(23)*
Not only did the Plaintiff exhaustively
interview, as he stated in
HITLER'S WAR, first
(1977) edition, at page 327, Hitler's surviving
adjutants, secretaries and staff stenographers
including Christa
Schroeder, Gerda Daranowski, Traudl Junge,
Ludwig Krieger, Nicholas von Below, Gerhard
Engel, Otto Günsche
[picture],
Max Wünsche, Rear-Admiral Karl-Jesco von
Puttkamer, and Karl Thöt, but many of these
ladies and gentlemen had been no less
exhaustively interrogated by the Allied
interrogators about precisely this matter, with
the same negative result. A scrupulous historian
is not impressed by what sources either
'imagine' or profess themselves incapable of
'imagining.'
Further the post-war testimonies of these
staff members present precisely the same
picture. The above-mentioned Nicholas von Below,
Hitler's air force adjutant from 1937 until the
end of the war, testified on oath on April 10,
1948: 'The anti-Jewish measures which became
known since 1945 were never the topic of
official discussion at the Führer HQ. Nor
do I recall any private talks about this matter.
None of the people who have since been
identified in trials as organisers of the
destruction of the Jews -- like Eichmann,
Höss, etc. -- was ever known to me even by
name before, and none of them ever visited the
Führer HQ.' Julius Schaub, Hitler's
long-time confidant and personal chief adjutant,
testified on oath June 8, 1948: 'in my presence
Hitler never talked of the so-called final
solution of the Jewish problem or of the
destruction of the Jews. There was never any
talk on such topics in Hitler's milieu. Nor was
there any discussion of the concentration camps.
I myself heard nothing of the so-called Jewish
question or any destruction of the Jews until
the surrender. I therefore consider it totally
impossible that [Otto] Dietrich knew of
it.' The above-mentioned Puttkamer -- Hitler's
naval adjutant, who attended every war
conference from 1935 to April 1945 -- testified
on oath on May 25, 1948: 'The steps taken
against the Jews which became known to me only
after the 1945 collapse were never discussed
either officially or privately at the
Führer's headquarters. This was impossible
as the knowledge of these things must have been
restricted to a very few people whose names I
naturally cannot state. Names like Auschwitz and
Maidanek were completely unknown to me.' Wilhelm
Brückner, Hitler's chief adjutant until
October 1940, testified on oath on June 8, 1948:
'In my presence there was never any mention by
Hitler of the so-called Final Solution of the
'Jewish problem' or 'destruction of Jews'.. . .
I myself learned nothing about it until the
capitulation.' (All the above are exhibits in
Nuremberg state archives, war crimes trials,
Case XI).
Typical of many interrogations is that of SS
Sturmbannführer Wolfgang Grosch, of
the construction office at the Buchenwald
concentration camp, who deposed as follows on
oath, June 26, 1947.
QUESTION: 'When did you
first heard of the erection of gas chambers in a
concentration camp?'
ANSWER: 'The first time
was when I was in prison camp, that was in the
spring of 1945, in fact during my first
interrogation at Pilsen, when I was frightfully
beaten up because they refused to believe me.'
QUESTION: '. . .That is
all for today.' (National Archives microfilm
M.1019 / 23).
(24)*
German courts have historically lacked the
independence from the legislature of which the
British courts are proud. They are subject to
the dictates of the Ministry of Justice of the
day. The trial of the former SS
Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff will
have been no exception.
(i) Where a Court rejects the claim
of a witness, particularly one as politically
charged as this, a historian should not be
impressed by such a rejection, in the absence
of documentary or forensic evidence;(ii) SS Gruppenführer Staatsrat
Dr Harald Turner (whose widow Heidi and
son Harald Turner jr. the Plaintiff
interviewed over twenty years ago) was
executed for these atrocities. The Plaintiff
admits that this document may be genuine (the
original is now in the Berlin Document Center
biographical file on Turner), despite
spelling and punctuation blemishes
(non-German paper-size, non-German quotation
marks, erratic use of the 'ß' character
-- dass, Einfluß, weiss,
erschiessen, Grüssen -- the
anglicised spelling of Canada, the absence of
a proper SS-runes character). Notwithstanding
what the Defendants aver, there is no
indication that Karl Wolff himself did
receive it. The handwritten initial on it is
apparently that of [Werner]
Gr[othmann], Himmler's adjutant,
familiar on other documents from Himmler's
files; Grothmann will no doubt clarify this
at the trial of this action.
