| Dear Ed, It needs to be stated immediately in the preamble to my reply that I am currently the victim of a Salman Rushdie-type international campaign to suppress my views as a very well-known writer and historian. This campaign, conducted by a global lobby of wealthy and influential people, has had horrifying consequences. They have used every possible method, including legal trickery and influence on governments, to prevent me from publicly and freely expressing my opinions. They have deliberately smeared my name around the globe so that I, who only recently was described by Britain's leading Defence Correspondent, John Keegan, of The Daily Telegraph, as having written in hitler's war one of the two best books on World War II; and who was described by The Times as being in the foremost rank of Britain's biographers and historians; and who was reviewed in the most glowing terms by historians of the rank of A J P Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper, am now freely criminalized and libelled worldwide as a "neo Nazi" and fascist, without the slightest shred of serious evidence in support. In every other civilised country, I would submit, with the utmost respect, the campaign has eventually been seen for what it is. I would also query the justice of the government introducing data and materials dating from after their original refusal. The sequence of events which this global lobby has adopted to secure my gagging is: (1) getting me convicted in Germany for the offence (unique to Germany) of "defaming the dead". Under German law there is no defence to this. Every court so far involved in these hearings against me and many others - and there have been scores already - has refused to hear any defence evidence or witnesses whatever. (2)getting me deported from Canada, on the grounds of the German "conviction". |
(i) I last lectured on behalf of the Gesellschaft für Freie Publizistik (Association for Free Journalism) about five years ago. It is a legally constituted democratic German association which eschews all forms of violence, racism, or extremist beliefs. It is not a proscribed organisation. I have had no association to the best of my belief with the Nationale Liste; this does not mean of course that its members have not in individual capacities attended my lectures.
(j) On April 21, 1990 [sic. 1991] I spoke at a function organised (not "for me") in Munich by Althans. The meeting was legally organised under the German Law on Assemblies (Versammlungsgesetz). I do not know what "neo Nazi" means: I believe Althans was not born until some twenty years after the Nazi Party collapsed. To the best of my knowledge he has no criminal convictions.
If the phrase "neo Nazi" means nothing substantive, perhaps we can ignore that phrase. If it means something substantive, perhaps I can be informed, so that I can address the substance rather than the odour. I last saw Althans about two years ago, and have had no contact with him since, since I disapprove of remarks that he has made.
I did not lead a street demonstration as alleged. Following the meeting referred to, I was occupied packaging my books for one hour during which the alleged march took place, so I could not have "led it". The Bavarian political police detained a large number of innocent people in the street, and charged each of them (ludicrously) with being the "leader" of the march. It was then found that the march was also legal, so all charges were dropped. I was not charged with anything relating to any march. I repeat: I was not present during any march, let alone an illegal one.
(k) Prohibited from political activity. I have never heard of any such allegation. I do not engage in political activity anyway. I am enjoined from doing so under Germany's Aliens Act (Ausländergesetz). So a formal prohibition would be unnecessary.
(l) In June 1984 as stated I was (illegally) detained and expelled from Austria. Upon appeal by me the detention and expulsion were found by the Austrian courts to have been illegal; they were reversed, the courts ordered full compensation and damages paid paid to me (the lawyers took the lot!), and we prosecuted the Austrian civil servants responsible for wrongful exercise of executive office. The Austrian minister of the interior who had ordered my arrest, the communist Karl Blecha, was subsequently dismissed in disgrace over his involvement in a cargo insurance scam (a ship scuttled, in which five men died.)
November 1989 warrant for my arrest: I have often heard this legend. Why is the warrant not produced and executed then, if it exists? Have they not heard of Interpol. I have been to Austria repeatedly and legally since then, most recently on January 13 and July 4 1993, my passport each time being subjected to the most detailed scrutiny and computer check by the Austrian police on the frontier. On January 13 this check lasted ten to fifteen minutes. My Austrian lawyer has called upon the Austrian authorities to produce this alleged warrant and enforce it, or shut up. Incidentally, if my conscience was not clean would I have risked visiting Austria so often since 1989?
