On January 13, 2000, Richard Rampton read Walter Bruns’s account of the Riga shootings and asked why Irving had left it out of his books. Irving answered, “I discounted it.” Day 3, L0734–L0737. Twelve other exchanges below connect the transcript to Gray’s judgment, and the nineteen charged instances of distortion follow them.
What the court tested
Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books after Lipstadt described him as a Holocaust denier who manipulated historical evidence. Because Irving sued, the defendants had to prove the central accusations. They compared his books with the documents, translations, notes, and testimony behind them.
One mistake wouldn’t prove dishonesty. The defence argued that Irving repeatedly changed or discounted evidence that ran against his position. Gray found that most of the falsification was deliberate and that the defendants had proved the substantial truth of the central charges. Judgment ¶¶13.163–13.167.
The trial wasn’t televised. The clips are recordings used or quoted in the litigation, not courtroom footage. Captions may contain errors. These thirteen exchanges are examples. The complete list of nineteen instances the defence charged is at the end of this page, and the statements Irving still repeats on video are checked separately against the trial evidence.
Irving omitted the words that changed Bruns’s account
In Hitler’s War, Irving used an account by German general Walter Bruns, secretly taped by British intelligence at Trent Park, to suggest that an order had stopped mass shootings in Riga. Bruns’s account also said that Berlin Jews were shot under Hitler’s orders and that future shootings should continue “more discreetly.” Those parts did not appear in Irving’s account.
“… He said [Altemeyer said] Well, they are to be shot in accordance with the Fuhrer’s orders! I said: Fuhrer’s orders? He said, yes, whereupon he showed me his orders.” Now that has never appeared in any of your books, has it?
Gray found that Irving had “perverted the sense” of the account
Gray wrote that a historian can’t select favorable passages from a document and ignore the rest without good reason. He included the Bruns passage in his finding that Irving skewed evidence to portray Hitler more favorably. Full passage read on Day 22, L0904–L0953 · Judgment ¶13.24
The omitted qualification
The full sentence did not order the shootings to stop. It said shootings “on that scale” should stop and that they should continue more discreetly. The omitted qualification reversed the meaning Irving gave the document.
Days 7–8Rampton, defence counsel; Irving, claimant
Irving promoted the Leuchter Report before checking its history
Fred Leuchter, an American execution-equipment consultant, took unauthorized material samples from Auschwitz and claimed that laboratory results disproved the use of homicidal gas chambers. Irving said the report changed his position on Auschwitz. He issued his own edition and announced it at a press conference, although he had not checked the report’s historical basis.
On the basis of no research whatsoever; you are absolutely right. …
Gray traced Irving’s changed position to the report
The report had a “profound impact” on Irving’s Holocaust denial, Gray wrote. Irving publicly endorsed its conclusion before examining the historical and architectural evidence it claimed to overturn. Full exchange: Day 7, L0852–L0930 · Judgment ¶¶7.79–7.89
Publication and the press conference
On Day 8, L1671–L1694, Irving agreed that he had issued a glossy edition and held a press conference without investigating Auschwitz himself. His answer was: “I am a publisher in this respect.”
Day 8Rampton, defence counsel; Irving, claimant
Irving conceded that Judge Biddle never wrote “bloody liar”
Marie Claude Vaillant-Couturier, a French survivor, testified about Auschwitz at the Nuremberg trial in 1946. Judge Francis Biddle’s notebook summary of her evidence contains three words in parenthesis, “(this I doubt)”, set against a single statement that every camp used the same system of forced prostitution. Irving told audiences that Biddle had privately written of her: “I don’t believe a word of what she is saying. I think she is a bloody liar.” Rampton put the notebook, and Irving’s own research card copying it, in front of him.
… "Judge Biddle, however, sitting in judgment at Nuremberg, he looked at one Auschwitz survivor all day, a Frenchman -- I am sure you know her name, she gave a heartbreaking testimony about what she had survived -- and in his diary at the end of that day Judge Biddle privately wrote: 'I don't believe a word of what she is saying. I think she is a bloody liar'."
