenführer Herbert Lust, still in Munich’.” This version is a blatant misrepresentation of what the order actually said.

That these events, as Goebbels’ diary entry suggests, took place on Hitler’s express authority is further confirmed by a message sent on the evening of 9 November 1938 by the leader of SA Group Nordsee, Böhmcker, in which he ordered that: “‘All Jewish shops are immediately to be destroyed by SA-men in uniform...Jewish synagogues are immediately to be set on fire... The police are not permitted to interfere. The Führer wants the police not to interfere. All Jews are to be disarmed. In the case of resistance immediately shoot them down.’ (translation @ Evans p249 (para 6), emphasis added; see document @ L2/1/1).”

This message is nowhere mentioned by P in Goebbels.

ND: 3051-PS: the Heydrich telex of 1.20am on 10 November 1938 (L2/1/4-6)

On page 276 of Goebbels, P writes: “‘What of Himmler and Hitler? Both were totally unaware of what Goebbels had done until the synagogue next to Munich’s Four Seasons Hotel was set on fire around 1am. Heydrich, Himmler’s national chief of police, was relaxing down in the hotel bar; he hurried up to Himmler’s room, then telexed instructions to all police authorities to restore law and order, protect Jews, and Jewish property, and halt any ongoing incidents.’”

P gives (n43, p613) the reference for this as ‘ND:3052-PS’. When in xx P was shown the text of ND:3051-PS (which is wholly inconsistent with P’s account of it: see 5.3 below), P said (12:118:22-25) that what he had quoted was a different telegram. That was a silly lie: overnight, the Ds obtained ND 3052-PS, which had nothing to do with Heydrich or the events of 9-10 November 1938 (see L2/7), and P was driven to accept (momentarily) that his reference should have been 3051 (13:25:7-17).

The relevant part of the Heydrich telex is translated at the top of page 263 of Evans (and see L2/1/4-6). So far from bearing out what P wrote on p276 of Goebbels, it is in truth no more than a set of rules or guidelines for the pogrom, most of which are designed to protect German (Aryan) lives and property, and foreigners. P’s representation of it as a comprehensive measure to protect Jews and their property and to halt any ongoing incidents is a falsification of the most astonishing magnitude. And, as P accepted in xx (12:112:19-26), this telex would have been sent on the authority of Hitler, via Himmler.

ND 3063-PS: the instruction from Hess’s office of 2.56am on 10 November 1938: L2/1/9

On page 277 of Goebbels P writes: “‘At 2.56am Rudolf Hess’s staff also began cabling, telephoning and radioing instructions to gauleiters and police authorities around the nation to halt the madness.’”

The relevant part of the instruction reads in English as follows: “‘On express orders from the very highest level [that is, Hitler] acts of arson against Jewish shops or the like are under no circumstances and under no conditions whatsoever to take place’.” (The instruction, in German, is @ L2/1/9).

The translation given at 6.2 above is in fact that of P, given in xx (12:127:15-22). And although P later tried to back away from it, preferring ‘businesses’ to ‘shops’ as a translation of ‘Geschäften’ and trying to attach the words ‘or the like’ (‘oder dergleichen’) to ‘acts of arson’ (‘Brandlegungen’) rather than to ‘shops’, it was plainly the correct translation, given, as it was, extempore by an accomplished Germanophone, and without foresight of the consequences.

P’s latter attempt – to attach ‘or the like’ to ‘acts of arson’, so as to give the prohibition the maximum possible width – is quite hopeless. This may be demonstrated in two ways: “If Hess’s office had meant to prohibit the destruction of Jewish property generally, then that is surely what they would have said: they would hardly have used the form of words ‘acts of arson or the like’, which besides being difficult for the recipients to interpret, would have been much too restricted to achieve the purpose which P attributes to them.”

The reference given by P for this order (n37, p613) is ND 3063-PS, which is the report of the Nazi Party Court of 13 February 1939 (L2/2). On page 3 of that document, against the entry for ‘2 Uhr 56’ (2.56am) for 10 November 1938, the order is recited, but without any reference at all to the words ‘oder dergleichen’ (‘or the like’) (L2/2/3). Plainly, the Nazis in 1938/9 knew that the order was intended to prevent only arson and nothing else; so too, therefore, P whose source this was for what he said on page 277 of Goebbels.

In the result, when the actual text of the message is looked at, it shows P’s representation of it in Goebbels to be a complete travesty of its true meaning and effect.

The final blow to the integrity of P’s attempt to absolve Hitler of responsibility for Reichskristallnacht is also to be found in this report. On its second page (L2/2/2) it recites what Goebbels had said to the assembled Party faithful at the Alten Rathaus on the evening of 9 November 1938. This included a report of the anti-Jewish demonstrations in Kurhesssen and Magdeburg-Anhalt and the statement that Hitler had decided that such demonstrations should not be stopped. Goebbels had discussed the demonstrations with Hitler before he made that speech (which Hitler did not attend) and (as P accepted in xx: 12:89: 9-13) it is inconceivable that Goebbels would have dared make such an assertion to such an audience if it were not true (see Evans p244). Yet, despite his knowledge of the document, P makes no mention of it in his book.

5(i)(c) Aftermath of Reichskristallnacht

P’s account of this is to be found on pages 277-282 of Goebbels. He starts by stating (p277) that on the morning of 10 November 1938: “‘As more ugly bulletins rained down on him next morning, November 10, 1938, Goebbels went to see Hitler to discuss ‘what to do next’ – there is surely an involuntary hint of apprehension in the phrase.’ ”

P gives as his source for this Goebbels’ diary entry of 10 November 1938 (n52 on page 613). There is no part of this (or any other) diary entry which gives any support to the assertion that Goebbels thought the bulletins ‘ugly’ or that he was ‘apprehensive’ when he first met Hitler on the morning of 10 November 1938. On the contrary, the full text reads: “‘New reports rain down the whole morning. I consider with the Führer what measures should be taken now. Let the beatings continue or stop them? That is now the question.’” (Evans p281 (para 2); L2/3/2)

Moreover, the diary entry of 11 November 1938 shows that Goebbels was delighted with the success of the pogrom and that Hitler agreed with him and approved what had happened: “‘Yesterday. Berlin. There, all proceeded fantastically. One fire after another. It is good that way. I prepare an order to put an end to the actions. It is now just enough... In the whole country the synagogues have burned down. I report to the Führer at the Osteria. He agrees with everything. His views are totally radical and aggressive. The action itself has taken place without any problems. 17 dead. But no German property damaged. The Führer approves my decree concerning the ending of the actions, with small amendments. I announce it via the press and radio. The Führer wants to take very sharp measures against the Jews. They must themselves put their businesses in order again. The insurance companies will not pay them anything. Then the Führer wants a gradual expropriation of Jewish businesses.’” (see Evans p282-3, paragraphs 4-5)

P asserts (p278) that ‘as will be seen’, Goebbels’ account of Hitler’s reaction was untrue. P does not, however, provide the promised proof for this assertion. Indeed, given the evidence provided by the contemporary documentary evidence, the only conclusion which an objective, fair-minded historian could sensibly draw is that what Goebbels wrote was true in all essential respects.

Nor is there any warrant in the evidence for P’s assertion that on the morning of 10 November 1938 Goebbels ‘immediately composed an ordinance calling a halt to ‘operations’ (Aktionen) and at 10am he broadcast a live appeal for order over the Deutschland Sender’. On the contrary, the diary entries, read in full, reveal that there were almost certainly two meetings or conversations between Goebbels and Hitler on 10 November, following the first of which, Goebbels drafted (‘Ich setze’) an order putting an end to the actions, which, on the second occasion at the Osteria (presumably an Italian restaurant), Hitler approved with minor amendments. Moreover, the surviving documentary evidence suggests that Goebbels’ broadcast was made at about 4pm on 10 November 1938 (L2/1/10).

Thus the impression given by P that Goebbels was, on the morning of 10 November 1938, full of apprehension about Hitler’s likely response to what had happened, hastened to make amends for his unauthorised conduct and lied to his diary about Hitler’s reaction is wholly unsupported by the contemporary evidence. It is, in fact, pure invention, designed to lend credibility to the deliberately misleading account given by P of the events of the previous night and to his ultimate objective, the exoneration of Hitler of responsibility for the events of Reichskristallnacht.

The Party Court Proceedings

On page 281 of Goebbels P writes: “‘Hess..ordered the Gestapo and the party courts to delve into the origins of the night of violence and turn the culprits over to the public prosecutors.’ ”

P gives as his source for this assertion an order of the SA leadership dated 19 December 1938. This stated that Hess had laid down that: “‘The aim of the investigation by the Party Courts is to establish which cases can and must be held responsible by the action itself and which cases arose out of personal and base motives. In the latter cases a referral to the state prosecution service will be unavoidable, indeed it will be just’. ” (Evans p293-4 para 1; L2/1/53). P does not, however, give the text of Hess’s order in his book.

In fact, on 10 November 1938, the Ministry of Justice had already ruled that ‘material damage to synagogues, cemetery halls and graveyards through fire, blowing up etc’ as well as ‘damage to Jewish shops’ should not be prosecuted (see Evans p294 para 2), thus leaving only the most serious offences, such as looting, rape, grievous bodily harm and the destruction of Jewish homes from selfish and base motives to be dealt with by the ordinary courts. P does not mention this in his book.

In the event, as its report of 13 February 1939 shows (L2/2), the ‘proceedings’ of the Party Court were a farce:

None of the foregoing is mentioned by P in his book, despite the fact that he is well familiar with the Party Court report (see, for example, n49 on page 613 – ND3063-PS).

In the result, P’s description of Hess’s order and his implication that the Nazi leadership had every intention of tracking down and bringing to justice all those responsible for acts of violence during the pogrom, are as P must have known very well, a shocking perversion of the true facts.

5(i)(d) Shooting of Jews in the East

General

Before the trial of this action, P had repeatedly asserted that the shootings of Jews in the East were, in summary, merely the random, arbitrary, unauthorised, criminal acts of individual groups or commanders: see, for example:

P repeated that assertion at the beginning of the trial: 2:257:19-20.

However, P eventually conceded in xx that these assertions were incorrect and that the shootings of Jews in the East (the Ostland and Russia) had in fact:

Those concessions were forced upon P by the evidence, in particular:

Moreover, it is clear that each of those categories of evidence has been known, or at least accessible, to P for some considerable time:

It is clear from his public statements that P must have been aware of the EMs for some time: see K3/13 p21-22 (IHR conference, 11 October 1992); K3/18 p15-16 (IHR Conference, September 1994); and, in particular, K3/16, p1 (the Holmes Show, 4 June 1993): “‘I’ve been working in the archives for 30 years, and after looking at all the documents I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no doubt at all the Nazis committed unspeakable crimes against the Jews. There is no doubt at all that they massacred them. They machine gunned them, tens of thousands at a time into pits in Russia and that they were killed in that way.’”

(At trial, P said that he had become familiar with them ‘over the last three to five years’: 4:84:20-2. In the light of the above, this would seem to be something of an understatement.)

Report No 51 is mentioned in passing on page 436 of Hitler’s War (1977), with a ‘laconic’ footnote (Hitler’s War (1991), p492, footnote on page 817). Plainly, therefore, P has been well aware of it for many years.

P later sought to retreat from the concession he made in xx (see his ‘Position’ document of 23 February 2000: A1/4/after Reply. His attempted retreat is, however, unconvincing and his new position untenable. The reasons are those set out above: the evidence on which the concessions were based is unanswerable and has, in whole or in part, been known to P for some time, and certainly by the time he made the disingenuous and misleading statements noted at 1.1 above.

The testimony of General Walter Bruns

P made reference to the December 1941 Riga shootings in Hitler’s War (1991) (p427) and Goebbels (p379). In Hitler’s War, there is no reference to the ‘testimony’ of General Bruns, either in the text, or in the footnotes. In Goebbels, there is no reference in the text on p379, and merely a footnote (n43) on p645 referring simply to the capacity (according to P) of the shooting-pits.

These are crucial omissions, having regard to what Bruns was recorded as having said and to P’s high regard for Bruns’ veracity (Bruns’ statements are set out, both in German and in English, with P’s comments, on P’s website: D8ii/20/737-756).

In his ‘testimony’, Bruns made an important statement, which P suppressed entirely in his books and edited in his public statements in such a way as completely to reverse its true meaning.

This statement by Bruns was made on 25 April 1945, after he had been captured by the Allies. It was made in conversations with his fellow prisoners which were secretly recorded by the British. For that reason (which P proposed in his opening at trial: [1:46:5-12]), and because (as P says: D8ii/20/747) Bruns ‘testimony’ anyway has ‘verisimilitude’, it is obvious that Bruns’ statement requires serious attention and careful treatment from an objective, fair-minded historian.

