David Irving |
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
First posted Sunday, November 21, 2010
© Focal Point 2010
Planes were diverted over a wide area of the mid West and the volcanic ash . . . is still darkening the Hoosier sky.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)I BIKE over to the Post Office carrying a huge box of DVDs and other stuff to mail to Jaenelle Antas in Indianapolis.
I am still searching for the daughters of Maimu Alber, whose mother was nanny to Heinrich Himmler's two children by his secretary Hedwig Potthast, including his son Helge (left). She told me her mother had taped her memoirs, but died in 2004 before letting me hear it. Case University provides me with data to locate them; Maimu herself is buried in Ohio.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)MARKUS H. sends me facsimiles of several more Himmler and Globocnik documents, saying that some of the Odilo Globocnik items are fake (but not which). I thank him. Himmler's letter to Rascher, which he sent me last month, is obviously fake. I think these are fake too:
I have been dubious for some time, ever since I saw the [same] August 1943 Globocnik item sold at a Louisville "Show of Shows" show in February 2003. The seller there was Bill B. He told me he got the document and an original Globocnik photo from the widow.Shortly, after perusing other documents in this set, I add: "Interesting, that they persuaded Generalleutnant Rudolf Schmundt, Chief of Army Personnel, to arise from the grave in January 1945 and sign that Beförderungsurkunde [certificate of promotion]! He died Oktober 1944."
Game, set and match, I think.
JAENELLE is most disaffected that Gabriela -- a runner-up two years ago to Miss Peru -- is flying up from Lima this week to assist me here for a month. She has often assisted me in the United States in recent years before entering the beauty-pageant circuit. She is now a trained management consultant, but says she has taken time off work to come.
A barrage of messages from Indianapolis makes the discontent clear. Indeed, there is a series of volcanic eruptions from Mount Jeanelle which shakes the ground as far away as England and Florida.
I cannot think why, but to stay on the safe side I cancel the invitation to Gabriela, as Jaenelle is indispensable.
A friend hears the shockwaves in England and writes me:
By the sound of things Jaenelle is most unhappy -- any mention of the felonious Peruvian is like a red rag to a bull.
I reply: "Planes were diverted over a wide area of the mid West and the volcanic ash . . . is still darkening the Hoosier sky."
Good work all afternoon on Himmler, and Chapter Three is finished in its preliminary form. It has a good ending but I need a new word for creepers. Unfortunately Jaenelle is not here . . . so I cannot ask her. Chapter Four has a good beginning too, I may call it Gaudeamus igitur. I can hear a loud bleat coming from R. [one of my unofficial Gang of Editors] already.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)AND still no sign that the Iolkos royalties payment has come through from Greece.
Markus H. agrees that those documents are fake. That General Rudolf Schmundt was already dead in January 1945 had not occurred to him.
I reply: "I knew his widow. She described to me the genuine sorrow of Hitler when she visited him in the Wolf's Lair after her husband's death." [Ich kannte ja seine Witwe; sie schilderte mir die echte Ergriffenheit Hitlers als sie ihn nach dem Tode Ihres Mannes in der Wolfsschanze besuchte.]
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)E-MAIL exchange with Markus H. about the Himmler stuff in Israel.
Interesting questions from an Australian student, who calls himself "Hugo Stiglitz" - evidently a pseudonym.
I have always reserved a manner of respect for you as an ethical historian who's less interested in the anxiety of the Holocaust's impact across the world, than one who's more intrigued by Nazism as a whole. I think your book Nuremberg: The Last Battle_ is absolutely brilliant. As a second year law student in Australia I find myself in the minority regarding my views on the International Military Tribunal for major Nazi "war criminals". The usual platitudes are discussed; Goering: the Teutonic arch-criminal... Speer: the penitent artist... Hess: the mad zealot, but never have my teacher's, or fellow students for that matter considered discussing the "tu quoque" nature of the trial, or documents that were entered in as evidence to serve the prosecution that can only be best described as perjury, notably Franz Ziereis' "sworn affidavit" (which he stated and signed whilst he was in a hospital dying of gunshot wounds) that implicatesd SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Ernst Kaltenbrunner in a series of crimes against humanity conducted at Mauthausen-Gusen. I wish to ask you a few questions regarding the trial:Then follow his questions. I reply:
- Question: In your judgment why did the IMT sentence the feckless Wilhelm Frick to death?
- A.: Probably the inbred hatred of one lawyer for another comes into it. I don't really know.
- Question: Is it fair to assert that this was really a Stalin trial with international trappings?
- A.: It is important to put the trial in a space-time context. Just as the "Holocaust" is inconceivable without the rising climate of brutality and barbarism, so the injustices and inequalities of the Nuremberg trial are inconceivable without studying the public's mood and needs. I have drawn attention to these in my book, which I always regard as one of my most readable.