Mr Irving, he did not say that in his diary?
Gray called the assertion “a travesty of the evidence”
Gray found that Biddle’s note showed doubt about one statement, not about the witness, and ruled that Irving’s assertion that Biddle thought her “a bloody liar” “is a travesty of the evidence.” Full exchange: Day 8, L0089–L0142 · Judgment ¶13.49
The three words in the notebook
Later the same morning Rampton read Irving’s research card, which copied Biddle’s note: “... House of prostitution for SS selected young women as they were washing for maids. All camps used the same system (this I doubt). ...” Asked what warrant he had “for inflating that side note about one little paragraph about prostitution into a general doubt by Judge Biddle about the credibility of the whole of this lady’s testimony,” Irving answered that reading the notebooks gave him “a very good feeling for the sense of the way a judge is thinking.” Day 8, L0133–L0142.
Irving made four roof openings a test of the Auschwitz evidence
Architectural historian Robert Jan van Pelt presented documents, eyewitness accounts, photographs and structural evidence that morgue 1 of Auschwitz-Birkenau crematorium 2 was used as a gas chamber. Eyewitnesses described Zyklon-B gas pellets being poured in through four openings in the concrete roof. Irving treated the absence of clearly visible holes in the collapsed slab as a test of the entire body of evidence.
May I say that if the Auschwitz authorities were now to agree to clean off that rubble off the top of that concrete slab and find the holes I would tomorrow halt this case and abandon my action.
1993The Search for Truth in History
Related judgment-cited talk, unofficial captionsThe Search for Truth in History, 1993 · 1:10
Irving dismisses converging survivor accounts
Gray listed this 1993 talk among the material relied on by the defendants at paragraph 9.5. This clip comes from that recording, but it is not the passage Gray quoted. Here Irving argues that survivor descriptions were corrupted by later media and that their differences show they could not describe real events. Judgment ¶9.5 · Caption text · Open MP4
The collapsed roof couldn't show whether the openings had existed
Gray took the roof argument seriously. He found that the roof was too badly collapsed to show whether holes had existed and that their apparent absence fell far short of a reason to reject the independent evidence. Full exchange: Day 11, L0947–L0958 · Judgment ¶13.83
The roof argument in closing
On Day 32, L0189–L0210, Irving said van Pelt had accepted that the holes were not in the roof. Gray corrected him: van Pelt’s evidence was that the roof’s condition made it impossible to see where holes would have been. Rampton called Irving’s statement a misrepresentation of his witness’s evidence.
Day 12Rampton, defence counsel; Irving, claimant
Irving cut the sentence saying Hitler “at least knew”
Awaiting trial at Nuremberg, Joachim von Ribbentrop wrote notes in his cell. Irving quoted the passage in which Ribbentrop refused to believe that Hitler had ordered the destruction of the Jews. He stopped before the next sentence, in which Ribbentrop wrote that, judging from Hitler’s testament, one would suppose he at least knew about it. Rampton asked why that sentence was missing.
I can see that at once, Mr Irving. We are not going to argue about that. But do you not agree that, if you add the last sentence, then the picture of Hitler's personality which one derives from Ribbentrop's written words is a very great deal more equivocal, is it not?
I agree. It is a defeated man about to be hanged, who then writes, on the other hand judging from his testament, one would suppose that he at least knew about it, if not even ordered it, in his fanaticism against the Jews. What kind of evidence is that? Supposition.
Gray held that selective quotation breached a historian’s duty
Gray accepted that Ribbentrop’s cell notes were evidence of doubtful value either way. What he faulted was the cut: a historian must not give the reader a distorted impression by selective quotation, and “Irving fails to observe this duty.” Full exchange: Day 12, L1510–L1534 · Judgment ¶13.48
“Why quote one bad bit and leave off the other bad bit”
Irving called both halves of the passage “equally bad” as evidence. Rampton asked: “So why quote one bad bit and leave off the other bad bit which supplies the balance?” Irving answered that the passage “cries out to be cut and it got cut. It was chopped.” Day 12, L1529–L1534.