The Bruns’ statement was as follows. Having related how a protest against the shooting of 5,000 Berlin Jews in Riga at the beginning of December 1941 had been conveyed to Canaris in Berlin with the intention that it should be relayed to Hitler; and how, a fortnight later, he came across the SS officer Alte(n)meyer again, he narrated the following: “‘Altenmeyer triumphantly showed me: ‘Here is an instruction which has arrived that mass shootings of this kind must no longer take place in the future. They are to be carried out more discreetly’’” (Ds’ translation of the German given at D8ii/20/743: the reason is that the translation given by P on p747 is significantly inaccurate because it gives ‘on that scale’ for ‘derartige’, which in fact means, as P must know, ‘of this kind’ or ‘in this manner’)

Besides suppressing the whole of this exchange in his books, P has gone a step further in his public statements. He has (i) suppressed the second part of what Alte(n)meyer, according to Bruns, said – ‘they are to be carried out more discreetly’; and (ii) then used the ‘orphaned’ first part:

to found an assertion that Hitler had ordered that all mass shootings of Jews in the East were to stop at once. See

By this device, P totally perverts the sense of what Bruns said. Bruns’ statement, read as a whole, meant that the shootings were to continue, but more discreetly. P’s edited version of Bruns’ statement means the precise opposite: the shootings were to stop completely.

Worse still, as noted above (2.6), P uses his edited version as evidence that Hitler had ordered a complete cessation of mass shootings of Jews in the East. This is an inexcusable falsification of history, for the following reasons:

Therefore, the order referred to by Bruns can only have applied to Baltic (and Russian) Jews, since, on Bruns’ account, it cannot have arrived much before the middle of December (‘a fortnight later’, that is, a fortnight after the shooting of the 5,000 Berlin Jews at the beginning of December, against which Bruns and his colleagues had sent their protest to Canaris), by which time the shooting of German Jews had been (temporarily) forbidden and the only Jews still permitted to be shot – though ‘more discreetly’ – were ‘local’ Jews.

This conclusion is reinforced by the letter from Lohse (Reichskommissar of the Ostland) to Rosenberg (Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories) dated 15 November 1941, in which Lohse reported (para 1) that he had forbidden the ‘wild’ execution of Jews at Libau (Liepaja) because ‘the manner in which they were carried out could not be justified’ and asked (para 2) whether his earlier instructions really meant that all Jews were to be killed, regardless of age, sex or economic value: N1/108-9 (this document was first introduced by P, though in an incomplete form, the word ‘wild’ being missing). Since Liepaja is on the coast of Latvia, about 200km from Riga, and since Lohse explicitly recognised in his letter (para 2) that the ‘cleansing’ of the Ostland Jews was a priority task, the executions in question must almost certainly been those of ‘local’, rather than German, Jews.

That conclusion is further confirmed by Rosenberg’s reply of 18 December 1941, consequentially introduced by Ds (N1/181-2), which, so far from endorsing or relieving Lohse’s concern about the indiscriminate killing of Jews, tells him that economic considerations have no role to play in the matter and that any questions he may have must be settled with the Higher SS and Police Leader for the area (that is, the murderous Jeckeln).

The date of Rosenberg’s reply (N1/184) is also significant: first, because it is on the very same day that Himmler’s note of his discussions with Hitler about the Jews in the East records that they are ‘als Partisanen auszurotten’; and, second, because it comes 18 days after Himmler has ordered a stop to the (immediate) killing of German Jews on arrival in Riga.

Therefore, since, until the trial of this action, P had never acknowledged that Hitler sanctioned the mass-shootings of the Eastern Jews, it was vital to his portrayal of Hitler as an innocent and benign protector of the Jews that the second part of Bruns’ statement be suppressed.

The Schulz Du Bois letter

Dr Schulz Du Bois, a reserve engineer captain, was one of the officers sent by General Bruns to witness the killing of (German) Jews at Riga on 30 November 1941, with the intention that an eyewitness report should then be sent to Canaris for onward transmission to Hitler (Evans p 359, paras 5-6)

In (probably) January 1942 Schulz Du Bois wrote his wife a letter recounting that, some time after 30 November 1941, he had inquired about the impact of his eyewitness report of the killings. He was told, he wrote, that his report had been forwarded to the top counter-espionage official “ ‘with the justification that these things damage the morale of the troops who see and hear such things. This man, who has constant access to the Führer, is said to have described the consequences and the terrible nature of these methods to the F.[ührer] once more compellingly, whereupon he (i.e. Hitler) is said to have said: “You want to show weakness, do you, mein Herr! I have to do that, for after me there will not be another one to do it!”’” (Evans p 360, para 6).

This written account by Schulz Du Bois, if true, is strongly corroborative of Bruns’ statement: it shows that the killing of Jews in the East was indeed to continue, and on Hitler’s express authority.

At the trial of this action, P first asserted that he had never had the Schulz Du Bois letter in his possession, nor had it before him, nor been aware of its contents (22:102:2-22:104:6). However, when, under later xx, he was confronted with his own German edition of Professor Fleming’s 1982 book, he was driven to admit that he had read the passage in that book (N2 pp 97-8), in which the letter is dealt with and its full text set out (22:79:22-29:80:22).

It is clear, therefore, that, as with the Bruns statement, P has deliberately suppressed what he has all along known (probably since 1982 or 1983) was a significant piece of evidence against Hitler.

5(i)(e) Hitler’s views on the Jewish Question during the war

Introduction

For the reasons given in the main introduction to this section, most of the detail in this sub-section will be concerned with P’s treatment of particular statements made by Hitler or derived from him. However, in order to show the wider historiographical context in which these particular instances must be set, it is necessary to consider briefly a much wider range of Hitler’s acts and utterances in relation to the Jews. For the same reason, we have expanded this part to include some of Hitler’s pre-war statements and actions, because they illustrate very clearly, from the beginning, Hitler’s dynamic and dominant role in driving forward the persecution of the Jews.

Therefore, though it may involve a degree of repetition, it is proposed to divide this section into two parts. In the first, A, will be set out the full range of Hitler’s acts and utterances on the Jewish Question, as well as those of others which are obviously derived directly from Hitler, including some instances dealt with elsewhere in this submission (which will be incorporated by reference: for example, sub-sections (e), Bruns and Schulz Du Bois, (f), (h), (j), (k) and (n) of this section and parts of section (ii).) Part B will then give Ds’ detailed criticisms of P’s historiography in relation to particular instances.

A: Hitler’s views on the Jewish Question

See the table on the following pages.

B. The particular instances relevant to P’s historiography

As proposed in the Introduction to this subsection, a balanced, objective assessment of the meaning and effect of the statements made by, or evidently derived from, Hitler which are examined below necessarily requires consideration of the place they have in the overall record of Hitler’s utterances on the Jewish Question. Only by this means can the careful historian be sure that he has as far as possible avoided the pitfalls of selectivity and of giving undue weight, or insufficient weight, to a particular statement. Thus, for example, the dispassionate and properly informed historian will immediately notice that the ‘prophecy’ referred to in the Goebbels’ diary entry of 27 March 1942 (see (h) below) is unquestionably yet another reference back to Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag on 30 January 1939 (N1/10). But he will also know, first, that by this date, the Final Solution in relation to both the eastern and the European Jews, was well under way (see (h) below); and, second, that, in Hitler’s statement to NSDAP members of 24 February 1942 (N1/201), the term used by Hitler to describe as already known was well under way and the term used by Hitler to describe the ultimate fate of the Jews in the 1939 speech – ‘Vernichtung’ – has by now become the much more explicit ‘ausgerottet’.

The following particular instances are dealt with below:

(B1) Hitler’s table talk of 25 October 1941

In Hitler’s War (1991), p427, P wrote this: “No documentary evidence exists that Hitler was aware of what was in store for the Jews. His remarks, noted by Bormann’s adjutant Heinrich Heim late on October 25, 1941, indicate that he did not: “from the rostrum of the Reichstag I prophesied to Jewry that if war could not be avoided, the Jews would disappear from Europe. That race of criminals already had on its conscience the 2 million dead of the Great War, and now it has hundreds of thousands more. Let nobody tell me that despite that we cannot park them in the marshy parts of Russia! Our troops are there as well, and who worries about them! By the way – it’s not a bad thing that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate Jews’. Hitler added that however, just as he was postponing the final reckoning with the turbulent Bishop von Galen until later, “with the Jews too I have found myself remaining inactive. There’s no point adding to one’s difficulties at a time like this.”’”

In Goebbels, p377, this version appeared: “‘Hitler was neither consulted nor informed [about the mass deportation of Jews from Berlin]. Ten days after the forced exodus began, he referred, soliloquizing over supper to Himmler and Heydrich, to the way the Jews had started this war “Let nobody tell me”, he added; “that despite that we can’t park them in the marshier parts of Russia!” “By the way”, he added, “it’s not a bad thing that public rumor attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews.” He pointed out however that he had no intention of starting anything at present. “There’s no point in adding to one’s difficulties at a time like this.”’”

It is worth noting at once that the statement in Goebbels quoted in 7 above that ‘Hitler was neither consulted nor informed’ about the deportations from Berlin is pure invention (as well as being intrinsically wholly incredible). As P plainly knew (see the preceding paragraph in Goebbels), the deportations began on 18 [sic] October 1941. As Goebbels’ diary entry of 24 September 1941 recalls (N1/86), this was because Hitler had decided that ‘the Jews must be taken out of Germany bit by bit. The first cities that are now to be made free of Jews are Berlin, Vienna and Prague...’; which only confirmed what Himmler had already written to Greiser in the Warthegau on 18 September 1941, viz, ‘The Führer wishes the Old Reich Protectorate to be emptied and freed of Jews from west to east as quickly as possible. I am thus aiming to transport the Jews of the Old Reich and the Protectorate if possible before the end of this year into the eastern territories which newly came to the Reich two years ago, initially as first step, in order to move them further still to the east next spring.’ Evans, p 329-30; N1/84-85.

Further, in both HW (1991) and Goebbels, P has so distorted the sense of the original as to produce a meaning which is the reverse of what Hitler actually said.

P accepted in xx that he had read the original German: there is therefore no excuse for his having used a corrupt translation produced by someone else: 4:182:6-11.

The true sense of the original is given in the English translation set out on p. 324 of Evans. This shows the deliberate distortions of P’s version very clearly:

“P represents Hitler’s words as though they were an expression of his future intentions for the Jews. He does this:

  • by obliterating the past tense of the original – ‘Auch den Juden gegenüber musste ich lange tatenlos bleiben’: ‘for a long time I had to remain inactive against the Jews as well’;
  • by introducing the word ‘plan’ into his text, when it is nowhere to be found in the original; and
  • by asserting that, in relation to the Jews, Hitler had said that he ‘had no intention of starting anything at present’, which he reinforces by attributing to Hitler the words ‘There’s no point in adding to one’s difficulties at a time like this’; when in fact the words ‘at a time like this’ are nowhere to be found in the original and it is clear that Hitler’s observation about the unwisdom of ‘making unnecessary difficulties for oneself’ is both a reflection on his past inactivity against the Jews and an expression of his opinion that the controversy about Bishop Galen was best left on one side for the present. ”

P mistranslates the word ‘Schrecken’ as ‘public rumor’, when in fact it means ‘terror’. Thus he deliberately and dishonestly converts the fear of what was happening into an apprehension – which might very likely be unfounded – of what might happen: in other words, a mere ‘rumour’.

The reference in this statement by Hitler to his Reichstag prophecy of 30 January 1939 is significant. By 25 October 1941, on Hitler’s authority, huge numbers of Jews in the East had already been killed and would continue to be killed, and the deportation of German Jews had begun a mere ten days ago. In the light of that, this statement can only be read as a testimonial by Hitler to the fulfilment of his Reichstag prophecy of 30 January 1939, and in the most terrible way.

In fact, the true sense of what Hitler was saying was, in effect, that after a period of waiting, the time had now come, so far as the Jews were concerned, that the “account” had to be brought out and drastic action taken against the Jews: with the result that the justifiable terror of the Jews at what they saw happening was “good” (P’s version: “not a bad thing”).

P, who is entirely familiar not only with the original German of this table-talk, but also, as his account of the start of the deportations shows, knows only too well that this interpretation of this entry is the only one which, in historical terms, is plausible. Despite that, he has persisted (both in Hitler’s War (1991) and in Goebbels) in an account which represents, as he certainly knows, a total falsification of Hitler’s knowledge of and intentions regarding the fate of the Jews.