- Question: Were Erich von em Bach-Zelewski, August Eigruber, Kurt Daleuge, or Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk ever considered as possible defendants? Given the fact that they were far superior to several of those finally included on the indictment.
- A.: As you know from the book, a short list of defendants was drawn up and rigidly adhered to, with nobody being added later. Had the people who drew up the list had access to the codebreaking intercepts (see http://www.fpp.co.uk/Himmler/decodes ) they could hardly have left Bach-Zelewski and Kurt Daluege off their list. Daluege had gone insane through syphilis by the time the war ended, and Bach was tried, much later, by the Germans and convicted.
- Question: Was Kaltenbrunner a mere fill-in Heydrich, or the dreadful brute the IMT had made him out to be?
- A.: He certainly committed capital offences, but he was a mere shadow of Heydrich, whose cruel Intelligence was behind most of the SS criminality.
- Question: Although you generally disagree with the trial in general, by your summation, at least hypothetically, who deserved the gallows, acquittal, or prison? I have always found Alfred Jodl's sentence a gross miscarriage of justice.
- A.: Speer deserved to hang by the standards of that Tribunal, but he had sanitised his real diary and concealed it -- and therein lay the deadly evidence. See the book by Mathias Schmidt, Albert Speer, The End of the Legend. Sauckel should not have been hanged. Jodl was hanged only as a horse trade with the Russians, who had wanted to hang Hess. Schacht and Papen should not have been acquitted by the standards of that Tribunal. The notes by [the American judge] Biddle on the sentencing session are very good for this topic. I used them in the book.
A baby iguana is back on the same branch as its three-foot long parent who has been driving us crazy by pooping on the back patio all month. Jeez, but they're ugly critters: Abe Foxman is a filmstar in comparison.
Supper at El Siboney. There is an email from Kevin when I return. Mount Jaenelle has erupted all over her Facebook page. "I am told that the whole saga is posted on Facebook." Heads down, and the writing continues.
I wonder if you could help me on an artifact which I am led to believe was used by Adolf Hitler as a walking cane. I can provide photographs, the description of the cane is wood, inscribed 1936 DS as an initial also unlike the one sold recently in America this has a number of badges from various towns within the Reich including Munich.
I send him the usual warnings about provenance and authenticity.
Conformist:
Professor Peter Longerich, world-famous German-born researcher and biographer of all the leading Nazis
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)MARKUS H. sends me word that Peter Longerich has now written a book on Dr Joseph Goebbels. That is quick; he only just published a Himmler biography. What will he do next? Hess? Rommel? Göring? Milch? Dr Morell? Churchill? Hitler?
My own Goebbels biography took me eight years; but then again it is reasonable to speculate that he has benefited from all the pioneering research work I did: I was the first to unseal the original 1944-1945 boxes of Goebbels diaries on microfiches in the KGB archives in Moscow in 1992 (left - seconds before I unsealed the first boxes). I researched all his private papers in California, his correspondence in the private archives of Rudolf Hess's widow, and all the files of the British authorities, and found the private papers of his first girlfriends and much else. All of these research files were stolen from me after 2002.
Longerich was one of Deborah Lipstadt's "neutral experts" who were permitted to read and copy all my research files by way of Discovery [now called: disclosure] in the 2000 Lipstadt Trial.
When the Trustees finally returned my archives to me in December 2007, seized after the trial, all the key Himmler and Goebbels boxes were missing, including my Box 51 on "Hitler and the Judenfrage". Lipstadt's lawyer told the High Court that her experts had found those documents to be particularly valuable, rather discounting the view of Professor Richard "Skunky" Evans that my research was "valueless".
My Goebbels archive boxes, containing the photographic prints from the Goebbels diary microfiches in the KGB archives in 1992, and all eight drafts of my Goebbels biography including the handwritten early drafts, with all my archival and source notes, were never returned to me.
I suppose I could readily put my suspicions to rest by checking Longerich's books, but on principal I refuse to open them. If I did, that would open the way to the next accusation levelled against me by these slime-balls.
All the same, it is a coincidence. The High Court papers record that one of Dr Longerich's thieving "expert" researchers, Dr Tobias Jersak (below right), was caught red-handed carrying my property out of the "safe" Sussex, England, warehouse where my seized goods were stored by the Trustee; this outrage was admitted in the correspondence between lawyers when she unsuccessfully claimed that all my possessions be turned over to her, a hopeless and dishonest lawsuit which she dropped.
