 ON
APRIL 17, 1974, while researching for his Hitler
biography, David Irving visited Dr. Karl
Thöt in Bonn, West Germany. Thöt
lived not far from the Bundestag where he he had
until 1968 been employed as a verbatim
stenographer.
Mr. Irving knew that in the 1930s Dr Thöt
had been a Reichstag stenographer, and that in
September 1942 he had been chosen by Martin
Bormann, Hitler's secretary, as one of the
dozen expert stenographers appointed to take down
every word spoken by Hitler in conference
[see
Hitler's own remarks on this]. Hitler no
longer trusted his generals to speak the truth to
him. In the years that remained, these dedicated
professional stenographers recorded millions of
words, which teams of typists typed up,
double-spaced, on tens of thousands of pages at the
headquarters and in Berlin. Regrettably, in the very last days of the war
Hitler's Beauftragter für die
Kriegsgeschichtsschreibung, Generalmajor
Walter Scherff, ordered all copies destroyed
before taking his own life. Searching the ruins of
the Berghof, American troops found half-burned
stenograms and reconstructed some of the texts,
which Dr Helmut Heiber published in full
under the title Hitlers Lagebesprechungen
(Institut für Zeitgeschichte, 1962); DTV
Stuttgart published an abbreviated selection as a
paperback in April 1963, and an English translation
appeared as Hitler and His Generals,
Military Conferences 1942-1945 (New York,
2003). Interestingly, the dust jacket of the latter
edition claims that the transcripts "contain some
of the very rare references to the Holocaust in
Hitler's own words." In fact they do not, and
neither Auschwitz
nor Oswiecim is referenced in the index.  These
fragments do however record vital evidence - e.g.
on January 27, 1945 when Generaloberst Heinz
Guderian informs him that the Red Army has just
overrun Auschwitz,
Hitler's only reply is just: okay, "Jawohl" -- he
seems to have no idea that Auschwitz
was anything other than a slave-labour camp built
for the nearby synthetic chemicals plant. Informed
by the general in these words, "The attacks along a
continuous line from the Tichau area to Auschwitz
have been deflected; however Auschwitz itself was
lost," Hitler finally interrupts to ask only,
"Where is the main coal area?"
All the stenographers, closely questioned by the
Americans, stated quite bluntly that there was
never any reference at all at the Führer-HQ to
what is now, since about 1972, called the
Holocaust. (Mr. Irving will post these
interrogations here shortly.) Thöt was a professional, and clearly very
proud of his abilities as a stenographer - one of
the best, like Heinrich Himmler's own man
Rudolf Brandt (hanged by the Americans in
1947). When Mr. Irving visited Thöt, the latter
revealed that he had kept a shorthand diary through
the period. He spent the whole day of Mr. Irving's
visit dictating from his own shorthand onto a tape
recorder. The Trustees seized all these priceless
recording tapes with Mr. Irving's archives and
other property in 2002, and the tapes were
destroyed. He had however typed a complete
transcript totalling some 63 pages. Mr. Irving
posts the corrected transcript of the Thöt
diary here in two sections, for ease of
downloading, 1942 to
1943; and 1944
to 1945. He submitted it at the time to
Dr. Thöt for correction (see
the latter's May 1974 letter confirming
this). Thöt died in 1984, and we do not know the
location of the original diary. The contents are a
historical document; the copyright vests in
Thöt's heirs. Mr. Irving does assert copyright
in this transcript. He provided a copy of the
entire diary to the German Bundesarchiv in about
1992, but when he was banned from that archives in
July 1993, and then from Germany in November 1993,
he demanded its return along with the rest of the
Sammlung Irving. The diary provides a
fascinating and accurate mirror of life at the
Führer's headquarters, and of the awe in which
Hitler was held by even the most professional and
highly qualified civil servants (men who in the
Third Reich were all required to hold high
university qualifications). 
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