(B2) Goebbels’ diary entry of 22 November 1941

In Goebbels, 379, P writes this: “‘When the Führer came to Berlin to Luftwaffe general Udet’s funeral he again instructed Goebbels to pursue a policy against the Jews “that does not cause us endless difficulties”...’ ”

What Goebbels actually wrote in his diary was this (in the translation provided on page 338 of Evans): “‘The Führer also completely agrees with my views with reference to the Jewish Question. He wants an energetic policy against the Jews, which, however, does not cause us unnecessary difficulties.’ (emphasis added) ”

A cursory glance at these two versions shows at once the vice of what P has done. By removing the word ‘energetic’ (‘energische’) and the word ‘however’ (‘allerdings’) and by converting the word ‘unnecessary’ (‘unnötige’) into ‘endless’ (‘endlose’), P has, yet again, completely reversed the sense of what Hitler said. What Hitler in fact said was that he wanted an energetic policy against the Jews, but one which did not cause unnecessary difficulties – perhaps, for example, because he was anxious about the effect of an excessively blatant anti-Jewish policy on public opinion both at home and abroad. What P has done, however, by his falsification of the original German, is to convert Hitler’s desire for an energetic policy against the Jews into yet another attempt by Hitler to restrain Goebbels’ enthusiasm for drastic measures against the Jews and to instruct him that the Jewish Question did not, and should not, entail measures that were likely to cause ‘endless difficulties’. Thus, once more, P has falsified the historical record in order to exculpate Hitler.

(B3) The Goebbels diary entry of 13 December 1941

According to this entry in Goebbels’ diary, on 12 December 1941 Hitler made a speech to the Reichs- and Gauleiters in Berlin in which he said: “‘With reference to the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they should once more bring about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation (Vernichtung) in doing so. That was no mere talk. The world war is there, the annihilation (Vernichtung) of Jewry must be the necessary consequence. The question is to be considered without sentimentality. We aren’t there to have sympathy with the Jews, only sympathy with our German people.’ ”

There is no question but that P has read at least some of the original Goebbels diary entry for this day. In his book Goebbels, p383 he makes reference, in the first and second paragraph, to this speech by Hitler (see n. 71 and 72 on page 646).

The question which arises is how much of this speech P read when he scanned the glass plates in Moscow on which the Goebbels diaries are recorded.

P’s evidence at trial was that he had stopped reading and transcribing the entry of 13 December 1941 some 30 to 40 pages before the passage referred to in 1. above (3:152-3).

After that evidence had been given, Ds obtained from Moscow facsimiles of the pages reproduced on the original glass plates for 13 December 1941. Ds were told by the archive in Moscow that the entry of 13 December 1941 was spread over two plates and that the part of the entry for that date which was reproduced on the first plate ended at the end of page 17 of the copy of the facsimile sent to Ds (see file N3). P accepted this (29:149).

An examination of the material appearing on the copy of the second plate (that is from page 18 onwards) showed that all the extracts transcribed by P came from this plate, starting on page 26. P accepted this (29:149:5-12).

In fact, contrary to what P had said (see para 21 above), the entry referred to at para 18 above began a mere 12 pages (at the bottom of page 50) after the last passage transcribed by P. Moreover, the pages are short (an average of 14 lines per pages, with an average of only 8 words per line).It follows that it would have been the work of a few moments for P to have read on to the passage in question.

Given:

It is simply not credible that P did not read the whole of the entry (his answers in xx did nothing to improve the credibility of what he had told the court: 29:152:25-29:162:8). “If so, then P’s motive for suppressing this crucial part of the entry is, once again, obvious. As with the table talk of 25 October 1941, this entry shows Hitler once more affirming the fulfilment of his prophecy in the Reichstag on 30 January 1939. By this date (12 December 1941) the euthanasia personnel had been transferred to the East, and the first gassings at Chelmno had already taken place. The shootings of the Jews in the East were continuing unabated. Hitler’s knowledge of, and authority for, these atrocities cannot seriously be disputed and, to a large extent, is not disputed by P. In consequence, when P read (as it is submitted that he must have done) the relevant part of the entry of 13 December 1941, he must have realised at once that what Hitler was saying was that the wholesale extermination of the Jews of Europe was, or was about to be, an actuality. Not only does this mean that P’s failure to mention this entry in any of his publications is another example of his falsification of history, it also constitutes another reason why P’s repeated characterization of the ‘Schlegelberger’ note (which P was driven to adopt as his flagship in place of the Himmler telephone log of 30 November 1941 as ‘incontrovertible evidence’ of Hitler’s innocence) is not susceptible of the interpretation which P seeks to give it as a once-and-for-all decree by Hitler that there should be, in effect, no liquidation of the Jews until after the end of the war (see further 5(i)(f) and (g) below).”

(B4) Hans Frank’s speech at Cracow, 16 December 1941

Hans Frank, General Governor of the General Government, in his function as Reichsleiter attended Hitler’s speech on 12 December 1941 in Berlin. Upon his return to the Generalgouvernement he informed his cabinet in Cracow on 16 December 1941 that when he was in Berlin he had been told: “‘why all this trouble; we cannot use them [the Jews] in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves!’ (Browning, page 31, para 5.1.13; N1/171-180). ”

In Hitler’s War (1977), p. 332, P renders that passage in this way: “‘”In Berlin” – and with Hitler in East Prussia this can only be taken as a reference to Heydrich’s agencies – “they tell us: why the cavilling? We’ve got no use for them either....Liquidate them yourselves!”’ ”

The account given by P in Hitler’s War (1991), p. 428, is identical.

In Goebbels, p386, P reversed the meaning of this exchange and attributed the injunction ‘liquidate them yourselves!’ to Frank as a response to Berlin’s insistence that the General Government should continue to accept trainloads of Jews deported from Germany and elsewhere.

It may be noted, shortly, that this last version of what Frank said is a total perversion of the text of his speech.

More important, it is clear that what Frank said to his colleagues in Cracow on16 December 1941 was the direct consequence of what he had been told in Berlin when he attended the occasion of Hitler’s speech on 12 December. Whether or not he had his instruction to liquidate the Jews himself directly from Hitler, or from Himmler, or from Heydrich, is beside the point. The fact is that what Frank brought back from Berlin and conveyed to his colleagues in Cracow was in precise conformity with the thrust of what Hitler is reported by Goebbels as having said in his speech on 12 December 1941 (see (B)(4) above). This means that no objective historian, absent evidence to the contrary, would contemplate divorcing what Frank said in Cracow from what Hitler had said in Berlin.

However, in both editions of Hitler’s War (pp. 332 and 428, respectively) P did precisely that. For what he wrote was, in each case, that when Frank was in Berlin, and was being told that he must liquidate the Jews of the General Government himself, Hitler was in East Prussia, with the result that Frank’s instructions must have come from ‘Heydrich’s agencies’, and cannot have come from Hitler.

Once again, P betrays himself. Page 383 of Goebbels relates that Hitler did not return to the Wolf’s Lair from Berlin until 16 December. Therefore the attempt by P in the two editions of Hitler’s War to distance Hitler from what Frank had been told in Berlin on 12 December 1941 was, yet again, a deliberate falsification of history designed to exonerate Hitler of responsibility for what, as P perfectly well knew, Frank took back with him to the General Government as the seed of the destruction of the Jews in that part of Europe.

That this was, indeed, the seed which Hitler had planted in Frank’s mind is confirmed by the later part of Frank’s remarks in Cracow (not reported anywhere by P) to the effect that he and his colleagues must recognise the need to destroy the Jews in the General Government wherever they found them and by whatever means might be available, but with a certainty that they would find the means which would somehow lead to a successful destruction (Browning, page 31-2).

B5) Goebbels diary entry of 30 May 1942

In the light of everything else that the Ds are able to advance in this section of the case in support of their assertion that P has repeatedly falsified history in order to exculpate Hitler, they do not consider that this entry, which is plainly susceptible of different interpretations, needs to be further pursued in this Submission.

(B6) To the examples given above must be added the following:

5(i)(f) Expulsion of Jews from Berlin in 1941

A.The entry in Himmler’s log for 30 November 1941

In Hitler’s War (1977), p332, P writes: “Himmler’s personal role is ambivalent. On November 30, 1941, he was summoned to the Wolf’s Lair for a secret conference with Hitler, at which the fate of Berlin’s Jews was clearly raised. At 1.30pm Himmler was obliged to telephone from Hitler’s bunker to Heydrich the explicit order that Jews were not to be liquidated; and the next day Himmler telephoned SS General Oswald Pohl, overall chief of the concentration camp system, with the order “Jews are to stay where they are.”

In Hitler’s War (1977), Introduction, xiv, P summarises this as follows: “...but the incontrovertible evidence is that Hitler ordered on November 30, 1941, that there was to be “no liquidation” of the Jews (without much difficulty, I found in Himmler’s private files his own handwritten note on this).”

The context of this passage shows that P was advancing Himmler’s note as incontrovertible evidence that Hitler had ordered that there was to be no liquidation of any Jews – anywhere – at any time.

The relevant part of Himmler’s “own handwritten note on this” (N1/133-5) reads as follows: “ “Judentransport aus Berlin. keine Liquidierung.” ”

This means: “Jew-transport from Berlin. No liquidation.”

The note is a record of part of a telephone conversation between Himmler and Heydrich (who was in Prague) at 1.30pm on 30 November 1941. It concerned a trainload of Jews from Berlin destined for Riga.

Its meaning, without more than the most general reference to the historical context, is unambiguous: Himmler was telling Heydrich that that particular transport of Jews from Berlin was not to be liquidated.

The original note is in Himmler’s spidery “Sütterlin” script: N1/133. It is, despite that, not very difficult to read, even for the untrained eye (the word ‘Judentransport’ is one of the least difficult on the page, in fact). P’s eye was obviously very far from untrained; and as Professor Evans said (22:70:17-19), Himmler’s version of the “Sütterlin” script is not in general very difficult anyway.

When first confronted in xx with his transformation of this entry from the particular into the general, P said that it was a “silly misreading” of the word “Judentransport” and that he had made “a mistake” in transcribing it, not realising that it did not have an “e” on the end: 2:289:4–2:290:3.

This was, in fact, another of P’s silly, short-term lies. It turned out the following day that on 23 January 1974–3 years before the 1977 edition of Hitler’s War was published – P had sent a letter to Dr Kabermann [J1/3/1], giving the correct transcription: 3:29:7-26.

This prompted a rapid volte-face. Now P’s excuse was that a legitimate translation of “Judentransport” was “transportation of Jews”, that is, generally: 3:30-32. This, too, was a hopeless position for P: first, because it involves an unnatural distortion of the language used by Himmler and, second, and conclusively, because it completely ignores the second part of Himmler’s phrase – “aus Berlin”.

In the result – taking P’s two wholly inconsistent and unconvincing explanations for his falsification together – the conclusion must be that the falsification was deliberate; which is to say, that P deliberately, and dishonestly, inflated Himmler’s order prohibiting the liquidation of a single trainload of Jews from Berlin into a general prohibition (emanating from Hitler: see 13-15 below) against the killing of any Jews anywhere at any time.

The court is referred back to the passages quoted in 1 and 2 above. According to P, the order for the (non-existent) prohibition against the liquidation of the Jews generally was given by Hitler. This is another of P’s inventions. There is not, and never was, any evidence at all that Himmler’s instruction to Heydrich was the consequence of an order from Hitler (in fact, as later emerged, Himmler did not meet Hitler until an hour after his telephone conversation with Heydrich; but this, for present purposes, is beside the point). P, in xx, described this invention as a “judgment call” based on the (mere) fact that Himmler was at Hitler’s HQ in East Prussia (the Wolfsschanze) when he spoke to Heydrich on the telephone, whilst at the same time accepting that he had asserted it as a fact and that the assertion of a fact is different from the assertion of a possibility (2:286:3-20).

It is of course possible that Himmler had spoken to Hitler before he spoke to Heydrich. It is also possible that Himmler raised with Hitler, perhaps on the basis of information given to him on the train to the Wolfsschanze by the itinerant SS journalist d’Alquen (see N1/136), a concern about the fact (which it was: see, for example, the Jäger report of 1 December 1941, page 5: N1/147 @151; under ‘Monat November’) that Jews from Germany (and Austria) were being massacred on arrival in Latvia. But possibilities and conjectures such as these must, in the mind, and in the writings, of the objective, fair-minded historian, always remain no more than possibilities, unless and until evidence emerges which shows them to be probabilities, perhaps even certainties – or, on the contrary, impossibilities.

P’s failure to observe that basic standard of historiographical integrity betrays him totally: his categorical interpretation of Himmler’s order to Heydrich as an order from Hitler, on grounds which no reputable historian would consider remotely persuasive, is (again) powerful evidence of a preconceived determination to exculpate Hitler at any price, including most particularly, the price paid by historical truth.

In Hitler’s War (1991) p427, P writes: “Himmler’s personal role is ambivalent. On November 30, 1941, he was summoned to the Wolf’s Lair for a secret conference with Hitler, at which the fate of a trainload of Berlin’s Jews was clearly raised. At 1.30pm Himmler was obliged to telephone from Hitler’s bunker to Heydrich the explicit order that these Jews were not to be liquidated; and the next day Himmler telephoned SS General Oswald Pohl, overall chief of the concentration camp system with the order: “Jews are to stay where they are.”

