 Reply
by David Irving to Lipstadt's Defence Hyperlinks
and illustrations are added by this
Website | continued | (39)
In a book about the arch antisemite of modern
times, Dr Goebbels, there is only limited number
of ways that one can describe his enemies and
victims as Jews without trespassing on the
readers' patience. One of the ways is to
identify them as such by their names. Clearly it
would be wrongful to suppress their Jewish
identities. To be Jewish is nothing shameful. To
describe this as antisemitism per se is evidence
of paranoia: while the German politician Willi
Brandt was alive, some people goaded him with
his real name, Willi Frahm, yet he was not
Jewish.(40)*
At page 393 the Plaintiff translates the
Goebbels Diary entry for May 15, 1942 as: 'It
would be best either to deport the remaining
yids from Paris or to liquidate the lot.' The
context is an angry passage about a Jewish
assassination. The Ostjuden (eastern
Jews) were considered lower than the assimilated
Juden, even by the latter Jews
themselves. It is likely that had Goebbels
written his diary or spoken in English he would
have used the same jargon to describe his
arch-enemies as the foul-mouthed English
antisemites would have. As often as not they
would have used the word yid (which the
Langenscheidt dictionary allows at page 727 as a
perfectly correct slang translation of
Jude). The Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary at page 2,467 defines yid as 'U.S.
slang, a Jew.' It would have been unacceptable,
even manipulation, to use a toned-down
translation to mask the antisemitic nature of
the passage. (41)*
At page 203 the Plaintiff is stated to write
that 'Hitler finds it hard to get worked up
about the Jews, now that he is in power.' The
Plaintiff submits that when considered in the
context of the entire Goebbels Diaries the
diaries for April 29, September 19, 25, and
October 1, 1935 adequately support this
sentence. (42)*
(i), (ii), and (iii). This citation, note 85 at
page 591, is given only as one instance ('e.g.')
of many, the entire drift of the diaries
recording the endless debates by Goebbels and
Hitler on the Jewish Question, which must lead
any objective reader, and did so lead the
Plaintiff, to conclude that Hitler was the
reluctant partner. (43)*
(i) and (ii) The Plaintiff specified no reason
why Hitler 'leaned toward leniency' in applying
the new Nuremberg Laws and it is false and
manipulative for the Defendants to impute such
reasons to the Plaintiff and then to dismiss
those reasons. (iii) The verbatim German text of Hitler's
speech to the Kreisleiter (Nazi district
leaders) on April 29, 1937 runs to some 1,800
lines of print. See Dr Hildegard von Kotze and
Professor Helmut Krausnick (ed.), Es Spricht
der Führer (Gütersloh, 1966),
pages 123-177. The six lines on which the
Defendants rely are preceded by Hitler's
deprecating references to demands from the
public for Jewish stores to be tagged as such.
This entire paragraph, his only reference to
Jews in this speech to top Nazi Party district
officials runs to 29 lines, or only 1·6
percent of the total; the six lines referred to
are one-third of one percent of Hitler's speech.
This is evidence that the Jewish issue was not
large on his own horizon. (44)*
(i) and (ii) At page 407 of
HITLER'S WAR (1991 edition) the Plaintiff
quotes from Goebbels' unpublished diary of a
meeting with Hitler the day before, August 18,
1941, which indicates that he, and not Hitler,
initiated the expulsion of the Berlin Jews:
'Incidentally, the Führer agrees that as
soon as the first transport possibilities arise,
the Berlin Jews will be deported from Berlin to
the east.' At page 326 of
HITLER'S WAR (1977
edition) the Plaintiff quoted verbatim a letter
from Himmler to Gauleiter Arthur Greiser dated
September 18, 1941: 'The Führer wishes the
old Reich territory and the Protectorate [of
Bohemia-Moravia] to be cleansed and rid of
Jews, from west to east, as soon as possible. As
a first step I am therefore endeavouring to
transport -- this year as far as possible -- all
the Jews of the old Reich and Protectorate into
the eastern territories annexed by the Reich in
1939 first of all; next spring they will then be
deported still further eastward [into
Russia]' (National Archives microfilm T-175,
roll 54, page 8695). On the same page of
HITLER'S WAR the
Plaintiff quotes verbatim the passage of the
Goebbels Diaries, September 24, 1941 which is
relied on by the Defendants; he did not ignore
it. | At page 374 of
