Come off, it Mr Longerich! We already have millions of lines in the archives, so why read between them?

Wednesday, January 30, 2002
(London, England)

A FRIENDLY U.S. bookseller asks, "Are you aware of this book written by Peter Longerich called The Unwritten Order: Hitler's Role in the Final Solution"? Indeed I am, it was published first in German (his English is not very good, but he is a conformist historian who teaches at a minor British university); it is evidently his own exploitation, i.e. double-dipping, of his expert witness report for the Lipstadt trial (for which he was already paid £76,195.25 in fees). Amazon says it is due out in May.

This is a minor scandal. Longerich is the author of the lesser work Politik der Vernichtung, which he and his fellow conformists make required reading for their luckless students; he confesses in lectures that he has found no documentary evidence of Hitler's role in the Holocaust, but in this new book he once again hastens to claim that such evidence is "there," between the lines.

Come off, it Mr Longerich! We already have millions of lines in the archives, so why read between them? If there is no explicit documentary evidence even now, sixty years on, even the dimmest academic can surely guess at the reason why? Or should I write, even the most intellectually corrupt?

And that is the reason for my beef. Van Pelt, Browning, Longerich, Evans, have all subsequently published books on the trial, rehashing their paid neutral expert evidence. So their evidence was influenced by commercial considerations. It was not neutral after all, or am I missing something? If Longerich had titled his book: "Still no proof for Hitler's role in the Holocaust," he would have been on to a loser. Madison Avenue and its British counterparts would have looked the other way. (Under cross-examination, Van Pelt actually denied on oath that he intended to publish his expert evidence as a book. He has now done so).

This is the same Peter Longerich who admitted under cross examination that he had omitted all reference to the 1942 Schlegelberger memorandum ("the Führer has repeatedly stated that he wants the Solution of the Jewish Problem postponed until the war is over") from his history books.

The publisher's illiterate, ungrammatical, and misspelt blurb for the book puffs it as "a compelling account of how Hitler came to take the decision to kill the Jews," but then I see that this impressive quote is from Longerich's friend and fellow witness Prof. Richard ("Skunk") Evans, whom Lipstadt's gang paid a fat fee of at least £70,181 for giving his neutral evidence in the way he did.

These neutral expert witnesses all know which side their bread is buttered on. Thank god for Real History.

Relevant items on this website:

Peter Longerich index

At a 1998 London lecture, Longerich tells the Chairman in advance that he will refuse to answer any questions put in Question Time by Mr Irving (--Some "neutral"!)

Longerich: "Ein Führerbefehl war nicht nötig"

Transcripts of Lipstadt trial