At the Munich trial of Karl Wolff in 1964 his
protestations that he did not know what happened
to the Jews e.g. after they arrived at Treblinka
were not believed by the court, and he was
sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Of
relevance to the current action however is that
even the notorious SS Gruppenführer
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who unjustly
escaped the hangman's noose at Nuremberg,
testified on July 24, 1964 during the Wolff
Trial that in his view 'Hitler knew nothing of
the mass destruction of the Jews,' and that 'The
entire thing began with Himmler.' This is close
to the views expressed by the Plaintiff.
(25)*
Höttl
and Höss
delivered their statements to Allied officers
under circumstances of duress that would have
made them unacceptable to a British court.
Höttl, a career Gestapo officer who also
worked for the U.S. Office of Strategic
Services, was offered inducements, thanks to
which he is still alive today; although he wrote
for the Plaintiff on October 26, 1977 denying
that he was ever pressured by the Americans, his
evidence at Nuremberg, as a former double-agent,
was felt to be unsound, and he remarked:
'Probably that is the reason why I was never
called as a witness.' Höttl adds: 'My own
researches have yielded that even in this
gruesome affair the figures were exaggerated by
those involved.'
SS Obersturmbannführer Rudolf
Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, was
manhandled upon capture. After making
self-incriminating (and often
self-contradictory) confessions
at Nuremberg he tried to smuggle a letter out to
his wife apologising that he had made them only
because he had been tortured (the letter is now
in private hands in the USA). Höss's
subsequent memoirs, written in Polish captivity
before his execution, bristle with inconsistencies,
inaccurate statistics, anachronisms and data so
egregiously false that historians quoting the
memoirs have been obliged to omit these passages
altogether for fear of bringing discredit on the
whole. Adolf Eichmann,
told of Höss's confessions, described these
while still in hiding in Argentina in 1956 as
downright lies; shown a printed text of
Höss's memoirs, Eichmann scribbled scornful
remarks in the margin (the Plaintiff has a copy
of these pages with Eichmann's hand-written
marginalia). Told that Höss confessed to
killing 2·8 million Jews in Auschwitz,
Eichmann asked sarcastically where Höss was
claiming to have obtained the seven million or
so Jews from (of which the '2·8 million'
would have been the 'unfit residue') --
'Certainly not from me.' In the absence of
satisfactory collateral evidence of a forensic
or documentary nature, the self-serving oral
testimonies of Nazi criminals like Höttl
and Höss alone are not enough for a
scrupulous historian.
(26)*
It is denied that the Plaintiff manipulated
Hitler's discussions with Horthy and Antonescu.
On April 23, 1943 the Hungarian ambassador to
Berlin, Sztójay, sent a full report No.
168 / pol. 1943 to Budapest summarising the
talks between Hitler and Horthy and Ribbentrop;
this report is in Hungarian archives, and
printed in English translation by Eugene Levai
in his Black Book, 1948. There is not even a
hint therein that the one million Hungarian Jews
were to be liquidated, only interned. Dr
Goebbels in his diary entry of May 8, 1943,
regrets only, 'The Führer did not succeed
in his talk with Horthy in persuading him of the
need for tougher measures.' When the Regent
Horthy wrote to Hitler on May 7, 1943, to
protest Hitler's reproaches about Hungarian
'defeatism', while he did not accuse Hitler of
having called upon him to turn the Jews over for
liquidation, the original draft -- prepared by
the Hungarian foreign ministry -- included this
preamble: 'Your Excellency further reproached me
that my governments were not proceeding with the
same radicalism in the Ausrottung des
Judentums [for the meanings of this
phrase see paras. 32 (i) --
(iii) below] as those carrying it out in
Germany and as is regarded there as being
desirable in other countries too.' (German:
'Euer Exzellenz warfen mir des weiteren vor,
meine Regierungen schritten nicht mit dem
gleichen Radikalismus in der Ausrottung des
Judentums vor, als diese in Deutschland
durchgeführt und dort auch für andere
Länder als erwünscht betrachtet wird.'
Horthy to Hitler, May 7, 1943, in Budapest
National Record office, 'OL Küm.
Magyarország külpolitikája'
[The Foreign Policy of Hungary], MS,
at pages 814-823; see The Confidential Papers of
Admiral Horthy, Bu-dapest, 1965, No. 53).
(27)*
The sentence at page 12 of
HITLER'S WAR reads,
'While Hitler's overall
anti-Jewish policy was clearly and repeatedly
enunciated, it is harder to
establish a documentary link between him and
the murderous activities of SS 'task forces'
and their extermination camps in the
east.'
Dishonestly manipulating the text to their
advantage, the Defendants omit the
struck-through words from the passage quoted in
their Defence.