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE
THIRD REICH wrote: 'Hitler had confirmed
to him [Goebbels] that little by little
all Jews were to be expelled from Berlin,
Vienna, and Prague.' As a source for this
sentence the Plaintiff properly cited: 'Diary,
Sep 24, 1941. Berlin, he [Goebbels]
noted, would be first.' (In German the diary
entry reads: 'Der Führer ist der
Meinung, daß die Juden nach und nach ganz
aus Deutschland herausgebracht werden
müßten.') The Plaintiff submits
that this meeting provided the general authority
under which Goebbels executed the measure but,
as stated at page 377, that Hitler was not
consulted or informed about the actual time that
the expulsions began. Indeed, from the diary
passage dated November 22, 1941, relating a
meeting with Hitler, which the Defendants
themselves quote at 30 (iii), 'It is therefore
uncertain as yet when it will be the turn of
Berlin' for evacuation of the Jews.(iii) The Plaintiff refers to para. 14 (iii)
above, where he has set out his
justification. (iv) and (v) Far from confirming to Himmler
and Heydrich that Hitler had decided on
expulsion 'and extermination' as the Defendants
falsely aver, Heim's record
makes abundantly plain that Hitler stated
specifically to these two murderous gentlemen
that the Jews would disappear from Europe and be
'parked in the marshy parts' of Russia, as is
the official translation offered by H. R.
Trevor-Roper, ed., Hitler's Table Talk
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1953),
at page 87; Werner Jochmann, ed., Adolf
Hitler. Monologe im Führerhauptquartier
1941-1944 (Hamburg 1980), at page 106. In
the premises it is denied that the Plaintiff
made improper use of the sources available to
him. Furthermore, the Defendants themselves quote
further passages of the diary (from April 27,
1942), at para. 31 of their reply, which make
plain that Hitler was reiterating to Goebbels
only 'He is determined to push the Jews out of
Europe.' No mention of exterminating them
in Europe. (45)*
(i) The Defence at page 41 inaccurately quotes
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE
THIRD REICH, page 379. (ii) The Plaintiff again denies that value
can safely be attached to Dr Goebbels' diary
assertions, if uncorroborated, that the
Führer is in agreement with his more
extreme utterances and actions, and further
submits that in his judgement such diary entries
are inserted by Goebbels as alibis for his own
wrongdoing. (iii) The passage which the Plaintiff omitted
from the diary entry of November 22, 1941 shows
that Goebbels was frustrated by Hitler's failure
to order the immediate evacuation of the Jews
from Berlin (as Goebbels had urged, and as was
in fact under weigh). This was to become a
familiar refrain until 1943. The inclusion of
the omitted passage would have aided the
Plaintiff's case; it was omitted as it would
have been merely repetitive. (46)*
It is denied that the paraphrases used by the
Plaintiff diminished the impact as alleged; the
use of the words force out in place of
push out actually increased the
impact. (47)
It is denied that the Plaintiff misquoted this
report. At page 427 of GOEBBELS.
MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH the
Plaintiff wrote: 'There was much the same diary
entry after Hitler phoned him on the fourteenth,
and on the twentieth he noted how pleased the
Führer, visiting Berlin, had been when he
told him that a large part of the Jews had now
gone.59 The war had, agreed Hitler,
enabled them to tackle a number of thorny
problems.' The Plaintiff submits that this
passage, which is not given as a direct
quotation or in quotation marks in
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE
THIRD REICH, is a satisfactory
straightforward paraphrase in fourteen words of
the actual twenty-five word diary entry as
translated by the Defendants, namely, 'He
[Hitler] feels quite rightly that the
war has enabled us to solve a number of problems
which could never have been solved in normal
times.' |  MEANING:
THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN(48)*
The Defendants have ignored the fact, although
it was drawn to learned Counsel's attention in a
Reply to her identical defence in an another
action, that the Plaintiff published a
totally revised and updated edition of this book
entitled APOCALYPSE '45. THE
DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN in 1995, which
work is generally available in bookstores in the
United Kingdom and is also advertised at page
723 of the book GOEBBELS.
MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH. (i) That the estimates of casualties
in the city of Dresden varied between 35,000
and 250,000 is a statement of fact which will
be proven at the trial of this action.(ii) In his letter
to The Times, published on July 7, 1966, the
Plaintiff voluntarily drew public attention
to two wartime documents recently discovered
in east and west German archives which might
have indicated a lower death roll. (iii) Since the Plaintiff was not
responsible for cover design of the Corgi
(paperback) edition of the book
THE DESTRUCTION OF
DRESDEN, which was sublicensed by
Kimber to Corgi, who retained under their
respective contracts and sublicences absolute
control over such matters, this cannot be
adduced as evidence of manipulation or
falsification by the Plaintiff or at all. At
that time the Plaintiff accepted a death roll
of 135,000 as the most probable figure. (iv) At page 771 of
HITLER'S WAR, 1977
edition, the Plaintiff wrote that 'the
night's death roll in Dresden was estimated
at a quarter-million.' (The sentence is
repeated at page 739 of the 1991 edition.)
There were wartime estimates of that number
of fatalities in Dresden, as will be shown at
the trial of this action. (v) Since the Plaintiff was not
responsible for the cover design of the
Papermac (paperback) edition of the book
THE DESTRUCTION OF
DRESDEN, which was sublicensed by the
Plaintiff to Macmillan UK Ltd, who retained
under their respective licence absolute
control over such matters, this cannot be
adduced as evidence of manipulation or
falsification. At that time the Plaintiff
accepted a death roll of 135,000 as the most
probable figure. (vi) The Plaintiff will aver that the
official German figures for the death roll in
Dresden have always been held down. The
practice started, to the fury of the Dresden
population, with the communist German
government, who clung to the minimalist
figure of 35,000 for political reasons from
1945 to 1989; it was then furthered by the
West German government, who supposedly out of
a desire not to embarrass the Allies had
consistently made a taboo of the Allied
strategic bombing of German cities. While
Soviet-zone Dresden held an annual candlelit
parade to commemorate the tragedy, such
parades were actively discouraged in west
German cities.  MEANING:
GENERAL SIKORSKI
(49)
The plane carrying the Polish exiled Prime
Minister general Wladyslaw Sikorski and his
senior officials crashed
on take-off at Gibraltar on July 4, 1943. It
was officially announced that only the pilot had
survived. Some bodies were recovered. The
remains of several others were never found. (50) To the Plaintiff's
knowledge, Mr Rolf Hochhuth claimed to have his
own direct sources of information, which he
claimed to have locked in a Swiss bank safe. He
suggested that the Plaintiff investigate
independently, which the latter thereupon
did. The Plaintiff published his book
ACCIDENT: THE DEATH OF GENERAL
SIKORSKI, in October 1967. It remained
necessarily inconclusive. The cause of the crash
will probably never be known. The Governor of
Gibraltar, Lieutenant General Sir Noël
Mason-Macfarlane, wrote a five-page private
memorandum
in July 1945, which the Plaintiff found in his
papers, casting suspicions on the role of the
pilot who had seemingly alone survived. The surviving pilot offered his papers to the
Hoover Library in California, then suddenly
withdrew the offer a few months before his
death.
| Assassination was much more commonplace
as a wartime means of eliminating inconvenient
personages than is now realised.(51) It is denied that either
the document as described (the alleged diary
entry) or Mr [Bickham] Sweet-Escott is
mentioned in the Plaintiff's book
ACCIDENT. THE DEATH OF GENERAL
SIKORSKI. It is further denied that
either played any part whatever in his
argument. (52)*
It is admitted that Mr Sweet-Escott informed the
Plaintiff that he was in London that day. Mr
Sweet-Escott wrote in his memoirs, Baker
Street Irregular (London, 1965), at page 166
that he departed from London early in July 1943
to fly to Algiers, North Africa. And at page
168, footnote 1, he refers to arriving in
Algiers early on July 5, 1943. From information
provided to the Plaintiff by the late Lord
Sherfield, a fellow passenger (formerly Sir
Roger Makins), it is known that Sweet-Escott was
not in London on July 4, 1943, the day of the
Sikorski crash, as the Defendants maintain. All
planes flying from London in 1943 to North
Africa staged at Gibraltar's RAF North Front
airfield. To the Plaintiff's knowledge, Mr
Hochhuth, being domiciled in Switzerland, did
not enter an appearance in Sweet-Escott's libel
suit (in which the Plaintiff was not a party).