It is apparent that P has by now abandoned his untenable assertion that the Himmler note of 30 November 1941 represented a ban on the liquidation of Jews generally.

But he still adheres to the proposition that Himmler’s order concerning the fate of the single trainload of Berlin Jews emanated from Hitler.

No new evidence had emerged between 1977 and 1991 (or 2000) to validate that proposition. Therefore the criticisms made of it at 13-15 above remain undisturbed.

B.The entry in Himmler’s log for 1 December 1941

The court is referred back to the passages from Hitler’s War (1977) and (1991) which are set out at 1, 2 and 16 above.

The relevant words in the 1977 edition are: “..and the next day Himmler telephoned SS General Oswald Pohl, overall chief of the concentration camp system, with the order “Jews are to stay where they are.” Those words were reprinted, unchanged, in the 1991 edition.

The relevant part of Himler’s entry in his log for 1 December 1941 (N1/137-139) reads as follows: “ “Verwaltungsführer der SS haben zu bleiben.” ” This means: “Administrative leaders of the SS are to stay.”

The entry is a note of a telephone conversation between Himmler and General Pohl (who was in Berlin) at 4.55pm on 1 December 1941. It is a routine entry with no historical significance for this case.

The original note, like that for 30 November, is in Himmler’s “Sütterlin” script. As to this generally, see para 8 above.

The criticism of P in relation to this entry rests upon his rendering of the word “haben” in the original as “Juden”, so as to produce the (supposed) order of Himmler to Pohl that “Jews are to stay where they are”, thus providing further confirmation of the protective nature of Hitler’s (supposed) intention in giving his (supposed) order of the previous day.

P’s primary response to this criticism was that the error (there is no dispute that it was an error) was simply the result of an innocent (and insignificant) misreading of the word (see, for example: 4:131:2-14).

This is not credible. Even the untrained eye can, with a moment’s instruction, see on the page of Himmler’s note, even in the poor copy provided by P to the court as being the copy he worked from (N1/139/), the clear differences between the following pairs of letters: “ “J” and “h” “u” and “a” “d” and “b”. ”

In order to convert “haben” into “Juden”, it is necessary to “misread” each of its first three letters. That P did this innocently is not credible, for the following reasons:

P’s secondary response on this entry was that he realised in due course that his original rendering of “haben” as “Juden” was wrong, and therefore re-transcribed it on his old typewriter ten or fifteen years ago (that is, in about 1990 or 1985) – but in any case before 1991 (3:68:4-16). If so, the question arises why he did not remove the words quoted at para 21 above from the 1991 edition of Hitler’s War. The essence of P’s answer to this was that those words were not important, a “very subordinate matter in the book” (3:73:19-3:74:4). This answer was quite obviously disingenuous, for the reasons given above.

Thus it can be concluded:

>5(i)g The ‘Schlegelberger’ note

This document will be found at J1/7/9.

It may be translated as follows (taken from Evans p364)

“Reich Minister Lammers informed me that the Führer had repeatedly explained to him that he wanted the solution of the Jewish Question put back until after the war. Accordingly the present discussions possess a merely theoretical value in the opinion of Reich Minister Lammers. But he will be in all cases concerned that fundamental decisions are not reached by a surprise intervention from another agency without his knowledge.”

P has dealt with it in the following terms in his books:

In his articles and speeches, P has made statements including the following about the document:

5(i)(h) Goebbels’ diary entries for 27 March and 27 April 1942

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5(i)(i) Himmler minute of 22 September 1942

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(see, for example: RE xx: 23:110:10–23:111:13; PL xx: 22:194-199).

5(i)j Himmler’s note for his meeting with Hitler on 10 December 1942

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5(i)k Hitler’s meetings with Antonescu and with Horthy in April 1943

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A Antonescu

B Horthy

5(i)(o) Ribbentrop’s testimony and evidence from his cell at Nuremberg

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‘On the other hand, judging from his [Hitler’s] testament, one must suppose that he at least knew about it, if not even ordered it in his fanaticism against the Jews’.

5(i)(p) Marie-Claude Vaillant Couturier

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3.1 When speaking in Toronto on 13 August 1988, P had his notes, made in Syracuse two days earlier, in front of him as he spoke (as is apparent from the transcript K2/7/1-2; see also Day 8:24:5-7). P quoted Biddle as saying ’all this I doubt’:

i) This was deliberate distortion by P. He knew what Judge Biddle had said – he had it in front of him. He misrepresented Biddle’s doubting of one sentence of what the witness said (not based on her own experience) into his supposed dismissal of all of her evidence.

ii) In evidence, P agreed that Judge Biddle did not say the words P had attributed to him: 8:24:10–8:25:22. P explained what he said as follows:

3.2 Similarly, in relation to what he had said at the Leuchter press conference on 23 June 1989 – in evidence, P agreed that the judge had not used the words P had presented as a quotation; P accepted that they were his own ’gloss’ on what the judge had said: 8:14:14-17

3.3 So far as Nuremberg is concerned, P referred to the judge’s notes as the source for what he wrote in that book (footnotes 14-15: K2/7/8). P defended what he had written in the book about the witness and claimed that the picture caption was ’absolutely justified’: 8:22:2-7. Plainly, on the evidence, it was not.

3.4 P’s attempt at trial to pervert the meaning of the judge’s notes (see 1.4 above) was bizarre. The single parenthetical ‘This I doubt’ cannot stand as any evidence at all of Judge Biddle’s overall view of Vaillant-Couturier’s credibility.

4.1 In conclusion, P, in his public utterances, oral and written, has again wilfully falsified the historical record in order to achieve an ulterior goal: the discrediting of powerful evidence of Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz/Birkenau.

4.2 This is also a further example of P’s habitual attempts to discredit eyewitness testimony he does not like (whilst habitually embracing, quite uncritically, eyewitness testimony he does like). In this instance, he seeks to achieve his aim by attributing to a “very, very level-headed” judge (8:17:20) an adverse view of the witness’s credibility which he did not hold and never expressed.

5(i)(q) Kurt Aumeier

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5(i)r Criminal statistics for 1932 (Daluege, etc)

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5(i)(s) PWE ‘invention’

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“....In my press pack, ..you will find I have included one page from a typical document in the British archives showing how we invented the lie about gas chambers in 1942 and 1943 as a perfectly justified means of psychological warfare against the Germans.” (page 3)

(In Q&A) ”...I don’t think there’s any specific reason why a lie has been adopted, I think as I’ve said often before, wartime governments produce propaganda. The propaganda fly-wheel starts to spin and nobody at the end of the war has a motive to stop the propaganda fly-wheel spinning. It should be the job of the historians but the historians have become themselves part of the propaganda process. Now we find in the British archives a lot of evidence that we willingly propagated the gas chamber stories because it was a useful propaganda line for us to take. However, it was based on such tenuous evidence and you’ll see from the documents in your press packs that the people who themselves spread the lie then urged that Her Majesty’s Government should not attach their name to it, for the end for fear of eventually being shown up.” (page 16)

P goes on to refer to the ’prolongation of the propaganda myth’ by TV series such as ‘War and Remembrance’ – page 17

iv) 9 March 1990: P in Moers: K3/5 (pages 17-21)

“ .... So the propaganda machine runs on. But we, clear-thinking and decent people, we recognise that. We have recognised it as propaganda for years. ... this lie, this myth, must be cleared out of the world....” (page 21)

v) 8 November 1990: Latvian Hall, Toronto: K3/8 (pages 12-13)

“How has this legend been propagated until now? Well, the legend was originally propagated, I think, by us British back in 1942. And I set out the reasons for believing this in my previous talk, 18 months ago. But since 1945, the legend has marched. And this is a great sad facet of war. In wartime, quite justifiably, the warring factions and powers decide to use propaganda, they lie about each other. They lie, massively.... When the Victory Day comes, these Ministries of Lies are not replaced by Ministries of Truth. So the old propaganda continues to march on and nobody really has the job of stopping these lies from flooding out. Particularly when some people find they have a vested interest in keeping the lies spewing forth.” (pages 12-13)

vi) 15 November 1991: Chelsea Town Hall: K3/11 (page 3)

“And if you ask where these legends come from, the trouble is that it comes in fact from us, the British, and we’re very good liars. World War II showed this and the Falklands showed it, the Gulf War showed it, we’re very good liars and in wartime we have ministers of propaganda whose job it is to lie and in fact we can show quite clearly how this particular lie started in our own Ministry of Propaganda, the Political Warfare Executive and you can go and get the records from the Public Records Office and you can see how we in September, October and November 1942 created the gas chamber lie as a weapon of war, perfectly justified. But the problem with all this is that after the war is over, the Government doesn’t set up a Ministry of Truth whose job it is to go around with a bucket and mop cleaning-up all the lies that the Ministry of Information has been spreading and so the lies continue to soldier on. And if they’re lies that are very profitable lies, as this particular lie is of course, and I’m not going to go into detail on that there, because then were treading on very thin ice, but it has become a very profitable lie, a lie in fact on which the financial existence of the State of Israel depends, then the lie is not only soldiering on it becomes reinforced and bolstered in a quite extraordinary way.” (page 3)

vii)8 November 1991 ‘This Week’ (the interview was on 9.11.91, in Germany): K3/12 (page 5)

Q But you told your audience tonight that the gas chambers were a fiction.

P Oh yes, the gas chambers are a very clever piece of propaganda that we British very cunningly, cunningly connived at and contrived during World War II and that is my considered opinion as a British historian and I think in two, two or three years people will accept I am right again. (page 5)

(on page 6, P is asked whether it is important to him to get across to a German audience like this that people are told lies about the gas chambers – he replies that he prefers “the word legends. It is, in fact, a lie. Propaganda is basically lying but what is, is now going around isn’t a lie, it’s a legend.”)

viii ‘Search for Truth in History – Banned’(1993): K3/15 (pages 13, 25)

“Now if I was an average German citizen and I felt that two or three generations down the road I was being blamed for something which probably didn’t happen. The massacre of millions of people in gas chambers, in factories of death and we now begin to suspect that the factories of death were just brutal slave labour camps. That gas chambers are a figment of enemy, in other words allied propaganda.” (page 13)

“Now the second question is: if the gas chambers didn’t exist, where did they come from? Well, had I come to Australia, I would have produced and shown to you in the manner as they say in the law courts, the documents from the British archives showing how we, in Britain, having first heard rumours that the Nazis were killing Jews in gas chambers, rumours that the Jews themselves have told us, Gerhard Riegner, a man who is still alive, in the Autumn of 1942, we decided to use that fact which we knew was totally untrue in our war-time propaganda. We turned the facts over [to] the British political warfare executive, the PWE, and from that moment on as I can prove producing the radio monitoring reports, the BBC and our psychological warfare organisations, the aerial leaflet organisations made increasing use of this particular legend about the gas chambers, killing millions of Jews in Nazi concentration camps.

That, I think, is a plausible explanation as to where first came from and after a year of course we are hearing the echo of our own propaganda. There is hardly a German who hasn’t been listening clandestinely to the BBC who hasn’t heard talk about the gas chambers. They begin mentioning the rumours to each other, from one washerwoman to the next, the rumour goes around Germany until finally they’ve actually seen about it and their son is working in a unit and he has heard about it too and that’s how the legend gained credibility from the German side too.

So this explains, in my view, where the story came from.’

(page 25)

6. For the reasons given at 3 & 4 above, P’s message is itself a lie.

5(ii) P as a ‘Hitler partisan’ and the extent of Hitler’s knowledge of the solution of the Jewish Question

(iii) Auschwitz

.

This section identifies a number of statements made by P which demonstrate beyond any doubt that he is, and can rightly (indeed should) be described as, a Holocaust denier. It includes only statements made by P before the trial of this action. As identified in the list of issues, it covers P’s statements on the following topics:

In section (e), the question whether P’s statements are consistent with the evidence is addressed briefly (paragraph 50).

This section gives examples of P’s statements about the existence (or, as he would have it, the non-existence) of gas chambers. It comprises four sections:

I: General statements: no gas chambers (paras 1-7)

II: Auschwitz: no gas chambers (paras 8-33)

III: Other camps: no gas chambers (paras 34-36)

IV: Gas vans (paras 37-39)

The first section contains examples of statements by P in what appear to be entirely general terms that there were ‘no gas chambers’/‘no factories of death’. There are more numerous examples of P denying that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz (see next section) – but even when speaking about Auschwitz, P often suggests that because there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, there were no gas chambers anywhere else (P states, for example, that he regards Auschwitz as the ‘tent-pole’ of the Holocaust, calls for the sinking of ‘Battleship Auschwitz’ and so on). In some cases, P refers specifically to other camps (see third section); and to gas vans (fourth section).

I No gas chambers (generally)

(for the first of these, see D8i/i/222; for the other three, see pages 52-53 of the Ds document “examples of statements by P: Auschwitz/denial”, inserted @ the front of K3, and the attached letters).