The
Defendants furthermore accuse the Plaintiff of
not drawing the reader's attention to a
September 9, 1939 document in which Vice-Admiral
Wilhelm Canaris tells Field Marshal Wilhelm
Keitel
[picture]
that his understanding is that there is an order
from Hitler for 'grosse Füsilierungen'
(large shootings) in Poland. Had the Defendants
read onward to page 15 they would have found
precisely this document and quotation,
große Füsilierungen therein
being rendered more literately as 'widespread
executions'.
(28)*
It is admitted that the
Plaintiff, like many other historians, has
commented on the absence of any written order
bearing Hitler's signature for the extermination
of the Jews. He denies that he has relied on
this absence in the legal sense of the word
'rely'. He further denies the Defendants'
contention that Hitler preferred oral
instructions over written directives, especially
in secret matters: firstly, the Defendants
appear to contend that Hitler made no secret
whatever of his intentions in this matter,
publicly proclaiming it in speeches in 1939 and
1942. Secondly, the archives contain comparable
orders which he did personally sign, e.g. the
Euthanasia Order, in the summer of 1940 (but
backdated for obscure reasons to September 1,
1939). Equally remarkably, no other high ranking
official (Himmler, Bormann, Heydrich, Keitel)
appears to have signed any document referring
explicitly to a Hitler Order for the liquidation
of the Jews. There is no evidence known to the
Plaintiff that Hitler gave an oral instruction
in this matter.
The Plaintiff further draws attention to
Raul
Hilberg's standard work The Destruction
of the European Jews. In the first edition
(New York, 1961), he originally held that there
were two orders by Hitler for the destruction of
Europe's Jews, the first given in the spring of
1941 and the second shortly thereafter. By the
time that Hilberg published his second, revised
edition in 1985 he was no longer so sure.
"In the new edition, all references
in the text to a Hitler decision or Hitler
order for the 'Final Solution' have been
systematically excised. Buried at the bottom
of a single footnote stands the solitary
reference, 'Chronology and circumstances
point to a Hitler decision before the summer
ended.' In the new edition, decisions were
not made and orders were not given" (Dr
Christopher Browning, 'The Revised Hilberg,'
Simon Wiesenthal Annual, vol. 3, 1986,
at page 294).
(29)*
It is denied that the Plaintiff falsified and
took out of context in HITLER'S
WAR (original 1977 edition) at page 331
certain remarks recorded in Hitler's Table Talk
as having been made by Hitler on October
25, 1941, which falsification thereby
enabled, if the Defendants' rather complicated
submission is correctly understood, the
Plaintiff to draw a false analogy between
Hitler's attitude to the Jews and his attitude
to Bishop Galen and the Vatican.
(i) The Defence quotes the Plaintiff
as writing in HITLER'S
WAR (1977 edition) at page 331 as
follows:
'No
documentary evidence exists that Hitler was
aware that the Jews were being massacred upon
their arrival. His remarks, noted by
Bormann's adjutant Heinrich Heim late on
October 25, 1941, indicate that he did not
favor it: '. . . By the way -- it's not a bad
thing that public rumour attributes to us a
plan to exterminate the Jews. Terror is a
salutary thing.' Hitler added that, just as
he was sidestepping an open clash with the
Vatican by postponing the final reckoning
with Bishop von Galen until later, "with the
Jews too I have found myself remaining
inactive. There's no point in adding to one's
difficulties at a time like this."'
In fact the Plaintiff had written in
HITLER'S WAR at page
331:
'No documentary evidence exists
that Hitler was aware that the Jews were
being massacred upon their arrival. His
remarks, noted by Bormann's adjutant
Heinrich Heim late on October 25, 1941,
indicate that he did not favor it:
"From the rostrum of the Reichstag
I prophesied to Jewry that if war could
not be avoided, the Jews would disappear
from Europe. That race of criminals
already had on its conscience the two
million dead of the Great War, and now it
has hundreds of thousands more. Let nobody
tell me that despite that we cannot park
them in the marshy parts of Russia! Our
troops are there as well, and who worries
about them! By the way -- it's
not a bad thing that public rumour
attributes to us a plan to exterminate the
Jews. Terror is a salutary thing." Hitler
added that, just as he was sidestepping an
open clash with the Vatican by postponing
the final reckoning with Bishop von Galen
until later, "with the Jews too I have
found myself remaining inactive. There's
no point in adding to one's difficulties
at a time like this."'
The omission by the Defendants of the
struckthrough passage is
straightforward textual manipulation by the
Defendants, because the full text makes plain
that Hitler was talking only about, at
worst, 'parking the Jews in the marshy
parts' of Russia.