Day 13Rampton, defence counsel; Irving, claimant
Funfack denied first-hand knowledge of the Dresden toll
“Order of the Day 47” claimed that 202,040 people had died in the February 1945 bombing of Dresden and projected a final toll of 250,000. Irving had called the document spurious in 1963, then printed it after a copy reached him through Dr Max Funfack. Irving believed Funfack had been Dresden’s deputy chief medical officer. Funfack was a hospital urologist; in 1965 he told Irving that his numbers were third-hand and that he could give no firm death toll. The version of the document now accepted as genuine put the dead at about 20,000. The defence’s charge was that Irving kept using the inflated number to exaggerate the death toll for political effect.
“… I have only ever heard the numbers third-hand … Likewise, I was never Dresden’s Chief Medical Officer or even Deputy Chief Medical Officer … Therefore, I can give no firm [verbindliche] Information about the figure of the dead but only repeat what was reported to me’.” Mr Irving, from that date you knew, did you not, that Dr Funfack was not your man?
Gray found that Irving should have checked the document
After Funfack denied first-hand knowledge, Gray held that Irving should have checked the document’s history and stopped using it in the meantime. Irving instead accepted the number from a document he already considered suspect. Full exchange: Day 13, L0943–L1010 · Judgment ¶¶13.119–13.121
Day 14Rampton, defence counsel; Irving, claimant
Gray called Irving’s rhyme for his daughter “undeniably racist”
Lipstadt’s book had described Irving as antisemitic, and the defence also sought to prove that his own words showed racist views. Rampton read a rhyme that Irving wrote in his private diary for his nine-month-old daughter. This exchange deals with an allegation separate from the manipulation of historical documents.
Do you think that a nine month old can understand words spoken in English or any other language?
1991Milton, OntarioBayerische Hof speech
Primary recording played and quoted in court, open-captionedMilton, Ontario, October 5, 1991 · 4:35
The “telephone-box” sequence and connected passages
Gray reproduced extracts from this speech at paragraph 9.5 when setting out the defendants’ evidence of antisemitism. This is the exact sequence played and read in court, including the telephone-box story and the connected Chappaquiddick and “spurious survivors” passages. Trial: Day 29, L0075–L0294 · Exhibit DOC-29-5 · Judgment ¶9.5 · Caption text · Recording context
1995Tampa, FloridaNational Alliance speech
Related primary recording, open-captionedTampa, October 6, 1995 · 0:50
The “necessary” passage put to Irving on Day 14
This National Alliance speech excerpt was put to Irving later in the same day’s questioning about racism and antisemitism. It deals with an allegation distinct from the diary rhyme, and formed part of Gray’s overall finding on Irving’s views. Trial: Day 14, L1304–L1310 · Exhibit DOC-14-5 · Caption text · Recording context
Day 18, L0440–L0469: defence expert Richard Evans says there is only one ditty but many other remarks of that sort. Day 27, L1417 and Day 32, L0235: Irving returns to it in his own defence.
Day 19Evans, defence expert; Irving, claimant
Evans showed that Irving moved Hitler’s answer to Horthy by a day
In April 1943 Hitler and Ribbentrop pressed Admiral Horthy, the Hungarian regent, over what would happen to Hungary’s Jews at meetings on two successive days. In Hitler’s War, Irving ran Horthy’s protest from the second day, that the Jews “can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated,” straight into a reassurance from Hitler that belongs to the first day’s minutes, with nothing to mark the join or the passages left out between them. Irving had challenged Evans to name one place where he cut material from a document without marking it. Evans answered with the Horthy meetings.
Here is your -- you simply go straight on, what you said, "'They can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated', he protested. Hitler reassured him there is no need for that".
Evans stood by “a tissue of inventions” on Kristallnacht
On the night of November 9–10, 1938, synagogues and Jewish shops across Germany were burned and wrecked and Jews were beaten, arrested, and killed. Irving’s account had Hitler unaware of the pogrom and working to stop it once he knew. In his expert report, Evans wrote that this account relied on “a tissue of inventions, manipulations, suppressions and omissions.” Cross-examining him, Irving invited Evans to soften that verdict.