What an unsavoury character is this Professor Longerich! Venal, unimaginative, boring, dishonest, and afraid of open debate. "Neutral," he was not: He was the one who refused in advance in 1998 to answer any question I put to him at a public lecture -- in particular about the Schlegelberger document proving that Hitler wanted to postpone the Final Solution until the war was over. It was at his lecture at the German Institute in London. [See The Radical's Diary, October 27, 1998 ]
When I politely raised the question, the Chairman rose and said, "Dr Longerich has asked me to state that he is not prepared to answer questions from you, Mr Irving."
I am not afraid to debate; so why is he?
Yes, they broke the mould when they made this 'historian'; or did they? Tja, die Historikerschaft. German historians, liars and cowards. And thieves.
"Today is November 13. Exactly a year ago the traditional enemy hacked into our private emails and splashed them all over the Internet including Wikileaks, and destroyed our website and online bookstore. We are now up again and running better than ever before. I would like to say, Thank you Enemy (and thank you to those who helped repair the damage). But of course they did lose us around $50,000, from which it is taking a long time to recover."
Monday, November 15, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)I WRITE yet again to Iolkos, my Greek publisher, this time trying a different tack:
I know that these are difficult economic times, but please can we have the payment due to us? Can we charge your credit card ? We have the number on file, but we need a new expiry date. Please reply today. The amount owing is euros 1459.90 but we would make a small reduction to cover your card costs. With best wishes, [etc].As usual, he does not reply. I guess he has been swept under by the Greek financial crisis. The domino effect is gathering momentum.
To Jaenelle:
I have decided to widen my daily newsletter page to the same width as The Huffington Post, as an example. Other pages will also expand to that width as I create them. I am not going to start using that quantity of code, as I think their page is horrendously bloated with code and consequently takes TIME to build. I started my page in 1998 when screens were much narrower than today, firstly at 550 pixels. As from today I shall make it 970 pixels wide. As a first stage I shall introduce an extra right hand column, which will just have our books linked to the appropriate bookstore bookpage. That will bring them up into view, without scrolling down. Then I will rotate their sequence from time to time. Some of the images I will animate. What do you think? I value your brain input.This produces an eloquent response, shall we say. Mount Jaenelle. I respond:
"Ah, the hidden author in you is coming to the fore. Good. As you will have observed, I hate reading and writing emails. They are a plague, like cellphones. . . Hey ho. And the Greek publisher is still not answering my requests that he pay the $2,000 he owes. But I have long learned not to take my irritation over little things out of other folks who are innocent."
Maybe the Greek publisher ignores your emails because he knows you are ignoring mine? Karma.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)
MARK W. reports: "If you haven't already seen it, you may be interested in this German television report which has a clip of you addressing a meeting some years ago in Germany." -- Evidently in Halle, 1991. What's bugging them?
Harry von G. asks me: "Before I forget it, Hans Baur related in private that Otto Günsche (right, with Hitler) had the order from Hitler to give Eva the coup de grâce after she took the poison, just to make certain, and that he did so. This might explain why the skull recently investigated in Moscow has a bullet hole, but is of a women younger than thirty." [Hans Baur erzählte im kleinen Kreis, daß Günsche von Hitler den Auftrag hatte, Eva nach ihrem Selbstmord mit Gift zur Sicherheit ihr einen "Fangschuß" zu geben, um eine absolute Sicherheit des Selbstmordes zu gewährleisten. Dies tat er. Das würde auch erklären, warum die kürzlich untersuchte Schädeldecke in Moskau zwar ein Schußloch aufwies, jedoch von einer Frau unter 30 stammen soll.]
I reply: "Günsche told me in 1967 that Hitler gave him the command to finish him off with his pistol if necessary, saying to me: 'That would have been the hardest order of my life.' But Günsche left open whether he had actually carried it out, and I considered it proper not to press him." [Günsche erzählte mir ca 1967 er habe von Hitler den Auftrag gehabt, ihm einen Fangschuss falls nötig zu geben, 'das wäre der schwerste Befehl meines Lebens gewesen.' Günsche liess dabei freilich offen, ob er ihn ausgeführt hatte, ich habe wohlweislich nicht gefragt.]
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)MARKUS H. tells me that the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich has now published its entire archive of interview transcripts online, the Zeugenschrifttum. I reply, "Yes, I read them in the 1960s and 1970s. They even showed me the Karl Wolff transcript confidentially." It is a noteworthy publication, but I add: "I am well ahead of them. I started my online archives ten years ago. See for example http://www.fpp.co.uk/Himmler. Scores of my interview transcripts which I donated to the Institut are among those they have now published. I know that Ian Kershaw and many another historian have used them.
After breakfast I write thanking the Institut für Zeitgeschichte: "Sehr geehrte Herren!