(m) on November 9, 1993 the Munich district administrative council (Kreisverwaltungsreferat), aliens department, issued the order referred to, a voluntary departure notice requiring me to leave within twenty four hours. I at once complied, pending an appeal which my German lawyer has already initiated. If anything, episodes like this should give the Australian government pause to consider: do they really want to become part of such a global gagging effort?
(n) in April 1992 the South African government issued to me the notification of withdrawal of visa exemption referred to. The S.A. newspapers investigated the virtually unparalleled case, and found that it was the same international lobby which had put pressure on the South African government to ban me. (In this case, locally represented by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, SAJBOD). The newspapers also reported that even the ANC did not favour my being banned, as it was a violation of free speech. In December 1992 Pretoria granted me a visa for a three month visit to South Africa, which passed without incident (January to March 1993).
(o) in March 1992 I delivered talks to two small groups of people, not exceeding twenty, in Württemberg and Augsburg. I am not aware if they belonged to the Nationale Offensive. I have not heard of that organisation to the best of my knowledge and belief. (If they did, it would not alter the historical content of the lecture I delivered, so I did not ask.) I take it from this paragraph that the organisation was not even banned at the time.
(p) see my remarks above about "neo Nazi." On an afternoon in November 1991 I spoke to several hundred people in Halle, at short notice. On this occasion very large numbers of (presumably non-"neo-Nazi") television and radio reporters were present from around the world, and my remarks were addressed as much to them as to the audience. I have since written to twenty of these news organisations asking for any recordings that have survived of my speech, without success so far. My brief ten-minute speech has been greatly misrepresented by the international lobby referred to. In my speech, I said to the (largely youthful) audience: "You are young, the sons and grandsons of the wartime generation. Nobody can accuse you of committing war crimes. You are Germany's future."
A group in the front rank started baying Hitler slogans and giving the Hitler salute, and I furiously interrupted them: "I said, you are Germany's future; and you are discrediting it by using the slogans and salutes of the past." Needless to say, the news media showed only the italicised sentence, and pictures of Sieg-heiling youths (who were paid to do so by the media, it turned out.) Martin Bell, the BBC's veteran correspondent [Note: Since May 1997 an independent Member of Parliament], was present, and he can confirm this; I can probably produce other names of witnesses, although the events are rather long ago. I left Halle five minutes after my speech - which was the first speech that afternoon - and saw no signs of any violence.
(q) I organised a lecture in Chelsea Town Hall [in November 1991] for Mr Fred Leuchter, a professional consultant to the American penitentiaries on execution technology. Mr Leuchter legally entered Britain at Dover, and both his and his wife's passports were duly stamped by passport officers. I saw the stamps myself. There is no suggestion that he entered illegally, and consequently there can be no suggestion that I "aided and abetted." In all honesty however I am bound to admit: what are we coming to, when society tries to ban a forensic expert from giving a lecture, within the law, to an invited, peaceful, and law-abiding British audience?
(r) I have referred to Althans above. I have severed associations with this young man two years or so ago. He now appears to be the darling of the German media. To the best of my belief he has a clean criminal record.
Clive Derby-Lewis: I first met him in 1986 and again in 1987 when he chaired one or two of my lectures at Pretoria and other universities; I may have met him on my third visit to South Africa in 1989. At all material times he was a highly respected former British army officer and Conservative member of parliament. He introduced me to an impressive circle of South African friends including army officers, Supreme Court judges, and ministers. I coincidentally heard him address an audience two years ago in the House of Lords in London. Until his arrest last year he was a member of President F W de Klerk's presidential council. He was a patriotic, upstanding, and decent officer and politician, though with a different set of values, it turns out, than we are accustomed to in the northern hemisphere. He never discussed with me his motives in allegedly plotting to assassinate the Communist leader Chris Hani, leader of the violent terrorist organisation known as Umkhonto weSizwe; if he had, I would have suggested that he find other methods of solving the problem. Perhaps a visa ban on Mr Hani would have sufficed. [Note: Derby-Lewis was sentenced to death for the assassination of S A Communist Party leader Chris Hani and is currently (1998) in jail]
François Genoud is to the best of my knowledge a respectable Swiss attorney, with of course no criminal record. [Note: Genoud died in 1997] He has upset the international Zionist lobby with his support of legal Palestinian causes (he has Palestinian family connections, I believe). I have known him for thirty years, and he has proved a blessing to me as a source of access to exclusive caches of documents including the private papers of Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels, and Adolf Hitler to which he purchased literary rights in the 1950s. This exclusive access has naturally aroused anger among my rival historians.