But in view of the fact that you write on page 251 quite robustly at the end of paragraph 1, once more Irving's account relies on a tissue of inventions, manipulations, suppressions and omissions, and I have been telling you for the last two hours there are numbers of documents to which you paid no attention or to which you have had no access, this is probably an over robust verdict. Would you agree?
Well, this is your account that Hitler did "everything he could to prevent things nasty happening" to the Jews in the pogrom of 8, 9, particularly 9 and 10 of November 1938. That is your account and it does indeed rely on a tissue of inventions, manipulations, suppressions and omissions.
You describe even now the interview with von Below, the Schaub papers, the Bruckner papers, whatever they were, as being just this tissue of inventions?
Yes. I think you accept their lies as being truth because that supports your line.
Gray adopted the substance of the verdict
Gray found that to write, as Irving did, that Hitler was “totally unaware of what Goebbels had done” was “to pervert the evidence,” and that the assertion that Hitler did everything he could to prevent the violence was “based upon misrepresentation, misconstruction and omission of the documentary evidence.”Full exchange: Day 21, L0691–L0733 · Judgment ¶¶13.14–13.18
Day 23Evans, defence expert; Irving, claimant; Gray, trial judge
A quotation misdated by a week supported Irving’s argument that Goebbels hid the killings
In the 1977 edition of Hitler’s War, Irving wrote that Goebbels noted the “ghastly secrets” of Auschwitz and Treblinka in his diary on March 27, 1942, but “held his tongue” when he met Hitler two days later. The proof was a Hitler remark that Irving dated to that later meeting. Evans traced the remark to the diary entry of March 20, a week before the summary it was supposed to follow. Irving asked him to concede that the misdating did not matter.
Well, because, let me go back to what you say in 1977, Hitler's War: "Ghastly secrets of Auschwitz and Treblinka were well kept. Goebbels wrote a frank summary of them in his diary on March 27 1942, but evidently held his tongue when he met Hitler two days later for he quotes only Hitler's remark, 'The Jews must get out of Europe. If need be, we must resort to the most brutal methods'.". So, you maintain that he made that statement about, which I just quoted, two days after Goebbels wrote this summary on March 27th. …
What you do is to quote Hitler, "The Jews must get out of Europe" from the diary of 20th March as if it was from 30th March, in other words, he made that statement before Goebbels made a frank summary. It is true that Goebbels made a frank summary of the extermination in March, but it is not true that he concealed it when he met Hitler two days later because the quote that you use to support your view that Hitler did not know about it after this frank summary on 27th March is lifted from a week earlier in the diary and not from two days later where it is not there. So I do think this is a clear piece of manipulation. This diary is written in chronological order. It is very difficult to get that date wrong.
Gray called Irving’s handling of the entry misleading
Gray found that the way Irving dealt with the diary entry of March 27, 1942 “is misleading and unsupported by the circumstantial evidence,” and that his treatment of the diary was “tendentious and unjustified.”Full exchange: Day 23, L0531–L0539 · Judgment ¶¶13.37–13.38
Day 25Gray, trial judge; Irving, claimant
Irving accepted that Hitler and Himmler discussed and agreed on killing Jews “as partisans”
Irving’s books repeatedly separated Hitler from the mass murder of Jews. A note in Heinrich Himmler’s appointment book lists a December 18, 1941 meeting with Hitler and the words “Jewish question / to be annihilated as partisans.” Irving offered several readings that kept the policy from implicating Hitler. Gray required a direct answer.
So are you or are you not saying that the notion of killing the Jews as partisans was something that was discussed and agreed between Hitler and Himmler?
