Hitler planned Holocaust - report

From correspondents in Berlin, Germany

CONCRETE evidence that Adolf Hitler was personally involved in the details of planning the Holocaust has been published in a new German book based on Soviet interrogations of two of the Nazi leader's closest aides.

David Irving comments:: EACH time I read that fresh "concrete evidence" of Adolf Hitler's involvement in the massacre of the Jews has been found, I wait for the inevitable follow up: such evidence has "not been found before." -- It comes along as sure as night follows day.    Each fresh "concrete discovery" thus discredits and invalidates the previous one, and this one too will eventually be discredited, -- not least because we are not shown the original German text of the statements by Günsche and Linge.    But it all goes down very well with the corrupt media world, with you-know-whom, and with the present German regime. No real risk is incurred by any modern German historian in saying these things. And so they get said. Ad nauseam. Ad infinitum. And we get no wiser.    When I first received -- from my friend Lev Bezymenski in Moscow -- parts of the Russian text of this Stalin Hitler-book I put them in writing (translated back into German) to both Linge and Günsche; I also interviewed Günsche closely on Hitler's knowledge of the massacres.    His statements to me were negative -- Hitler had known nothing, had not been involved, there had never been any discussion of this sort of thing at Hitler's headquarters. But then of course I did not beat and torture him, I merely questioned him as any real historian should.    I am surprised and sorry that Matthias Uhl, who is a conformist historian at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, does not concede, however grudgingly, that I first used this Russian manuscript in the 1960s. My correspondence with Günsche and Linge about its content is in the Sammlung Irving in the IfZ archives. Surely he looked?

Matthias Uhl, a Berlin historian who found a secret biography of the Nazi leader in Moscow commissioned by Josef Stalin, said today that such tangible proof of Hitler's role in the Holocaust that killed six million had not been found before.

"It was always assumed Hitler was involved in the Holocaust planning despite a lack of corresponding documents," Mr Uhl said after the publication of his 672-page Das Buch Hitler (The Hitler Book) based on a 413-page original for Stalin.

"This shows for the first time that Hitler was intimately involved," he said.

The Hitler Book was first presented to the Soviet dictator in December, 1949, in a limited edition of one. Mr Uhl found it buried in a Soviet archive last summer and with the help of a Nazi expert, Henrik Eberle, published the book yesterday.

Mr Uhl said the biography designed to give Stalin details of Hitler's death, insights into his thinking, and information about the betrayals around him was based on two years of interrogation of two Hitler associates - his butler Heinz Linge and SS adjutant Otto Günsche (below).

Linge and Günsche spent 10 years working for Hitler.

They were captured by the Soviets in Berlin on May 2, 1945, days after both helped burn Hitler's body.

After beatings, they told the Soviet secret service all they knew about Hitler.

They were released in 1955. Linge died in 1980 and Günsche in 2003.

"Hitler showed personal interest in the development of the gas chambers," the book said. "He studied the development of the project that (SS leader Heinrich) Himmler presented him. Hitler ordered full support for engineers building the gas chambers."

The book, which supports much of what is already known about Hitler, his odd sense of humour and his relationship with Eva Braun, quotes from written reports by Linge and Günsche.

"Hitler told Himmler to use more trucks with mobile gas chambers so that munition needed for the troops wouldn't be wasted on shooting Russian (prisoners)," the book reads.

"Himmler reported that the mobile gas chambers were working. He laughed cynically when he said that this method of murder is 'more considerate' and 'quieter' than shooting them," it said.

Mr Uhl, an historian at the Institute of Contemporary History [Institut für Zeitgeschichte], said the book offers confirmation that Hitler had no warning about his deputy Rudolf Hess's peace flight to Britain in 1941.

"Obviously after more than 50 years of study into the Nazi era there isn't a lot to be found that's going to rewrite history," Mr Uhl said. "But it does illuminate a lot of things."

Mr Uhl said Hitler's relationship with Eva Braun, for example, was closer than thought, especially after Germany's defeat at Stalingrad. He called her at least every second day after that.

Hitler also had a strange sense of humour.

He allowed German soldiers in occupied countries to marry local women, but only after he saw photographs of the women.

"Most of the women in the pictures were not especially pretty," the book said. "Hitler laughed and said once the soldiers who fell in love with these women sobered up again they would curse him for allowing them to marry."

The book quotes the two aides saying Hitler mocked the United States when it declared war in December 1941.

"He said their cars never win races, American planes look sharp but their engines are worthless ... He said they hadn't proven anything - just mediocrity and advertising."

Stalin's "Hitler Book" discovered - yet again| David Irving, A Radical's Diary: I used it in the late 1960s, writing Hitler's War