II No gas chambers (Auschwitz)

P has repeatedly claimed that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. In making that claim, he relies on the same or similar themes repeatedly. These themes include the following:

P’s claims that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz are clear proof that he is, and can be described as, a Holocaust denier.

His claim that more people died in Senator Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick (that is, one person) than died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz is enough – without more – to establish him as a Holocaust denier. This was not a one-off remark by him. He used the same scripted ‘line’ – together with most offensive remarks about eyewitnesses – in at least three different speeches (see Latvian Hall, Toronto 8.11.90; Calgary 29.9.91 and Milton 5.10.91, below). He sought laughs from his audience. He invited them to treat survivors with contempt.

When the court was shown the transcript of the relevant part of the Milton video, referring to P’s ‘Chappaquiddick’ theme, P tried to lie about what he had said, in an attempt to escape the obvious conclusion. “The applause drowned the rest of the sentence, unfortunately, which is ‘in the gas chambers of Auschwitz which are shown to the tourists”: 29:27:8–29:29:1. The video was played. The underlined words were, clearly, not spoken by P on that occasion. Nor by him in Calgary. P’s denial that anyone was killed in a gas chamber in Auschwitz was in absolute and categorical terms.

Video in German; intended for distribution in Germany after P is banned (P’s diary 18.11.93 – suggested by P as a project to Philipp: RWE2/10/45)

lie/legend

page 1

”In Germany, in contrast, the lie is an intrinsic part of legislation. The lie is protected by law. And whoever would oppose it, will be punished”.

page 5

”..All German historians are liars and cowards. There is no question of contempt for humanity. An international campaign for real history. An international campaign for realistic historiography. I am gradually beginning to gain acceptance – and here now I am able to make the prediction that within two years nobody will believe in the great lies any more which have been burdening the conscience of the entire German people for 45 years...”

no gas chambers at Auschwitz

page 16

”...We are not fools, we know where the truth lies. But it is very clear that in Germany one is not willing to say certain things. It reminds me of a case in Remschied two or three years ago where I was allowed to appear as an expert witness for the defence, and at the end of this case the judge said to me, it was about a teacher in Remscheid who had coined the fatal expression “there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz.” This teacher was stripped of his job, his pension, his future, everything because he had told the truth,.....”

page 24

“But there is further proof that right is on our side on the point of Auschwitz. And isn’t it strange, my ladies and gentlemen, that when we claim, when I say there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz in front of a German public, it is a crime because, according to a judgement by the constitutional court of the Federal German Republic, an insult to the reputation of the dead. I didn’t know that. Who could have thought as a right-thinking, sensible person, that when I say that there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz that I could insult the reputation of dead people. But that is German justice. German justice has always been a parade, ever since the beginning of the century. And has really not changed. In the Weimar republic, in the Third Reich, also in the Federal Republic, the jurists click their heels together and say “yes, sir”. Nothing has changed, but that they no longer have to wear any armbands.”

Leuchter

Although P refers to Leuchter and claims that chemistry/physics (unlike history) are ‘exact sciences’ (page 22), the Leuchter results are not the main plank of P’s case in this video (P suggests it is up to others to reproduce the tests (page 26)

Coke consumption

P says, it takes 35-40kg of coke to cremate a corpse; Höss said on one day he cremated 60,000 corpses “you can work out for yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, how many thousand tons of coke one needs for that. But we have the aerial photographs, where one can’t see a single mound of coke. And not only that, but no railway, no railway siding leads to the crematorium, these masses of coke, these huge masses of coke, thousands of tons per day. No lorry convoys are to be seen, where the coke, under circumstances, might have been delivered by lorry.” (page 22)

P says that Pressac (an ’intimate enemy’) found a document which showed the consumption of 2,188 tonnes of coke at Auschwitz; but claims Pressac’didn’t find a single piece of paper for the construction of a position of a gas chamber, not a single gas chamber, and there were allegedly six gas chambers in Auschwitz alone.’

Death books

P relies on the death books (page 23)

Decrypts

P relies on the decrypts (page 23-24).

“Seven concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Auschwitz, etcetera, sent activity reports daily to the head of the WVHA Oswald Pohl in Berlin..... Deaths from epidemics, deaths by hanging, and death by shooting. As ascertained by the British official historian, Sir Frank Hinsley, the British official historian, the history writer of the British secret service, in volume two of his British official work. Hinsley established, and I quote, “there is no mention of gassings.” In these secret radio messages, in the most secret SS key, figure, code, to Berlin, there is no mention of gassings, in the radio messages from Auschwitz to Berlin. Naturally if Hinsley were to claim this in Germany, he would have to be arrested, led off in handcuffs, be fined a DM 30,000 fine, insulted, and his reputation ruined. Yes, that is Germany. That is what you yourselves must take care of, my ladies and gentlemen, the German voters.”

Aerial photographs

P says that they do not show coke quantities or mass graves: ”The pictures have been analysed by independent aerial picture analysts. They found nothing. These are the scientific methods. We have truth on our side.” (page 27)

P also claims that photographs have been faked by the enemy: “The aerial photographs don’t only show how we have right, truth on our side, but how the enemies have faked the pictures. Because you know the American or Canadian or South African plane which took these pictures [in] 1944 or 1945. [They] took not only the one picture, but a whole set of pictures, every five seconds a picture. One sees how the buildings, the people, the lorries etcetera, have moved in the five seconds. But one also sees how the one picture published fifteen years ago by the CIA at the behest of world Jewry, with the supposed holes in the roof of the gas chamber where the cyanide was poured in, with the supposed lines of people who queue to be gassed. If one looks at the surrounding pictures then one suddenly notices that on these surrounding pictures the holes are not present. And that the lines of people are not present. One sees conclusively that the CIA has faked these photos, retouched them to the benefit of world Jewry, who somehow wanted prove that the gas chambers had existed.” (page 28)

‘The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers

P referred to Eichmann’s ‘memoirs’ and, after Eichmann’s description of a shooting at Minsk, said: ‘He also describes, and I have to say this being an honest historian, going to another location a few weeks later and being driven around in a bus and then being told by the bus driver to look through a peep hole in the back of a bus, where he saw a number of prisoners being gassed by the exhaust fumes. So I accept that this kind of experiment was made on a very limited scale, but that it was rapidly abandoned as a totally inefficient way of killing people. What I don’t accept is that the gas chambers existed and this is well-known.’ (p22)

P accepts that there were killings in the east – but refers to major crimes at the initiative of local criminals on the spot (p279)

ii) ABC Radio 3LO – March 1986 – D2i/1

P refers to ‘millions or hundreds of thousands liquidated in WW2 by Germans (or Latvians or Ukrainians) were victims of large number of nameless criminals into whose hands they fell on the Eastern front..acted on their own impulse, their own initiative within the general atmosphere of brutality’ (p10-11)

In a comment (file p738) headed ‘Our opinion’, P writes: ‘Revisionists must not make the mistake of claiming, crudely speaking, that no bodily harm whatever came to the Jews during the Third Reich. But nor should their opponents allege that the Germans alone were the perpetrators or (as the Israelis claimed in June 1987) that the Bruns document ‘proves’ Hitler’s direct involvement. ... What seems important is an assessment of the scale of the atrocities, and the degree to which they were ad hoc (like My Lai) or institutionalised massacres (like Hiroshima, Dresden, Lidice).

v) Whether P is anti-Semitic/racist/right-wing

P is an anti-Semite and a racist. The material relied upon for his anti-Semitism/racism is set out in a document entitled David Irving: A Political Self Portrait (‘PSP’) [front of K4]. This comprises extracts from a selection of P’s speeches, interviews, publications and diaries. The whole of PSP and the documents from which the extracts are taken are relied on by the Ds.

In relation to each statement put to him in cross-examination, P had an ‘excuse’ or ‘explanation’. The overriding excuse used for the document and extracts as whole was that the quote was taken out of context or manipulated [14:79-onwards].

Additionally, throughout the evidence, there were other examples of P’s anti-Semitism: his references to “traditional enemies of the truth”; his insistence that the Ds’ experts were in the pay of Yad Vashem or on a Holocaust junket; and his reliance on Professor MacDonald’s anti-Semitic report.

2. Racism

2.1 D’s position: P is so racist, he is prepared to teach his daughter racist ditties.

P’s explanation: The poem is a response to a magazine article [14:99:1]; P is not a racist, while there has not been a single coloured member on the Ds’ team ’I have employed coloured people of ethnic minorities on my staff’ [14:99:26]

2.2 D’s position: P believes that God is inflicting, through AIDS, a Final Solution on the black population.

P’s explanation: He is a religious man [14:102:24] musing about the strange way in which God works [14:103:10]; and there is not the slightest trace of approval in that sentence [14:103:18]

2.3 Ds’ position: P regrets black immigration and is happy to see black people leave England. He believes that black people should be limited to reading the news relating to muggings and drug busts.

P’s explanation: the comment about blacks leaving the country was a cynical joke [14:107:5]; this is a standard speech P gives for debating purposes [14:111:3]; it is the speech of a stand up comedian (14:113:19].

2.4 Ds’ position: P feels ‘queasy’ about black people playing sports for England. His view is that black people are better at sports than whites, a situation he regrets.

P’s explanation: ’What a pity it is that we have to have blacks on the team and that they are better than our whites.’ [15:11:5] ’... privately you are allowed to have your own private thoughts about the way things go, what you would call a state of mind, and my state of mind is that I regret what has happened to the England I grew up in.’ [15:13:1] The comment is ’patriotic’, not racist. [15:13:19]. ’90% of Englishmen born at the same time as me think the same.’ [15:15:21].

2.5 Ds’ position: P believes that black immigration in the 50s was a ’tragedy’; Lord Hailsham was a traitor to allow it and that the killing of Stephen Lawrence was a result of it.

P’s explanation: His regret is a form of patriotism. ’Patriotism is pride in the country that has been handed down to you by your parents and by their parents before them.’ [15:21:13] The government ’inflicted on this country a body wound which has led to 100,000 cases of the Stephen Lawrence tragedy occurring on one level, and it could have been avoided’ [15:23:12].

2.6 Ds’ position: P regards having his passport checked by a Pakistani immigration officer as an ’humiliation’.

P’s explanation: ’I would expect an Englishman to be better in control of immigration into England than someone who was born outside the country.’ [15:27:20] His view is not racist because ’Pakistanis, of course, are not necessarily brown’ [15:30:8]

vi) Whether P Associates with Right-Wing Extremists

On the second day of trial, when asked about his “alleged association with Neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists,” P replied, in part, ‘I suppose it can easily be said (and I am making no great concession here) if I say that probably everybody in this courtroom has acquaintances who they shudder when they ring the door bell. When you hold a cocktail party, you say you hope that Smith does not come or whoever it is but, on the other hand, he is an agreeable person to have around. This does not mean to say that you share all of Smith’s opinions. [2:207:6]

The evidence in this case shows that P has regular, extensive, and deep relationships with right-wing extremists in various parts of the world. And as his own correspondence and diary entries prove, frequently it is P who is figuratively – and sometime literally – ringing the door bell of these associates, rather than the other way around.

P conceded ”If I were to associate with somebody who held extremist views, this would not be in the least bit reprehensible.” [26:132:4] He instead strives to redefine this problem away, saying that only allegations of association with “violent” extremists would be defamatory. But the evidence shows that many of the groups with which Irving associates not only promote Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism and racism as cornerstones of their extremist political programmes, but also advocate and/or engage in violence to further those political aims. P’s comments, as seen in the documents and videos, were clearly hateful, inflammatory and inciteful; frequently making rabble rousing speeches to audiences with violent tendencies. Especially in Germany, P uses the entire range of right-wing neo-Nazi themes to excite his audiences (for example the glorification of Nazi war heroes, the establishment of a greater Germany comprised of ethnic Germans, and absolution of Nazis for blame for the Second world War).

1. Gerhard Frey / DVU

1.1 Identity of Individual/Organisation: The DVU, and its leader Dr. Gerhard Frey, is one of the most prominent representatives of right-wing extremism in Germany. Irving was a leading speaker in what is described as the tradition of ‘old’ RWE represented by the DVU. This old RWE line of thought included playing down the crimes of the NS period, questioning the extent of the extermination of the Jews, questioning German war guilt, denouncing the Nuremberg Trial as a sham, praising military and political personnel who actively identified with the Nazi system (like Dahl, Rudel, or Hess), and an aggressive rhetoric against the Allies. [See B5, tab 1, pp 19-38]

1.2 Nature of P’s association: P speaks regularly at the invitation of the DVU, as evidenced in correspondence between Frey and P. P greatly admires Frey, referring to him as ’one of the few people on the Right putting his money where his mouth is in the fight against the Far Left’ [RWE 2/7/43]. Frey advises P as to the contents of his speeches, repeatedly requesting that P refrain from mentioning Hitler and the Jews, and stresses that P must ’follow the political line’[RWE 2/7/43]. RWE 1, tab 7.