Gray wrote that “certainly Hitler sanctioned the killing”
Summing up the shooting evidence, Gray noted that Irving’s own testimony was that “certainly Hitler sanctioned the killing of the Jews on the Eastern front,” and wrote: “It inexorably follows that Irving was misrepresenting the historical evidence when he told audiences in Australia, Canada and the US (as he accepted he did) that the shooting of Jews in the East was arbitrary, unauthorised and undertaken by individual groups or commanders.” Full exchange: Day 25, L0715–L0742 · Judgment ¶6.56 · ¶¶13.57–13.58
Irving’s Wolff notes left out millions killed and gassing
Karl Wolff was a senior SS general who worked between Himmler and Hitler. Irving used Wolff’s 1952 postwar interview as evidence that Hitler did not know about the extermination. When historian Peter Longerich compared Irving’s handwritten archive extract with the complete interview, two omitted passages referred to millions of dead and to gassing. The answers below came as Irving cross-examined Longerich.
… you left out the passage where actually Wolff is referring to millions of dead, and also you left out the passage that is referring to the vergassungs, the idea to gassings. …
… he is accepting the idea that millions of Jews were killed, and he is accepting the idea that they were killed by gas. …
Gray’s finding covered omissions of this kind
The complete interview contained evidence that weakened Irving’s use of Wolff as support for Hitler’s lack of knowledge. His extract preserved the passages favorable to that reading. On Hitler and the Jews generally, Gray found that Irving “has seriously misrepresented Hitler’s views on the Jewish question,” in some instances “by omitting documents or parts of them.” Full exchange: Day 26, L0093–L0179 · Judgment ¶¶6.137–6.139 · ¶13.31
Day 29Rampton, defence counsel; Irving, claimant
Irving’s diary named the National Alliance
Lipstadt linked Irving to right-wing extremists. Before trial, Irving said that he had no association with the National Alliance, a US neo-Nazi organization whose membership was limited to “non-Jewish Whites.” During cross-examination he said no diary entry referred to the group. Rampton moved five days forward in the same diary.
Five days later: “… Turned out the meeting here is also organized by the National Alliance and National Vanguard Bookshop. Well attended”. Now, Mr Irving, do you want to revise the answers you have just been giving me?
… In other words, you knew that both the meetings were organized by the National Alliance?
1995Tampa, FloridaNational Alliance speech
Primary recording, open-captionedTampa, October 6, 1995 · 1:05
Irving speaking at a National Alliance event
The recording documents Irving addressing the National Alliance gathering identified in the evidence. This excerpt contains the Auschwitz-responsibility passage later quoted in the defendants’ closing argument and addressed in Gray’s finding. Trial: Day 32, L0025 · Exhibit DOC-32-13 · Caption text · Recording context
Gray specifically referred at paragraph 10.24 to the recording of this talk, in which the chairman welcomed Irving “on behalf of the National Alliance.” This excerpt comes from a later audience discussion in the same recording; it is not the welcome Gray described. Judgment ¶10.24 · Caption text · Open MP4
Gray found that Irving knew the organization’s character
The diary entry was one of several records tying Irving to National Alliance events. Gray accepted that Irving was associated with the organization and could not have failed to understand its neo-Nazi and antisemitic character. Full exchange: Day 29, L0381–L0406 · Judgment ¶10.24 · ¶13.114
The nineteen instances
The defence selected nineteen instances where they said Irving had distorted the evidence, and Gray ruled on each: “Having considered the arguments, which I have summarised at some length, I have come to the conclusion that the criticisms advanced by the Defendants are almost invariably well-founded” (¶13.9). He took them under eighteen headings; the Riga heading contains two separate criticisms. He found for Irving on two points and against him on the rest. The quotations below are Gray’s own words from section 13 of the judgment.