Congratulations on publication of your vast collection of Zeugenschriiften. That is truly a valuable step toward objective historical research. Pity however that the Institut für Zeitgeschichte did not pursue these interviews more intensively when the subjects from the Nazi era were still alive. Still ... our thanks.[Darf ich kurz gratulieren zur Veröffentlichung der Bestände "Zeugenschrifttum" des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte. Das ist wirklich ein wertvoller Schritt für die objektive Geschichtsforschung. Nur schade, dass das Institut für Zeitgeschichte die Arbeit nicht viel intensiver betrieben hatte, als die Leute aus der NS-Zeit noch am Leben waren. Immerhin... wir danken sehr.]
Friday, November 19, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)THE BRANCHES from which the iguana pooped on our backyard have now been cut back. That puts him out of business. I guess we have now inconvenienced our incontinent friend, the four-legged Mr Iggy, considerably. We shall now see him up a tree on the other side of the fence wondering where his toilet went, and hopping from one leg to the other, to the other, to the other. I wonder what his revenge will be.
A good afternoon's writing on Himmler. Chapter 4, on his student years, takes shape in its third and then fourth draft, but it may need splitting.
I have not read the other biographers apart of course from the first half of Peter Padfield: Macmillan Ltd, worried about the turgid manuscript he had submitted in 1988, asked me to report on it, which task I reluctantly accepted and abandoned after writing three hundred pages of criticisms, highlighting all its omissions and weaknesses -- not least that Himmler totally vanishes from its early chapters, and that Padfield seems to rely entirely on a dozen books, most of them proven fakes like Hermann Rauschning (who wrote "Conversations with Hitler" despite having met him only once at a cocktail party), and Felix Kersten, the notorious masseur, whose diaries turned out to have been written by his sister.
I am sure other biographers have skipped across these early Himmler years lightly, but the child is father of the man, and that is why the various facets of his otherwise conventional bourgeois youth need exploring -- his Catholicism, his delight in church architecture, his fascination with military uniforms, church regalia and ritual, his possibly phoney desire to go to war -- any war, his curiosity about other countries like Russia, Spain, Turkey and Georgia; his obsession with dueling, his attitude toward young women.
What a wonderful tool the Internet now is if used judiciously -- I can check the authors and titles of all the books which young Himmler notes as having read, and see summaries of their content too; and even find online facsimiles of very old books, like one written by his father Professor Gebhard Himmler, on philology.
I have exploited all the 1919-1922 diaries now (they are in California), and will shape the next chapter structurally first, before reviewing again the letters that I have also transcribed and extracted, and seeing what else to incorporate.
I have made minor corrections to my transcripts of these documents, and will have to re-upload those that I have posted some years ago on my website.
Until 1922 there is very little hint in the diaries or letters of any feeling against the Jews, but he is just beginning to tilt against them. Like Dr. Goebbels, who was not anti-Semitic to start with, Himmler was poisoned by the events of the Twenties and Thirties that he saw around him.
In January 1922 his father sent him to deliver a letter to one Jewish lawyer in Munich. We lose sight of that man until April 4, 1942 when we glimpse him again, boarding the second deportation train to leave the Bavarian capital, despite the letter which the Reichsführer's own father had earlier signed to protect him. After the train from Munich reached Poland, the lawyer vanished permanently from sight, and probably from life too.
Jaenelle is gearing up book sales for Christmas.
You can put on your front page the following text or something similar: Why wait for Black Friday to get a great deal? We're starting our Christmas sale early! Some titles are very limited, so shop now and make sure you don't miss out! Enjoy deep discounts now through the end of the holiday season. David Irving books make great gifts for any bookworm or even for yourself.Being English, I ask: "Does everybody know what Black Friday is? Not everybody was born in an aisle of The Mall of America."
- She retorts: "The term has been in use since the mid 80s."
- "Ah, it's after my time then. I stopped learning in the 1970s."
I have sent out my draft Chapter Four to my informal worldwide Gang of Editors.
R. objects to my calling General Hans Oster a traitor. I warn him in my reply to expect more: "I refer to all these anti-Hitler plotters who had their medals, promotions, and pay-checks from Hitler as traitors. It does not change their colour, the fact that they were on the losing side."
Saturday, November 19, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)JESSICA [fifth daughter] turns seventeen on Dec 5. I ask her if she'd like me to phone today for a chat; she replies on her Blackberry, whatever that is:
Can't speak at the moment, been busy all day! I started my job volunteering in a charity shop today which I did for a few hours which was OK. Its for the charity Trinity Hospice which provides palliative care for dying patients. And right now I'm babysitting, it's such a doss the boy is so well behaved he is already in bed and I'm just watching television for the rest of the evening!I reply: "You are my Golden girl, Jessica." Very proud of her.
To Bobalu's sixteen miles up US Highway 1, the Overseas Highway, for dinner. Meatloaf and gravy and spinach. Nice to eat ordinary, once in a while.
Transcripts of David Irving's 1967 interviews with Otto Günsche (pdf)
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