At the time when the Plaintiff wrote the
original 1977 edition of the book he relied
on the official translation of Hitler's
Table Talk (ed. H. R. Trevor-Roper,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953),
where at page 87 the relevant paragraph is
translated as follows:
'From the rostrum of the
Reichstag I prophesied to Jewry that, in
the event of war's proving inevitable, the
Jew would disappear from Europe. That race
of criminals has on its conscience the two
million dead of the
first
World War, and now already
hundreds of thousands more. Let nobody
tell me that all the same we can't park
them in the marshy parts
of
Russia! Who's worrying about
our troops? It's not a bad idea, by the
way, that public rumour attributes to us a
plan to exterminate the
Jews. Terror is a
salutary thing.'
When the Plaintiff thereafter prepared the
German edition, and subsequently revised the
book, he was the only historian in the world
to whom the original German texts were made
available by their physical owner, namely in
October 1977. He then found that Martin
Bormann's adjutant Heinrich Heim had actually
noted on October 25, 1941 the following
remarks by 'the Chief ' (i.e. Hitler), to his
dinner guests Heydrich and Himmler.
'Vor dem Reichstag habe ich
dem Judentum prophezeit, der Jude werde
aus Europa verschwinden, wenn der Krieg
nicht vermieden bleibt. Diese
Verbrecher-Rasse hat die zwei Millionen
Toten des Weltkrieges auf dem Gewissen,
jetzt wieder Hunderttausende. Sage mir
keiner: wir können sie doch nicht in
den Morast schicken. Wer kümmert sich
denn um unsere Menschen? Es ist gut, wenn
uns der Schrecken vorangeht, daß wir
das Judentum ausrotten.'
A photocopy
of this original typescript is in the
Plaintiff's possession. It shows that the
words
italicised in the English
translation above, 'Terror is a salutary
thing,' are wholly gratuitous additions by
the translator; the Plaintiff therefore
omitted them from the 1991 edition. It is
denied that this amounts to manipulation.
These typescripts have since been
published (Werner Jochmann, ed., Adolf
Hitler. Monologe im Führerhauptquartier
1941-1944, Hamburg 1980).
(ii) The Defendants furthermore aver that
Heim in fact recorded Hitler's words, if
translated, as follows:
'It is a good thing (is useful)
if we (our arrival is) are preceded by
terror-reports that we are exterminating
Jewry. . .'and, 'About the Jews too, I had to
remain inactive for a long time.'
(iii) The Defendants further aver*
that by (evidently deliberately) changing the
tense of the sentence 'About the Jews too. .
.' the Plaintiff falsely made it appear to
Hitler was not at that time pursuing an
active policy against the Jews, when the
sentence as properly translated made it clear
that the contrary was true;
(iv) The Defendants further falsely
aver*
that by adding the words 'plan' and 'public
rumour' the Plaintiff completely distorted
the meaning of the sentence, 'It is a good
thing (is useful) if our actions are preceded
by terror-reports that we are exterminating
Jewry.' The Defendants further falsely aver
that Hitler did not say that the
extermination was a rumour, let alone an
incorrect rumour as the Plaintiff implied;
nor did Hitler speak of a plan, allege the
Defendants, but of the fact that Jews were
being exterminated.
These averments are denied by the
Plaintiff. The original German phrase was
Es ist gut, wenn uns der Schrecken
vorangeht, daß wir das Judentum
ausrotten. The noun Schrecken has the
flavour of scarecrow, frightener, spectre;
hence the perfectly proper translation of
'public rumour'. The Plaintiff draws the
attention of the Defendants to page 87 of the
official Weidenfeld translation,
'[. . .] It's not a bad
idea, by the way, that public rumour
attributes to us a plan to exterminate the
Jews.'
(v) The Defendants aver*
that the sentence, 'There's no point in
adding to one's difficulties at a time like
this,' in its context, plainly referred to
Hitler's decision to postpone his 'settling
of accounts' with Bishop Galen and the
Vatican, not (as the Plaintiff falsely
suggested), to any postponement by Hitler of
an active policy against the Jews.
The Plaintiff denies this averment. The
aforementioned official translation of
Hitler's Table Talk reads (Weidenfeld
edition at page 90) without omissions,
'Even with regard to the Jews,
I've found myself remaining inactive.
There's no sense adding uselessly to the
difficulties of the moment. One acts more
shrewdly when one bides one's time.. . .
When I read of the speeches of a man like
Galen, I tell myself that there's no point
in administering pinpricks, and that for
the moment it's preferable to be silent.'