Hitler’s trial in 1924. In Goering, and to a lesser extent in Hitler’s War, “Irving misrepresents Hitler’s role in the putsch.” ¶13.12
Crime statistics for Berlin, 1932. Irving “chose to cite, without qualification, the claim made by Daluege, a committed Nazi,” that Jews were responsible for a strikingly large share of fraud offences. ¶13.13
The events of Kristallnacht, November 1938. To write that Hitler was “totally unaware of what Goebbels had done” was “to pervert the evidence.” Gray described Irving’s assertion that Hitler did everything he could to prevent the violence as “based upon misrepresentation, misconstruction and omission of the documentary evidence.”¶¶13.14–13.18 · Exchange 9 above
The aftermath of Kristallnacht. Irving’s account of the party’s investigation “fails lamentably to reveal to his readers how much of a whitewash it was.” ¶¶13.19–13.20
The expulsion of the Berlin Jews, 1941. There is, Gray found, no evidence that Hitler “summoned” Himmler to his headquarters and “obliged” him to telephone to Heydrich an order that Jews were not to be liquidated. On the misread telephone log of December 1, 1941, “Irving accepted that he misrepresented this document.” ¶¶13.21–13.23
The shooting of the Jews in Riga. Irving used the parts of General Bruns’s account that suited his case and suppressed the qualifications: “Irving has perverted the sense of Bruns’s account.” On the related assertion that he suppressed a second account, from Frau Schultz-Dubois, Gray found for Irving: “I am not satisfied that this criticism is made out.” ¶¶13.24–13.25 · Exchange 1 above
Hitler’s views on the Jewish question. Irving “has seriously misrepresented Hitler’s views on the Jewish question. He has done so in some instances by misinterpreting and mistranslating documents and in other instances by omitting documents or parts of them.” ¶¶13.26–13.31
The Schlegelberger note. Irving presented an undated, unsigned copy as decisive evidence that Hitler ordered the “final solution” postponed, “when, as he should have appreciated, there are powerful reasons for doubting that it has the significance which he attaches to it.” ¶¶13.32–13.36
Goebbels’s diary entry of March 27, 1942. Irving’s account “is misleading and unsupported by the circumstantial evidence”; his treatment of the diary is “tendentious and unjustified.”¶¶13.37–13.38 · Exchange 10 above
Himmler’s minute of September 22, 1942. “Irving’s treatment of this minute is unjustifiably favourable to Hitler.” ¶¶13.39–13.40
Himmler’s note for his meeting with Hitler, December 10, 1942. The reference to keeping the well-to-do French Jews “healthy and alive” “should have alerted an objective historian to the sinister significance of the note in regard to the fate awaiting the other French Jews.”¶13.41
Hitler’s meetings with Antonescu and Horthy, April 1943.“In my judgment Irving materially perverts the evidence of what passed between the Nazis and Horthy on 17 April.”¶¶13.42–13.44 · Exchange 8 above
The deportation and murder of the Jews of Rome, October 1943. Gray took the view that “it was a culpable omission on Irving’s part not to inform his readers that these Jews were ultimately murdered.” ¶13.45
Himmler’s speeches of October 6, 1943 and May 5 and 24, 1944. Irving’s theory that the transcript was altered or sanitised was “fanciful”; dropping the speech from the 1991 edition of Hitler’s War was “another culpable omission.” ¶13.46
Hitler’s speech of May 26, 1944. Gray found for Irving: his prefatory comment did not amount to misrepresenting Hitler’s words. “The reader can judge for himself.” ¶13.47
Ribbentrop’s notes from his Nuremberg cell. Historians must not give the reader “a distorted impression by selective quotation. In my view Irving fails to observe this duty.” ¶13.48 · Exchange 5 above
Marie Vaillant-Couturier. Gray wrote that Irving’s assertion that Judge Biddle thought her “a bloody liar” “is a travesty of the evidence.” ¶13.49 · Exchange 3 above
Kurt Aumeier. Irving “minimised the significance of Aumeier’s evidence (even if he did not suppress it altogether) when he confined reference to it to a footnote in Nuremberg.” ¶13.50
Gray’s summary: “I find that in most of the instances which they cite the Defendants’ criticisms are justified. In those instances it is my conclusion that, judged objectively, Irving treated the historical evidence in a manner which fell far short of the standard to be expected of a conscientious historian” (¶13.51). On motive, he found “that for the most part the falsification of the historical record was deliberate and that Irving was motivated by a desire to present events in a manner consistent with his own ideological beliefs even if that involved distortion and manipulation of historical evidence” (¶13.163).