The relevance of this whole paragraph is denied
(See para. 51 above). (53)*
It is admitted that in HITLER'S
WAR the Plaintiff correctly asserted at
page xiii that 'In an age in which the governments
of the democracies, both during World War II
and in later years, unhesitatingly attempted,
engineered or condoned the assassination of
the inconvenient -- from General Sikorski,
Admiral Darlan, Field Marshal Rommel, and
King Boris to Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba,
and Salvador Allende -- we learn that Hitler,
the unscrupulous dictator, not only never
resorted to the assassination of foreign
opponents but flatly forbade the Abwehr
(Intelligence Agency) to attempt it (in
particular he rejected Admiral Canaris's
plans to assassinate the Red Army General
Staff).' The passage is repeated in slightly
abbreviated form at page 5 of the 1991 edition,
with the word never ('not only never
resorted') in italics. The Defendants offer
no instances to disprove this firm statement of
fact. That Darlan was assassinated (in fact by
an assassin paid $38,000 from British funds,
equipped with a pistol provided by the SOE) is
known. That the British Special Air Service
(SAS) was ordered to assassinate Rommel is
revealed in the Plaintiff's biography
THE TRAIL OF TH E FOX
(London, 1977), at pages 415-416, with the
relevant wartime documentary sources. That King
Boris of Bulgaria was assassinated was the
conclusion of the reputable German historian Dr
Helmut Heiber in his paper published in the
quarterly Vierteljahrshefte für
Zeitgeschichte (1961), at pages 384 et seq.
The role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
in assassination plots against Castro, Lumumba
and Allende has been uncovered by Congressional
inquiries. | MEANING
(IV) -- (V): THE MOSCOW ARCHIVES(56)*
It is of course no defence whatsoever for
learned Counsel to plead merely that 'there are
grounds to suspect' something, without stating
what those grounds are. The same goes for the
belief that something 'is inherently
improbable'. At the hearing of this action
witnesses will be produced to confirm that the
archival authorities permitted and trusted the
Plaintiff to remove the Goebbels Diary
microfiches on loan from the archives. (57)*
The Plaintiff paid two visits to Moscow in June
and July 1992, during the first of which he was
aided throughout by a German assistant who will
testify at the trial of this action that each
and every one of the 1,400 glass microfiches was
carefully taken out of its original 1944-45
'Agfa' box, dusted free of glass fragments, and
scrutinised through a 12x magnifier to ascertain
the precise period which that slide covered. The
slides were all higgledy-piggledy, with no
noticeable order maintained among them. At the
Plaintiff's dictation his assistant noted on a
yellow Post-it sticker the relevant dates of
each slide, affixed it to the glass
(non-emulsion) side of the slide, and returned
it to the same boxes; the assistant also drew up
working inventories of the slides they had
found. They singled out slides for selective
dictation and/or copying, since the Plaintiff
had arrived in Moscow with a 'shopping list' of
important historical episodes: i.e., he knew
from the publication by Elke Fröhlich which
diaries were missing in toto from those already
researched by her, and he knew from his own
collection which of the wartime diaries he
already held on U.S. National Archives
microfilm. The Plaintiff will produce at the
trial of this action the inventories which he
made on this occasion. The Plaintiff had already
obtained a photocopy of the handwritten February
to October 1938 diary from Moscow via his
Italian publishers, as mentioned above, para.