1.2 P’s excuse for the association: P disputes the DVU’s extremism, and consistently argues that it is a legitimate, democratically elected party. P states that the agreement not to mention Hitler and the Jews was a form of insurance against prosecution. Furthermore, he asserts that he never spoke of Holocaust denial nor anti-Semitism at the DVU meetings, implying that he is therefore exonerated for associating with the right-wing organisation, and that the DVU has never been prosecuted for these political beliefs, thus confirming its legitimacy.

2. Gunter Deckert / NPD

2.1 Identity of Individual/Organisation: NPD is one of the few legalised right-wing parties in Germany, and has become increasingly more radical since the recruitment of Deckert in 1989. Deckert is one of the most influential figures in the history of the NPD – in the 1980s for his concentration on racial incitement against asylum-seekers and migrants, in the 1990s for his propagation of revisionism. Under his leadership the NPD became a collecting point for the members of banned organisations and groups. [See B5, tab 1, pp 46-48 & 142]

2.2 Nature of P’s association: NPD organise many of P’s speeches in Germany. P toys with the idea of becoming an NPD candidate for a German seat in the European Parliament. Upon Deckert’s arrest and jail sentence for Holocaust denial in Germany, P regularly reports the events in his Action Report. RWE 1, tab 8.

2.3 P’s excuse for the association: P concedes that he was in regular contact with Deckert and regards him as a friend. He defends his friend by stating that there was no anti-Semitic content in his letters to Deckert, and implying that Deckert has suffered injustice by his imprisonment.

3. Ewald Althans

3.1 Identity of Individual: A protégé of Otto Ernst Remer, Althans was a leader of the DJBW and organiser of the AVÖ, an organisational body for the prominent international revisionists surrounding Ernst Zundel, from 1986 until its closure in 1992. The AVÖ’s agenda was largely determined by Zündel’s anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, and belief in a world conspiracy. In 1994 Althans was an NPD candidate in the Munich city elections. In 1994 and 1995 Althans was found guilty in Munich and Berlin of defaming the memory of the dead and incitement to hatred, mainly because of opinions expressed in a 1993 documentary “Job neo-Nazi” [“Beruf Neonazi”]. [See B5, tab 1, pp 140-141]

3.2 Nature of P’s association: Althans is a key figure in organising P’s speaking engagements in Germany. Upon meeting Althans for the second time in September 1989, P comments ‘Seems a bit of a Nazi, but helpful’. During that same year P is full of praise for Althans’ dynamism and efficiency in organising his speaking tours, and selling P’s “merchandise”. In 1990, Althans organises a dinner to commemorate Hitler’s 101st birthday, attended by, amongst others, P, Wilhelm Stäglich, Karl Philipp, Ingrid Weckert and Anthony Hancock. The relationship sours, however, in 1991, as P questions Althans’ commitment to the Right after receiving disparaging information from, amongst others, Frey, Philipp and Swierczek. RWE 2, tab 9

3.3 P’s excuse for the association: P concedes that Althans is an extremist, and regrets ever having been involved with him; not so much due to his political views, but because he was an agent of the German government. P says that the reason he was warned against Althans by Frey was not, as stated by Professor Funke, that Frey was fearful that Althans’ extreme views might jeopardise the illusion of respectability of the DVU, but that Althans may have been given the task of framing P by the German government.

4. Karl Philipp

4.1 Identity of individual/organisation: An NPD functionary in the 1970s and 1980s, Philipp is an author in numerous neo-Nazi newspapers, such as Die Bauernschaft, and is the editor of his own press service that informs about denialist activities and trials. In 1990 he received a fine of DM 3,600 for incitement of the people and defamation. [See B5, tab 1, pp 53-55, & 145]

4.2 Nature of P’s association: P meets Philipp in July 1989, describing him as ’a rather rightwing friend of Tony Hancock’. At that meeting, Philipp expresses willingness to arrange an Austrian speaking tour for P, which he does for November of that year. Philipp organises a tour of East and West Germany for P, including his attendance at the speech in Weinheim on 2 September 1989, which was organised by Gunter Deckert. Philipp is involved in the production and distribution of P’s Ich Komme Wieder in 1995, but Philipp returns the master-tape unused ’out of fear’ of indictment. RWE 2, tab 10

4.3 P’s excuse for the association: P admits that Philipp is a friend of his, and that Philipp is a ‘revisionist’.

5 Christian and Ursula Worch

5.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Worch began his neo-Nazi activities in 1974 when he founded the ANS/NA in Hamburg together with Kühnen. After the ban on the ANS/NA, Worch became a leading member of the GdNF, founded by Kühnen, which was an overtly neo-Nazi organisation. From 1989 to 1995 he was one of the key organisers of the annual Rudolf-Hess Memorial March. Worch is amongst the most experienced and prominent functionaries of the neo-Nazi scene in Germany, and since Kühnen’s death took on a role as a national co-ordinator for GdNF marches and meetings. He has been imprisoned on two occasions for various political crimes. [See B5, tab 1, pp 41-46, & 149]

5.2 Nature of P’s association: Christian Worch organises a number of speaking engagements for P on behalf of himself and the Nationale Liste (‘NL’). Worch organises security for P’s Wahrheit macht Frei conference in Munich, 1990, and has breakfast with the Worchs the morning after, along with Hancock and Stäglich. In November 1991, P agrees to speak at an open-air rally in Halle on the invitation of the Worchs, appearing alongside Christian Worch and Thomas Dienel, where he delivers a ’rabble rousing’ speech. Ursula, or “Uschi” Worch, as P affectionately calls her, drives with P to the Halle meeting. P and the Worch’s correspond regularly during the 1990s. RWE 2, tab 11

5.3 P’s excuse for the association: P does not deny his association with the Worchs, but argues that there was not a ’close degree of intimacy’ because he did not receive Christmas cards from them. He admits that he spoke at Halle on the invitation of Ursula Worch, but alleges that he did not share the right-wing enthusiasm of the crowd, and that despite that fact, the speech, or any of the exchanges between P and the Worchs, do not contain any elements of Holocaust denial or anti-Semitism.

6 Thies Christophersen

6.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Christophersen was an SS-Sonderführer near Auschwitz, and continued to propagate the Nazi ideologies of that period after the collapse of the Reich. Christophersen was the editor of a number of right-wing publications, for example Die Bauernschaft and Kritik --Die Stimme des Volkes. In 1973 he published the deeply anti-Semitic pamphlet Die Auschwitz-Lüge. Christophersen sought the re-legalisation of the NSDAP, and in 1971 he founded his own right-wing faction, the BBI. Christophersen has been involved in several court actions for incitement of racial hatred, denigration of the state, and the circulation of unconstitutional symbols. [See B5, tab 1, pp 53-58, & 141]

6.2 Nature of P’s association: Christophersen organises a conference in Hagenau in 1989, bowing to P’s request for a separate speaking slot. Other attendees of the conference were Faurisson, Stäglich, Zundel and Walendy. Christophersen did not attend out of fear of arrest. Christophersen invites P to meeting in Antwerp on 12 September, other guests included Althans, Zundel and Christian Worch. RWE 2, tab 15

6.3 P’s excuse for the association: P admits to his association with Christophersen, but disputes the ’intensity’, arguing that he spoke at only one of the speeches organised by Christophersen., and that the relationship was ‘tenuous’.

7 Michael Swierczek / National Offensive

7.1 Identity of individual/organisation: A one-time member of Kühnen’s ANS/NA, Swierczek went on to create the south-German chapter of the KAH and the NO, which was subsequently banned in 1992. Swierczek is considered as one of the most important functionaries in the militant neo-Nazi scene, and received a suspended sentence in 1995 for his attempts to rebuild the ANS. [See B5, tab 1, pp 93-96 & 148]

7.2 Nature of P’s association: P speaks at an NO meeting, organised by Swierczek, near Stuttgart in May 1992, after having been introduced by Worch. RWE 2, tab 13

7.3 P’s excuse for the association: P claims that he cannot remember Swierczek, and that this illustrates that he did not have any important associations with him. P questions the extent of Swierczek’s extremism, saying that he has never been prosecuted for any offence, and that the suspended sentence Swierczek received for his attempts to rebuild the neo-Nazi ANS was for a ’pretty mild kind of offence’.

8 Wilhelm Stäglich

8.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Prior to 1945 Stäglich was a member of the anti aircraft division stationed at Auschwitz. He was a member of the NPD during the 70s, and in 1974 was subject to disciplinary proceedings as a result of an article in a right-wing newspaper. In 1975 he was retired from his position as a judge, and in 1987 was stripped of his doctorate. His book The Auschwitz Myth. Legend or Reality was seized by the German authorities in 1980 due to its provocative content. Stäglich has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee of the JHR. [See B5, tab 1 p 148]

8.2 Nature of P’s accociation: P appears alongside Stäglich at 5th IHR conference in September 1983. Stäglich is also present at the Hagenau meeting in November 1989, the Wahrheit Macht Frei conference in Munich in April 1990, the dinner to commemorate Hitler’s birthday on 20 April 1990 (breakfasting with P the morning after), and he shared a platform with P at the Leuchter Congress in Munich in March 1991. [RWE 1, tab 8a]

8.3 P’s excuse for the association: P minimises has association Stäglich, alleging that he met him for the first time for breakfast in 1990, despite having dined with him the previous evening. He says that there is no evidence from the video of the Hagenau meeting (as shown in court) that he was in the room when Stäglich was there.

9 Ahmed Rami

9.1 Identity of individual/organisation: A Swedish Holocaust Denier of Arab descent, Rami is a close political ally of Faurisson, a vicious anti-Semite and a proponent of Holocaust denial.

9.2 Nature of P’s association: P shares platform with Rami at the Leuchter Congress in Munich in March 1991 and at the 11th IHR conference in 1992. [RWE 2, tab 18]

9.3 P’s excuse for the association: P denies having associated with Rami, and disputes the Ds’ allegation that having appeared on the same platform as Rami is tantamount to associating with him.

10 Pedro Varela

10.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Varela is a prominent right-wing figure in Spain, and his name frequently crops up in denialist circles.

10.2 Nature of P’s association: P conducts speaking tour of Spain in November 1989, organised by Pedro Varela, having been in regular contact in the months leading up to the tour. RWE 2, tab 8b

10.3 P’s excuse for the association: P does not dispute his association with Varela. On day 28, P shows Dr Funke a photograph of a meeting he addressed at which Varela was holding up a placard calling German historians liars and cowards. P’s excuse is that Varela does not look like a violent or extreme person.

11 Ernst Zundel

11.1 Identity of individual/organisation: German expatriate Ernst Zundel is Canada’s most prominent neo-Nazi extremist and Holocaust denier. His company, Samisdat Publishers Ltd., is one of the world’s primary producers and distributors of neo-Nazi and racist material. Zundel has written a number of racist and anti-Semitic works, the most prominent being ‘The Hitler We Loved and Why’. Zundel has associated with the world’s leading extremists, and has been prosecuted on several occasions for his violation of Canadian law. [See B5, tab 3, pp 46-53]

11.2 Nature of P’s contact:P appears at Zundel’s first trial in 1986 as an expert witness. Zundel tempts P with an audience and publicity in Toronto, in exchange for his championing of the “revisionist” cause. After the trial, Zundel takes P under his wing, offering P advice on the expansion of his marketing possibilities, and offering his services in the promotion of P’s books and organisation of a lecture tour. P and Zundel correspond regularly during the 80s, discussing projects, exchanging documents, and offering each other advice. In April 1988, P appears at Zundel’s second trial as an expert witness, after Zundel’s repeated promises of publicity and book sales should he accept. RWE 2, tab 17

11.3 P’s excuse for the association: P is protective of Zundel’s reputation, implying that he had suffered injustice at the hands of the Canadian authorities, and that he is a respectable individual, ’free of any conviction’, although simultaneously accepting that Zundel holds right-wing political views. P denies having heard Zundel speak at the meeting in Munich, despite having been in the same room at the time.

12 Otto Ernst Remer

12.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Remer was Commander of the Berlin Watch Regiment ‘Groß Deutschland’ that was critical in crushing the attempted revolt against Hitler on 20 July 1944. Remer remained loyal to the NS philosophy, and founded several parties in Germany in the same vein. In the 1980s and 1990s Remer cultivated contacts in German and international revisionist and denial circles. From 1991 to 1994 he was editor of his own Remer-Depesche, a virulent anti-Semitic magazine. Following a series of judgements and appeals for incitement to racial hatred and spreading the Auschwitz lie from 1991–1993, resulting ultimately in a 22-month prison sentence, Remer fled to Spain in 1994. Remer’s role as a Third-Reich war hero, his RWE activities after the war, and his propagation of Holocaust denial since the 1980s make him one of the most widely admired figures in the right-wing spectrum.[See B5, tab 1, pp 29, 53, 72, 77, 80, 85, 87, 136 & 145]

12.2 Nature of P’s contact: In July 1989, P interviews Remer for his book Goebbels. In April 1990, P is scheduled to speak alongside Remer in Munich. In 1994 P regularly reports about Remers imprisonment for incitement in his Action Reports, and in the February issue of that year offers ’a magnificent souvenir colour photo of Remer in full uniform, taken at the height of his career’. In the September issue of P’s Action Report, P reports on Remer’s ongoing legal battles and promises to supply his readers with an address through which Remer can be contacted and donations can be made. On Remers death in December 1997, P describes him as having remained ’loyal to the old cause’. RWE 2, tab 10

12.3 P’s excuse for the association: P concedes that Remer is a ’reprobate and an unreconstructed Nazi’. P denies that he has associated Remer aside from interviewing him for the purposes of his book.