(The ellipsis [. . .] occurs in
the English original, but not in the
German. The German word auch can be
translated as both
even and
too and
also.)
As shown in para. 2 (f), Hitler repeatedly
stated that he wanted the solution of the
Jewish problem postponed until the war was
over; Hans-Heinrich Lammers also testified to
this effect (see HITLER'S
WAR, 1977 edition, page 331), and in
the Subsequent Proceedings at Nuremberg, Case
XI, September 23, 1948, the
Wilhelmstrasse-Trial.
(30)*
The Defendants note that the Plaintiff wrote at
page 851 of HITLER'S WAR
(1977 edition) that Ribbentrop
[picture]
had exonerated Hitler of responsibility
for the extermination of the Jews; the
Defendants aver that the Plaintiff omitted the
second part of the text which read, 'On the
other hand, judging from Hitler's last will, one
must suppose that he at least knew about it, if,
in his fanaticism against the Jews, he didn't
also order it.' As correctly stated at (ii), the
Plaintiff considered that the omitted passage
was irrelevant to the logic of his argument, and
that its inclusion would confuse the reader. The
special circumstances and imperatives of foreign
minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, writing under
duress in Allied captivity and facing the
inevitable death sentence, had to be born in
mind; even Hitler's Political Testament, to
which the Defendants allude, does not explicitly
specify a Hitler knowledge of the
extermination.
The Defendants overlook that the Plaintiff
also had a fund of collateral documentary
evidence on which to base his decisions on how
to paraphrase or edit overlong documents. This
includes the transcript of a conversation,
secretly recorded, between Ribbentrop and a
British officer at this time, relating to what
had happened in these concentration camps.
(31)*
The summary of the January 20, 1942 Conference
at Nos.56-58, am Grossen Wannsee in Berlin,
which the Defendants offer here is specious and
erroneous. The transcript retained in the
political archives of the German foreign
ministry today (and microfilmed by the U.S.
National Archives as film T-120, roll 780,
frames 372,024 et seq.) contains no reference to
liquidation or to agreement with Hitler.
Fortunately the 'Wannsee
conference' has been the subject of much
recent expert analysis, in particular by
Professor Eberhard Jäckel,
who concluded convincingly that Heydrich
[picture, left]
called the conference as a means of
raising his own profile among the mid-level
Staatssekretäre (permanent
under-secretaries) whom he had invited to
attend; those who attended included Gauleiter
Meyer, Stuckart, Freisler, Bühler, Klopfer,
Kritzinger, Eichmann and the Gestapo chief
Müller, but nobody of higher rank. Several
Staatssekretäre whom Heydrich
attended [read:
invited] including Gutterer (whom the
Plaintiff interviewed) and Schlegelberger did
not bother to attend.
The
foreign ministry's Martin Luther reported
afterwards: 'On the basis of this
[Göring] directive
Gruppenführer Heydrich called a conference
of all the German agencies involved on January
20, 1942 which was attended by the permanent
undersecretaries of the other ministries and by
myself from the foreign ministry.
Gruppenführer Heydrich told the conference
that Reichsmarschall Göring's warrant to
him had been issued at the Führer's behest
and that the Führer had now approved
evacuating the Jews to the east instead of
[overseas] emigration as a solution.
[. . .] The number of Jews expelled in
this manner to the east was insufficient to meet
the manpower needs there'
(Unterstaatssekretär Martin Luther,
'Aufzeichnung, auf Nr. 954 vom 19.8.,' Berlin,
August 21, 1942: Nuremberg document
NG-2586).
That the earlier planned emigration was to be
directed overseas is shown by a foreign ministry
letter signed Legationsrat Rademacher to
Gesandter Bielfeld, February 10, 1942, on the
new possibilities opened up by the Nazi
conquests in Russia: 'The Führer has
accordingly decided that the Jews are not to be
expelled to Madagascar but to the east. Thus
Madagascar need no longer be contemplated for
the final solution' (Nuremberg Document NG-5770,
at page D523727.)
On January 27, 1942, seven days after the
Wannsee conference, Heim noted
Hitler as saying at his supper table: 'The Jews
have got to get out of Europe! Best thing would
be for them to go to Russia. I've no sympathy
for the Jews.'
On March 7, 1942 Goebbels dictated
in his diary at pages 17-18 a summary of the
Wannsee conference report: 'There are still over
eleven million Jews in Europe. They'll have to
be concentrated later in the east for the time
being; perhaps an island like Madagascar can be
made available for them after the war.'
write
to David Irving