36, and below, para. 57 (iv); and he had
obtained much of the typescript 1944 diary from
a German colleague, Dr Ralf-Georg Reuth. (i) It was a struggle to scrutinise
the 1,400 fragile glass microfiches in the
time available and to the extent needed as
set out above; but it was done, as the
Plaintiff's inventories will show.(ii) and (iii) It is denied that the
Plaintiff claimed to have read in Moscow
every line of every page of the diaries; he
read principally the parts he needed to
fulfil his contract with the Sunday Times,
under which he was bound to obtain the
diaries relating to a number of episodes
details of which were annexed to the contract
as a schedule. (iii) It is denied that the Plaintiff
obtained only 'ten pages of text with any
material from Moscow.' In fact the Plaintiff
obtained the following materials, which he
listed in a confidential report on July 3,
1992 to the Sunday Times entitled 'A Survey
of the Unpublished Goebbels Diaries Fragments
in the Possession of David Irving': January
1-April 12, 1928, 18 pages; February 28,
1933, one page; March 1-September 4, 1934,
fifty pages of typescript from 100 pages of
originals; December 6, 1934-February 8, 1935,
nine pages of typed transcripts; March 16-May
27, 1935, eleven pages of typed transcripts;
February 11-October 26, 1938, 476 pages of
handwriting, transcribed by the Plaintiff as
in para. 21 (iv) above; October 27-31, 1938,
eight pages of typed transcripts; November
6-11, 1938, fourteen pages of photocopies
and/or typed transcripts; November 19, 1938,
one page of photocopy and typed transcript;
February 22-March 18, 1939, 19 pages of typed
transcripts; April 24 -- May 26, 1939, four
pages of typed transcripts; May 30-July 25,
1939, 100 pages of photocopies and/or typed
transcripts; August 9-September 5, 1939,
fifty pages of photocopies and/or typed
transcripts; September 6 -- September 28,
1939, eight pages of typed transcripts;
December 9-13, 1941, 21 pages of typed
transcripts (from dictation); August 22,
1942, four pages of typed transcripts and
ministerial conference; February 5 --
December 20, 1944, five hundred pages of
photocopies of original typescripts. | (iv) The true sequence of
events is as set out by the Plaintiff at page
xi of GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF
THE THIRD REICH, and his diaries,
letters, aides-mémoires and other
documents of those weeks will be produced at
the trial of this action. The Plaintiff had
obtained the February-October 1938 diary
entries independently of the Moscow archives
in 1990 from Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, under
contract for which firm of reputable
publishers -- who also purchased the
Italian-language rights to his book
GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE
THIRD REICH -- he transcribed, edited,
introduced, and commented the diaries.(v) On July 22, 1992 the Munich-based
daily newspaper Süddeutsche
Zeitung published at page 12 an article
stating that Dr Werner Röder, deputy
director of the IfZ, had alleged of the
Plaintiff, which is denied, 'The man has
pilfered the Russian archives.' Even before
the Plaintiff complained, on July 30, 1992
the said Dr Röder sent to him a copy of
a one-page statement which he had sent to the
same newspaper in which he stated: '[. .
.] With regard to the manner in which the
British writer David Irving procured copies
of the diaries there are also some
inaccuracies. "The man has pilfered the
Russian archives," I am quoted as saying in
an interview at the Institut für
Zeitgeschichte. It would have been more
approximately correct to say, "The suspicion
that has variously been voiced that David
Irving 'pilfered' the Russian archives
belongs in Werner Röder's view as yet in
the realm of speculation."' As averred by the
Plaintiff, in its issue of July 25-26, 1992
the same newspaper published a
Nachtrag (follow-up item) at page 51
in which the IfZ's deputy director Dr Werner
Röder stated that 'he would like to
mention that with the allegation that David
Irving had "pilfered the Russian archives" he
had merely quoted a supposition circulating
among colleagues. He does not wish to
identify himself with this allegation.' On
August 4, 1992 the Plaintiff thanked Dr
Röder for showing him this correction.
On August 6, 1992, as required under the
Bavarian Press Law, the same newspaper
published at page 13 a
Gegendarstellung (rebuttal) by the
Plaintiff. On August 13, 1992 the Plaintiff swore an
affidavit setting out the manner in which he
had acquired the copies of the diaries. As
will at the hearing of this action be proven
by witness-statements and by documents, the
Plaintiff was allowed to remove certain glass
plates from the Moscow archives; two of which
glass plates he brought back via Munich to
England for forensic testing by laboratories
nominated by the Sunday Times who did not
wish to be 'sold a pup' on Nazi diaries for a
second time. The tests included tests by Dr
David Baxendale and Dr Audrey Giles, forensic
document analysts; by Pilkington Group
Analytical services, on the glass plates; and
by Kodak photographic laboratories on the
emulsion. After these experts authenticated
the glass microfiche plates the plates were
without exception returned safely and
undamaged to the custody of the Moscow
archives on or before July 3, 1992. (vi) It is denied that the IfZ's Goebbels
Diary materials that are referred to had been
available to outside researchers, let alone
to Fleet Street newspapers, 'for some time'
or at all. The IfZ had specifically stated
that these materials were not available in a
letter to the Plaintiff dated May 13, 1992,
responding to the Plaintiff's written
application to be given privileged access to
their holdings of the Goebbels Diaries for
1939 and 1941: 'Materials which are the
object of current research projects of the
house and are not yet accessioned by the
archival collections are not available for
general loan. The Director of the Institute
has decided that this rule will also be
adhered to with respect to your application
dated the 8th inst.' In a letter dated July
25, 1992 the Plaintiff pointed out to the
IfZ: 'If the Institute, for whatever reasons,
had not refused me access to the diaries in
May I would never have gone to Moscow with
the results that followed thereupon.' (vii) It is known, and witnesses to this
effect will be produced at the trial of this
action, that the Daily Mail's experts
proved incapable of reading the hand-writing
of the Goebbels Diaries for which they had
paid much money. To state that the Goebbels
handwriting was decipherable by 'anyone who
could read it' is a pointless truism. The
point is that it had taken Dr Fröhlich
about ten years to become proficient in it;
it had taken the Plaintiff two years to
become half-proficient -- Dr Fröhlich
remains the best -- and there was not a
'considerable number' of historians with even
an approaching degree of proficiency. Many
thought they could read it -- until they
tried. (viii) It is denied that the Plaintiff
falsely claimed credit for the discovery of
the missing Goebbels diaries in the Moscow
archives. The Plaintiff made no attempt to
deprive Dr Fröhlich of the credit. He
willingly gave her the fullest credit from
the very first moments of his negotiations
with his then American and British publishers
and with the Sunday Times, with her
consent, and documents to establish this will
be produced at the trial of this action.