13 Ingrid Weckert

13.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Weckert was the leader of a GdNF group ‘Action Protection of Life’ [‘Aktion Lebensschutz’]. The group used ecological and biological ideas to propagate a form of racial purity or racial protection for white Aryans. [See B5, tab 1, pp 72 & 149]

13.2 Nature of P’s association: P has been in periodic contact with Weckert since 1979, and in April 1990, P records having dined with her, amongst others, in Munich to commemorate the 101st anniversary of Hitler’s birth. In early 2000, P calls for readers of his website to contribute to Dr Weckert’s survival after her conviction in Germany for inciting racial hatred. RWE 2, tab 12

13.3 P’s excuse for the association: P concedes that he has associated with Weckert; in providing her as a source for one of the footnotes in Goebbels he asserts that the fact that she is an anti-Semite has no reflection on the reliability of the source.

14 Thomas Dienel

14.1 Identity of individual/association: Former state chairman of the NPD in Thüringen, in which function he helped organise the rally in Halle on 9 November 1991. Later leader of the neo-Nazi DNP. In 1992 Dienel was filmed saying ‘Unfortunately the younger generation has not yet killed any Jews...’. In December 1992 Dienel was sentenced to 2 years 8 months imprisonment for incitement of the people and defamation of the memory of the dead. [See B5, tab 1, pp 45-46, 48, 91-92 & 142]

14.2 Nature of P’s association: Dienel was one of the organisers of the open-air rally in Halle, and spoke on the same platform as P and Christian Worch.

14.3 P’s excuse for the association: P categorically denies any association with Dienel.

15 Gottfried Küssel

15.1 Identity of individual/association: Member of the NSDAP/AO since 1977. Founder of the Austrian VAPO in 1986 and named ‘Bereichsleiter Ostmark’ [the NS title for Austria] by Kühnen in 1987. A leading activist in both the German and Austrian neo-Nazi scenes, Küssel was arrested in Vienna in 1993 and sentenced in the first instance to ten year’s imprisonment for NS re-activity. [See B5, tab 1, p 144]

15.2 Nature of P’s association: Küssel was one of the organisers and main speakers at the Halle rally in Munich, 1991.

15.3 P’s excuse for the association: P denies any involvement with Küssel, and disputes the D’s position that having appeared on the same platform with Küssel is evidence of P’s having associated with him.

16 IHR (including Mark Weber, Tom Marcellus, Greg Raven)

16.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Founded in 1979, the IHR is a pseudo-academic entity and the most renowned Holocaust denial organisation in the US. The IHR is dedicated to putting the case for Nazi Germany and against what it regards as the ‘myth’ of the Nazis’ extermination of millions of Jews during the Second World War. It organises annual ‘Revisionist’ conferences that are attended by the world’s most prominent extremists. The IHR promotes the works of the world’s leading extremists, who are also regular contributors to the JHR. [See B5, tab 3, pp 25-33]

16.2 Nature of P’s association: P’s contact with the IHR begins in 1980, when he is invited to appear at the IHR’s annual ‘Revisionist Conference’. He makes his debut in 1983, and goes on to appear at IHR conferences a further five times, in 1989, 1990, 1992, 1994, and 1995, and appears at numerous event organised by the IHR. P quickly becomes an important asset to the IHR, and is introduced by Weber at the 10th IHR conference (1990) as ’a kind of one man IHR’. In 1991, P arranges a meeting between Weber, of the IHR, and Wetzel, of the DVU, in Germany. P becomes a principal character at the IHR, and in 1994 he mediates the split between factions within the IHR, endorsing the IHR after its separation from Willis Carto. Later that year, P expresses interest in becoming a paid member of the IHR as an editor of their journal. His books and videos are regularly advertised in the IHR newsletter and the JHR. The IHR is involved in the promotion of P’s speaking tours in the US. RWE 1, tab 1

16.3 P’s excuse for the association: P concedes that the IHR consists of ’some elements which are cracked anti-Semites’. P claims that his association with the IHR is minimal, and that he is no more than an occasional speaker at their conferences. P had earlier conceded that he perceives himself as being an ally of the IHR.

17 National Alliance

17.1 Identity of individual/organisation: The National alliance is the largest and one of the most influential neo-Nazi organizations in the United States of America. Lead by William Pierce, a former member of the American Nazi Party, it is extremely right-wing, racist and anti-Semitic. Mirroring Nazi ideology, it sees its mission as “Building a new White World” and aspires to “a racially clean area of the earth for the further development of our [Aryan] people.” It calls for “a thorough rooting out of Semitic and other non-Aryan values and customs everywhere,” and posits building “the world that we want to forge from the ruins of the present world . .. “ through “ the strife of revolution.” [See B5, tab 3, pp 103-109, and witness statement of Rebecca Guttman, C1, tab 2]

17.2 Nature of P’s association: P has corresponded with representatives of the NA. P has appeared at, at least, 7 events organised by the NA, twice in 1995, three times in 1996, and twice again in 1997. RWE 1, tab 2

17.3 P’s excuse for the association: In P’s reply to the Requests for Information, P denies having corresponded with, nor spoken at an event organised by, the NA. He does not waver from this standpoint during the course of trial, stating that Gliebe, a prominent member of the NA who uses the NA postal box as his home address, is ’a personal friend’. P claims that at the time he was at the functions, he was not aware that they were organised by the NA.

18 Robert Faurisson

18.1 Identity of individual/organisation: Robert Faurisson is a former teacher of French literature who has argued over many years that Anne Frank’s diary is a forgery, and that ‘the alleged massacres in the “gas chambers” and the alleged “genocide” are part of the same lie’ which ‘is essentially Zionist in origin’ and ‘has allowed a huge political and financial swindle of which the state of Israel is the principal beneficiary’. Faurisson testified to this effect as an expert witness in the first Canadian trial of Ernst Zündel. By this time, however, Faurisson himself had been found guilty in his native France for slander, violation of Article 382 of the Civil Code by wilfully distorting history, and incitement to racial hatred. He has since been one of the most vocal and extreme of Holocaust deniers at the conferences of the IHR, and member of the editorial board, and frequent contributor, to its journal. [See B1, pp 176-177; B5, tab 3, pp 19-20]

18.2 Nature of P’s association: P meets Faurisson at the 5th IHR conference in 1983. P shares a platform with Faurisson in Hagenau in 1989, and at the 1991 revisionist congress in Munich. Faurisson and Leuchter speak at the November 1991 Clarendon Club meeting organised by P. P corresponds regularly with Faurisson over the years, exchanging information, compliments, and criticism on their respective endeavours.

18.3 P’s excuse for the association: P is evasive about his connections with Faurisson, however it is evident that P sees Faurisson as a martyr to the cause, and P alludes to the dangers facing Holocaust deniers by showing a photo of Faurisson after he was assaulted to the court.

16 British National Party

19.1 Identity of individual/organisation: The BNP’s main overt policy plank was the need to end all non-northern European immigration, and to repatriate all racial aliens. [See B5, tab 2, pp 28-29]

19.2 Nature of P’s association: P appears at 2 BNP meetings, one in 1983 and another in 1990, as evidenced in his diaries and the correspondence between himself and the BNP. P begins arrangements to speak at a BNP rally in November 1993, however he cancels as he had overlooked prior arrangements to meet Kirk Lyons in the US.

19.3 P’s excuse for the association: P calls the BNP ’a bunch of hope-less right-wingers’ and denies any association with the organisation.

Dresden

The following issues will be dealt with in turn (taken from list of issues)

P has also given different estimates in his speeches:

“...In total we dropped more than half a million incendiary devices on this city, the worst so-called apartment-block crushers. In the ensuing fires, we must have killed up to a quarter of a million people. We killed at least 135,000 people.”

P’s first knowledge of the fake TB 47

P had no reason to think the document was any more authentic than when it had been cited by Seydewitz: 13:106:2–13: 107:17. (Indeed less, because the Dresden archivist Lange had dismissed it as a ‘patent forgery’).

Funfack wrote to P in January 1965, stating that he could not understand why he was being cited as a witness for the deathroll; that he had never been Chief Medical Officer (or Deputy) in Dresden (he was a specialist urologist) and that he had no firm evidence as to the figure for the dead, but could only quote what had been reported to him: L1/2/41-42 (Evans translation read into transcript @ 13:110:18- 13:111:24; see also 13:115:2-7).

There was nothing in that letter or in subsequent correspondence to suggest that the copy of TB 47 P had obtained was genuine: L1/2/46-52. Yet:

P’s use of the fake TB 47 after authentic documents had come to his attention

(In his evidence, P attempted to distance himself from the estimate of 250,000, claiming that the quarter of a million figure estimate cited in Hitler’s War was not his estimate, but merely an estimate given to Hitler: 13:167:18–13:168:2.)

Hans Sperling

e) whether P suppressed/failed to take account of reliable material

Theo Miller

f) whether P misrepresented evidence

Red Cross

P’s estimates are – and always were – a gross misrepresentation of the evidence he had. The reason for this is clear: P has striven to achieve a false equivalence between the numbers killed by the Allies at Dresden, which he has deliberately exaggerated, and the numbers killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz, which he has deliberately sought to minimise (see further at section (iv) below).

a) Did P break an agreement with the Moscow archive?

All of this was in breach of P’s agreement with the archive.

5(ix) Assessing P as an historian

This section concerns concessions made by P during the course of the trial. It overlaps significantly with 5 (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) and (vii) above. In summary, P made a number of concessions during the course of the trial. Taken together they represent a significant departure from what may be characterised as his pre-trial stance. He gave various reasons for making these concessions (for example: to shorten the trial, or for the purposes of the trial). Furthermore P was not consistent in adhering to these concessions once made.

Ds’ case in relation to the concessions, the manner in which they were made, and P’s wavering adherence to them, is that:

The principal concessions made by P relate to: the Einsatzgruppen shootings of Jews in the East and deportations; the use of gas vans at Chelmno and in Yugoslavia; the “Action Reinhard” Camps; Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau; the Leuchter Report.

Set out below is an analysis of these concessions:

Concessions about the Einsatzgruppen shootings of Jews in the East and deportations

Pre-trial stance

In his writings and speeches, P described the murder of Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia by shooting, as: Those Jews murdered numbered ‘hundreds’ or ‘thousands’ at a time ad hoc and committed by small bands of criminals acting on base motives of revenge and greed, without orders. committed with Hitler’s partial knowledge, but not on his orders (express or otherwise) | K3/7/11 K3/8/15-16 K3/5/16

Concessions at trial

P accepts the shooting of perhaps 1.5 million Jews took place in the East by the SS and that it took place on the authority of Heydrich in Berlin. | 4:86-87

P accepts that his claim that these killings were committed by unauthorised gangsters without an order, the consent, or knowledge of the central Nazi authorities (‘My Lai’ – type atrocities), was wrong. | 4:115-116.

P admits that shootings in Soviet Russia were systematic | 5:10:12

P concedes that Hitler did know about the murder of the Jews on the Eastern front, but did not care. | 2:275-276.

P concedes that he should have brought Altemeyer’s reference to an order from Hitler in the Bruns report to his readers’ attention. | 3:90

Confronted with the Himmler log of 18 December 1941, P concedes that Hitler ordered the Jews in the East to be liquidated ‘as partisans’. | 4: 91-94

P concedes again that Hitler not only knew, but also sanctioned the murder of the Jews on the Eastern front ‘and that has never been a matter of contention for me’. | 4:107:1-2

P concedes that Hitler knew of the shootings in the East, but that he drew a distinction in his own mind between the Jews of Eastern and Western Europe. | 4:195

P concedes that Hitler had ‘taken the initiative’ in demanding that the ‘Altreich’ and the protectorates of Bohemia and Moravia be free of Jews ‘as soon as possible’. | 5:104:20-21 / H4 (v)

P’s adherence to concessions

Judges summary of concessions is again accepted by P. | 5:10

P retracts his concessions about Hitler’s knowledge and responsibility for the shootings. | 24:152-154

P tries to relativise the import of his earlier statements about Hitler’s role and knowledge of the shootings. | 24:161-166

In a two-page summary, P retreats to a position similar to that adopted pre-trial: i) The Einsatzgruppen were primarily anti-partisan units, operating on military rational ii) Hitler was ‘probably’ (irregularly) informed of anti-partisan operations in the East, including the murder of Jews iii) Although Hitler ordered the deportation of Reich Jews eastwards, their treatment upon arrival ‘suggests a lack of system and co-ordination’. There is no ‘clear or unambiguous’ evidence that Hitler was aware of the mass murder of Reich Jews in the East. | 25:1-2 J2, tab 12.