Anthony Hancock has been my printer for about twenty years. I selected him because of the favourable commercial terms he offers. (However I make more use of a local Jewish printing firm, Newman's.) He has made no secret of his rightwing views to me, and I have made no secret to him of the limits to which I can accept them. He is a personal friend, who has been the target of criminal actions from the same international lobby for some years. His printing works has twice been firebombed by them. The police caught the perpetrators. Unlike his (and my) opponents, he has no criminal record.
Gottfried Küssel. To the best of my belief I have not met or been introduced to him.
Fred Leuchter has the sense of political commitment of a potato. He is a friend. As stated above he was until about 1991 an expert consultant under contract to a number of U.S. penitentiaries. Preparing to defend a "false information" court action in 1988 in Canada - at the instigation of the same international lobby referred to seriatim above - the defence team asked several U.S. penitentiaries who executed convicts using gas chambers to identify an expert or consultant on such execution devices, capable of giving evidence in court. Several prison governors unanimously nominated Leuchter. I have seen their letters. He agreed to conduct certain forensic examinations in situ, having warned the defence most creditably that if his findings came out unfavourably to them he would not be a party to their suppression. I am personally impressed by Mr Leuchter's integrity and courage, despite the attempts now being made to ruin him (he has been robbed of all his consultancy contracts on which he depended) and to criminalize him using the same methods as are being used globally against me. I consider it a privilege to have made his acquaintance: a simple, honest American who is now "mad as hell" because of what he has been subjected to in the course of defending Free Speech.
General Otto Ernst Remer. I am aware of his name, but have no association or dealings with him. [Note: Remer died in exile in Spain in 1997]
Christian Worch is a rightwing Hamburg attorney (or para-legal), whom I last met about two years ago. He organised two or three lectures for me in northern Germany on an ad hoc basis, in complete concordance with, and with the cooperation of, the local authorities. I am not aware that Worch has any criminal record or that his character is suspect or that he runs a proscribed organisation, nor do I believe this to be so. I believe that he is running for office in democratic elections. [Worch is currently (1998) held in a German jail under the country's laws for the suppression of Free Speech].
Ernst Zündel. I met Zündel when called upon by the defence, and accepted by the Canadian District Court as an expert witness, in the 1988 "false information" prosecution referred to above. Since the Court of Appeal has cleared Zündel of all charges, there appears no need to go into further detail. I am aware that he is under powerful attack by the same international lobby to which I refer above. Although it is not specifically suggested otherwise, let me state here that I do not endorse all of Mr Zündel's political beliefs or opinions, so far as I have heard them represented.
(s) I am not familiar at all with this quotation or its context. The date
suggests that it was an interview in connection with the republication of my flagship biography Hitler's War (first published by Macmillan, The Viking Press, etc). The oppositional violence I anticipated did then partially materialise, when the international lobby to which I refer above began a campaign of intimidation of bookshops and smashing their windows to persuade them not to stock this (highly respected) book. All this reminded me strongly of the Nazi methods of the 1930s.
(t) I am not familiar with this quotation either. What is Wühlarbeit? Stirring things up? Controversy? I'll go along with that, in so far as the Immigration Act of Australia specifically says that people cannot be excluded simply because they may arouse controversy.
In the paragraph following (t) there is the ominous phrase, "having regard particularly to your recent conduct." What is that? If they don't spell it out, I shall ignore it. And what do they mean by (last lines) "undue harm"? That I may kick and scratch and bite? That I may cost the Oz community a bundle? It seems rather vague.
General point: Before getting involved in this, we should consider simply flatly refusing to answer. I rather fear that we are getting into an endless and very costly debate. The Minister may then require me, months along this road, to produce evidence of the Appeals, the Transcripts, the Broadcasts, etc. This could take years and effectively stop me writing another book in my life. Think about it and the implications!
Yours sincerely,
David Irving
David Irving