| (a) It is admitted that the Plaintiff
wrote to the Sunday Times on May 26, 1992
stating that he had located the diaries 'through
my special contacts'. These contacts he however
identified on the same date namely May 26 as
being Dr Fröhlich and the IfZ, by producing
to the Sunday Times editor Mr Andrew Neil
a note entitled 'Background Information,' of
which paras. 4, 5, and 6 explicitly identify Dr
Fröhlich as having discovered the diaries
in the Moscow archives. He also stated in his
covering letter to Mr Neil that Dr Fröhlich
was 'my initial source' and produced to Mr Neil
his diary record of the conversation on May 7,
1992 with Dr Fröhlich in Munich which
revealed her discovery of the microfiches.(b) It is admitted that at page 160 of the
book GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE
THIRD REICH the Plaintiff stated 'with
this author's discovery of the missing Goebbels
Diary entries in Moscow, that version is finally
laid to rest.' This is however an explicit
reference to the specific diary entries for
February 28, 1933, reproduced on the glass
microfiche for February 16-May 1, 1933, which in
this case was not discovered by Dr
Fröhlich, who would of course not have been
able to read it, not having the necessary
instruments, but by the Plaintiff himself. 12,
15.* (i) As the Plaintiff himself has
ascertained at bookstores visited in Nottingham,
London, Leicester, Leeds and other cities over
the last few days, the First Defendants are
continuing to publish,distribute, and profit
from the libels complained of in this action
throughout the jurisdiction of this court. (ii) It is averred that the First Defendants
recklessly published the Work written by the
Second Defendant without taking any of the usual
precautions, namely having the said Work read by
a reputable firm of libel lawyers, but intended
either to reap such profit from the publication
of these libels that the consequent risk of
paying damages could be faced with impunity, or
in the alternative relied on the contractual
indemnities which they confidently expected to
claim from the original publisher of the Work in
the United States in the event that its
publication within the jurisdiction of this
Honourable Court attracted any legal actions and
financial penalties. PURPORTED
DELAY IN BRINGING
PROCEEDINGS* 15. (iii) It is denied that
the alleged delay can be laid at the Plaintiff's
door. It is admitted that the Work was
purportedly published within this jurisdiction
in the summer of 1994. Its publication within
the jurisdiction was not at first brought to the
Plaintiff's notice. From October 1994 until July
1995 the Plaintiff was overseas. His attention
having been drawn to the publication in November
1995 he wrote the first Letter before Action. He
was then the victim of delaying tactics adopted
by solicitors instructed by these Defendants.
When it was plain after months of correspondence
between parties that an amicable settlement
could not be reached, despite the Plaintiff's
best endeavours, he issued the current
proceedings in September 1996. The First
Defendants asked four times for an extention
before they were able to serve the Defence which
is now pleaded. The Second Defendant took refuge
in her United States domicile, and despite
having instructed solicitors within the
jurisdiction she did not instruct them to accept
service of proceedings for six months, resulting
in further delays which again cannot be laid at
the Plaintiff's door.  DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING SERVED the eighteenth day of March 1997 by
the Plaintiff acting in person David Irving, 81 Duke
Street, Grosvenor Square, London W1M
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