Concessions about the use of gas vans at Chelmno and in Yugoslavia

Pre-trial stance

P is aware only of documentation that encompasses the ‘alleged liquidation’ of 152,000 Jews at Chelmno That documents ‘imply’ that the Nazis ‘experimented’ using gas vans, but that it took place on a ‘very limited scale’. | A/4/5-6 K3/4/32 / D3(i)/30/173

Concessions at trial

P accepts that a killing centre was established at Chelmno, but denies that there were any killings by gas. | 2:242:19ff

P concedes that is correct in stating that 97,000 people had been murdered in gas vans at Chelmno. | 6:50

P admits that the use of gas vans at Chelmno was ‘systematic’. | 6:50-51

P concedes that his Statement of Case position that gassings in vans was on an ‘experimental scale’ was wrong and that the Nazis later ‘abandoned and replaced [the gas vans] by other means of killing people’. | 6:57 & 6:66-67

P concedes that gas vans replaced shooting as a means of killing the Jews in Yugoslavia. | 6:50

Concessions about the ‘Action Reinhard’ Camps

Pre-trial stance

That there were no gas chambers at Treblinka, Sobibor, or Belzec or any of the ‘factories of death’. | K3/4/35&41/ K3/16/1

Concessions at trial

P concedes that Action Reinhard’s purpose was the wholesale murder of Jews. | 5:125-126

P concedes that hundreds of thousands were murdered in the Action Reinhard camps, but shies from the description ‘factory of death’. | 5:133-134 / D8(i)/222

P concedes that he is ‘not in a position to challenge’ the accepted historical figures for the numbers murdered in the Action Reinhard camps ‘on a numerical basis’ (i.e. Treblinka, 700-950,000; Belzec, 550,000; Sobibor, 200,000). These figures included a minimum of 150,000 for Chelmno. | 17:17-19

P concedes that gassings took place at Sobibor. | 8:170-171

P concedes that gassings took place at Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec, but in so doing claims that this fact stood in his printed works. | 19:192-193

Extrapolating from his theory that Hitler did not know of the ‘Final Solution’ until 1943, P concedes that if he had known, he would not have objected. | 5:179-182

P’s adherence to concessions

P says that it is not the nature of the Action Reinhard Camps he is challenging, rather the scale of the murders committed in them. | 17:152-153

P states that none of his concessions concerning the nature of the Action Reinhard camps and the numbers killed in them, are formal concessions but were made to speed the trial along | 19:201:25

P states that he is accepting that gassings occurred in the Action Reinhard camps ‘for the purposes of this trial’. | 23:17:1

Concessions about Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau

Pre-trial stance

i) Auschwitz was not a death camp or an instrument of mass extermination using Zyklon-B, but rather a ‘brutal slave labour camp’. ii) There were no homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz. iii) The gas chambers at Auschwitz were ‘deliberately masterminded’ as propaganda by the British PWE. iv) That the gas chambers at Auschwitz are fakes built by the Poles after the war. iv) That some 25,000 (a ‘grossly inflated figure [taken] to be on the safe side’) – 50,000 were murdered in Auschwitz. | K3/2/11 / K3/4/8 See 5(iv)(a) K3/2/14 K3/5/8 K3/14/11 / K3/8/20-21

Concessions at trial

Shown the Kinna Report of 16 December 1942, P concedes that Jews were liquidated in Auschwitz ‘at will’. | 29/88-92

P concedes that gassings did take place at Auschwitz-Birkenau, but refuses to label them ‘systematic’. | 2:157-158

P concedes that the crematoria II-V at Auschwitz were but only to fumigate objects or cadavers. | 8:118

P retreats to the position that he only meant crematoria II was designed as a gas chamber. | 8:119-120

P concedes that gassings took place at Auschwitz ‘on some scale’. | 17:180

P concedes the existence of all the gas chambers at Auschwitz bar crematorium II: ‘the only point I am holding out on is Crematorium no 2, that particular building’ | 19:192-3

Adherence to concessions

P retreats to position that he conceded that ‘gas chamber experiments’ were conducted in Birkenau, ‘for example’ in bunkers I and II. | 29:33

P contends that when talking about the ‘legend’ of Auschwitz, he is merely referring to crematorium I (Stammlager). | 7:176:15

Concessions about the Leuchter Report

Pre-trial stance In his introduction to the Leuchter Report P stated that: i) ‘chemistry is an exact science’ ii) the report was ‘a professional and dispassionate chemical examination’ iii) the results were ‘astounding’ iv) that Leuchter had shown that, ‘Nor ...could the design and construction of those buildings have made their use as mass gas chambers feasible under any circumstances.’ that ‘their was no doubt as to their [the laboratory reports] integrity’ vi) that his only reservation was that he ‘would, admittedly, preferred to see more rigorous methods used in identifying and certifying the samples’, but that the video footage of the Leuchter team ‘provide compelling visual evidence of the scrupulous methods that they used’ In his public speaking from 1989 to 1997 P habitually uses the Leuchter Report as an irrefutable piece of evidence that gassings did not take place at Auschwitz. In his Reply, P described the Leuchter Report as ‘an important historical document’, subject only to P’s ‘own measured concerns’ about its methodological flaws. | K3/3 A/4/11

Concessions at trial

P concedes that he himself carried out no research into Auschwitz before changing his mind about the ‘Final Solution’. | 6:123:25

P concedes that Leuchter’s premise of how many people could be gassed in a given space, was wrong. | 8:44

Shown Beer’s criticisms of the Leuchter Report (K1/5), P concedes that Leuchter’s hypothesised toxicity of 3,200 parts per million was at least 10 times too high, and made the report ‘fundamentally flawed’. P concedes three corollaries to this flawed hypothesis: i) That a lower toxic concentration would reduce the need for ventilation ii) That a lower toxic concentration would reduce or even negate a hypothetical danger of contamination of the wider camp through a sewer system. iii) That a lower toxic concentration would mean that less or no risk was posed to SS personnel inserting the crystals into the gas chambers and to Sonderkommando members clearing the chambers. But P refuses to concede that need of a far lower toxic concentration would explain the smallness of the traces found by Leuchter. | 8:47-51.

P concedes that Leuchter’s supposition on the porousness of brick and the danger posed by hydrogen cyanide residue was wrong. | 8:112-113

P concedes that Leuchter’s statements on sewers under crematorium as posing a deadly threat to the rest of the camp are wrong. | 8:113-114

P concedes that Leuchter was wrong to state that there was no provision to ventilate the gas chambers. | 8:114-115

P concedes that Leuchter was wrong to state that the doors to the crematoria opened inwards, when they in fact opened outwards. | 8:115-116

P concedes that hydrogen cyanide is heavier than air and poses no risk to those inserting Zyklon-B into the gas chambers. | 8:116-117

P concedes that it would not surprise him if Leuchter had miscalculated the incineration capacities. | 8:120

Adherence to concessions

P claims that the only part of the Leuchter report that can be relied upon is the chemical figures | 8:118:3

P claims that: i) he did not give the Leuchter Report a disproportionately high profile ii) that he was justified as it gave a stimulus to further research iii) that he acted merely as a publisher, without lending the report historical weight. | 8:184-186

d) Whether P’s “errors” have a convergence or tendency

There is no consistency in P’s approach to the assessing of evidence (P’s methodology). He can be over-rigorous in some cases, while being super-lax in others. Conversely, however, his errors do not have the inconsistency that one would expect of honest mistakes (“P’s errors”). Both P’s methodology and his errors cohere only at the substantive level of his ideological programme. This programme, in the context of his historical writing and speech making, has inter alia as its objectives:

What relates i) ii) and iii) above is P’s right wing and anti-Semitic agenda. P has too high a regard for Hitler, and too low a regard for the truth.

Set out below is a list of the types of excuses that P offered at trial for errors that could not (or not any longer) be denied by him. The D’s case is that these excuses:

Set out below are examples of these excuses.

P is allowed as a historian to represent two opinions at once. | 3:44-48

P is ‘not a Holocaust expert’:

8:162 8:184 2:242-243

P saw the source a long time ago, and can not reasonably be expected to recall it:

29:23

P’s mistakes and omissions are due to the vagaries of editing, recording, or transcription:

3:91 3:70-71 2:245-246 29:27-29 7:71-80 B3, pp. 27-28/ 6:4-5

P is obliged to keep the wishes and interest of his readers in mind:

3:92 7:19-20 29:16

Innocent Mistranslation: the ‘Table Talk of 25 October 1941’ | 5 (i) e) above

Innocent Mistranscription: The Himmler note of 1 December 1941, ‘Juden zu bleiben’ | 5 (i) f) above

Length of book / the sin of omission: the Goebbels diary entry of 27 March 1942, ‘40% – 60%’ | 5 (i) h above

P can not be expected to have been aware of document: Müller telex of 1 August 1941 | 5 (I) d above

Length of source: Hoffmann’s testimony at Hitler’s 1923 trial | 5 (i) a above

P will hype or dismiss a witness, and hype or dismiss a document, depending on whether its use conforms to his ideological agenda.

If P dislikes a document he may call into question its genuineness: it is a forgery; it emanates from an Iron Curtain country and therefore may be a forgery; it has the wrong classification, which is evidence of forgery (although it might alternatively be evidence of the innocence of the document’s meaning). P will often suggest that a document is a forgery without committing himself to the definite proposition that it is (“I just want to plant the seed of suspicion....” [17:72]).

Or he may call into question its reliability: the author is lying; the documents relate to an earlier period; the documents are “thin”; the documents are “janitorial level”; the document is an “orphan.”

If a document does not say that a particular order is from Hitler, then it isn’t. If the document does say that the order is from Hitler, then it’s wrong. The overt meaning of a document will be accepted if the effect of that meaning is to exculpate Hitler and/or the Nazis; a hidden meaning will be taken if the overt meaning is incriminatory.

In the context of inculpating Hitler, only an express written and signed order is acceptable; in the context of exculpating him “hypothesising” is acceptable: “I have not invented a Hitler order... I have hypothesised the Hitler order in the way that a scientist should and I then supported the hypothesis with evidence”; “into account I take when writing that sentence my entire expertise based on all the other documents that we have by that time already collected”.

If the witnesses are Jewish, they are unreliable because they are victims. If the witnesses are Nazis (and P does not like what they say) they are unreliable because they are mass murderers and their statements are self-serving. In general, witness evidence that P dislikes is rejected by him on one or more of the following grounds:

memory has faded; the statement was coerced from the witness; the witness is a communist; there are some errors in his (or her) evidence and therefore all the evidence has to be rejected; eye witness evidence is inherently unreliable; it is the “old gramophone” playing; the witness was on trial for his life; the witness had already been condemned to death; the witness is lying to protect himself; the witness is lying in order to promote a certain view of the matter in issue.

If P likes the witness’s evidence, it is accepted without demur.

Of the many examples given of illegitimately hyped and dismissed documents, and hyped and dismissed witnesses, the Ds contend that the following 16 are illustrative of P’s historiographical practice:

Hyped documents

The Schlegelberger note [5 (i) g above]; the telex from Hess’s staff, 2.56am 10.11.38 [5 (i) b above]; the Himmler log entry of 30.11.41 [5 (i) f above]; the Victor Cavendish-Bentinck/PWE memorandum [5 (i) s above].

Dismissed documents

Crematorium capacity at Auschwitz, 28 June 1943 [5 (iii) b above]; Himmler note on meeting with Hitler 10.12.42 [5 (i) j above]; Report 51, 29.12.42 [5 (i) d above]; Hitler/Horthy meetings of 16/17.4.43 [5 (i) k above].

Hyped eye-witnesses

Hans Ficker [22: 140]; Karl Wolff [26: 13-26 / 29:17-21]; Christa Schroeder [23:138-142 / 28:136-144]; Hans Voigt [5(vii) c above].

Dismissed eye-witnesses

Rudolf Hoss [5 (iii)]; Dieter Wisliceny [5 (iii) 17.3 (iv) above]; Marie-Claude Vaillant-Couturier [5 (i) p]; Theo Miller [5 (vii) e].

5(x) Relationship of (ix) above to (iv), (v) and (vi) above

(xi) The facts above (5i-5x) by reference to the principles in 4 above

Having regard to sections 5(i) to 5(x) above, the truth of the defamatory allegations made about P in Denying the Holocaust is clearly demonstrated. Therefore P’s claim fails.