The
illustrations of Milch and Jodl are by
Walter Frentz
American
troops looted Nicolaus von Below's
negative album of personal photos. In
1985 an American entrepreneur showed
them to David Irving:
December
3rd, 1985
London
DUE to meet Stanley Hubbard
this evening. Worked at PRO all day
reading Henderson,
Halifax and FO371 series for
Göring.
Returned to flat at 5:10 p.m
[… ]. He had half a dozen
of the photos with him, says he has
2,200 of
[Nicolaus]
von Below's originals, including shots
of Maria von B. suckling her
infant with Hitler at her side,
etc.
His pal Michael (?) went into
Berghof as soon as it was captured and
looted the Agfa negative album
containing the shots. Michael
apparently wants cash: he wants
£250,000 for the album, etc etc. I
tried to disabuse Hubbard of the value.
(a) the copyright problem. (b) the
ownership is still von Below's not his.
I will phone Maria von B. Their value
is good however, including shots of the
famous Berghof conference of 22 August
1939 ("Now I have Poland where I want
her") with generals Bock, Manstein,
Keitel, Brauchitsch, Milch,
Göring etc in plain
clothes.
December
4th, 1985
[… ] Wrote this letter
to Stanley Hubbard:
"Thank you for showing me those
photographs from the Nicolaus von Below
album yesterday. I think there are four
points that I can usefully make at this
stage.
1. For the purposes of my
Göring biography I would offer
£50 as what I would call a
"procurement fee" for each photograph
published in any or all editions of
this book; that fee would also cover
uses in connection with the book (e.g.
if a newspaper reviewed the book and
asked to use that picture in its
review.) I would anticipate using a
minimum of ten, going by the very good
quality of those that you have shown to
me. Payment would be made in advance by
me or by William Morrow Inc, on my
behalf. The author is traditionally
liable for such payments, but I might
be able to persuade the publisher to
assist if your friend feels the fee
should be marginally higher. Much more
than 50 per use would price him out of
the market, however.
2. As you state that the 2,200
negatives clearly document life at
Hitler's side, including some most
unusual pictures, there may well be
scope for a television exploitation of
the pictures. I have a few contacts
(two or three) to whom I can put the
idea over here, or do you want to
retain control of this part of the
project? As author of Hitler's War and
The War Path I would be willing to
compose and speak the narrative.
3. I do not myself think there is a
picture book in this. There have been
several in the past, most recently
Jochen von Lang's exploitation of the
Heinrich Hoffmann negative collection,
but I do not think they made anybody
rich.
4. Final resting place of the
negatives: I can envisage them ending
up in the hands of a German-based
institute or archives able to make
proper commercial exploitation; almost
certainly the heirs would have to be
given some benefit. The institute could
perhaps keep them in conjunction with
other similar historical collections
like the Hoffmann negatives in the
hands of Gerd Heidemann, the colour
pictures in the hands of Walter Frentz
etc.
It is not as simple as your friend
thinks to raise money on this cache of
photographs. The legal position is
unfavourable. Contrary, alas, to
popular belief, the looting of personal
property is illegal under the Hague
Rules of Land Warfare. There have been
several test cases since the war in
which American, French and British
officers tried to auction property they
had "liberated" in the conquest of
Germany, where the owner was readily
identifiable. Though they themselves
were not prosecuted, in every case the
property ended up being returned to its
legal owner.
To name but a few cases: the French
officer who tried to auction the
Göring diaries at Sotheby's saw
them frozen by injunction of the
Göring heirs, then seized by the
Bavarian government (pursuant to their
confiscation edict of 1947); they now
repose in a Munich institute of history
[the Institut
für Zeitgeschichte].
I
do not know what the Frenchman got for
his pains.
The Scots sergeant who obtained
Erhard Milch's
(right)
field marshal's baton had the same
experience in about 1967 when he tried
to sell it; the Milch family intervened
through the German embassy and regained
possession. Again, I do not know under
what terms.
Finally, the Churchill family
by injunction stopped the sale at
Sotheby's of Winston's appointment
cards which had somehow been obtained
by his private detective Commander
["Tommy"]
Thompson.
The
only exemption to this general rule of
which I am aware is the case of the
Alfred Jodl
(left)
diaries, now in the U.S. National
Archives. President Harry S.
Truman himself signed a decree
[Executive
Order] overriding the Hague
Rules, to permit those diaries to be
declared seized alien property and
remain in U.S. custody (I have seen the
document.)
Therefore although I do not believe
the Below family now has any
copyright claim on the
photographs (25 years having elapsed
under German law) they would certainly
be able to prevent the sale of the
negatives by your friend to any third
party; they might incidentally under
German law be able to proceed under
their laws of privacy against me for
reproducing any family-type
photographs, but through my personal
friendship with the Belows I am sure I
can obtain agreement as far as those I
envisage for my book is concerned.
Since von Below was never accused of
any war crimes, his heirs might also
find a sympathetic ear in American
courts.
As far as my own offer for those
photographs goes, may I also underline
the fact that the manuscript is now
approaching completion, will go to the
publishers at the end of December, and
that they will be making photographic
selections in the following weeks (say
January or February 1986) In addition
to what we will call a "procurement
fee" (which I suggest at £50) I
will pay reasonable print fees for
three sets of 10"x8" glossy prints of
any Below negatives showing
Göring, to enable my publishers to
make the selection. To protect your
friend's interests I would also
undertake to do all in my power to
prevent those prints being used for
anything purposes outside this
agreement.
[David Irving]
June
2002 postscript: At my suggestion,
Mr Hubbard eventually donated the
entire collection of Von Below
negatives to the Imperial War Museum
photographic archives in London, when
he heard that I had donated microfilm
of my entire "Adolf Hitler Document
Book" collected for Hitler's
War
to the museum's archives.
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