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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
Michael
S
writes from Carnforth, Cumbria,
March 17, 1999
Although I have ordered a copy of your book
Nuremberg, the Last Battle for my library I would
like to accept your kind offer of sending me a copy.
I was interested in your reasons for not treating the "blue book record" [of the International Military Tribunal] as reliable in comparison with the sound tapes - could you elaborate a little? I have made extensive use of these records (via the Yale University avalon website).
yours sincerely
David Irving
notes:
IN THE 1960s I wrote and published a biography of Field Marshal Erhard Milch called The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe (Weidenfeld). Milch loaned me his diaries, including the Nuremberg period; I have those diaries here on microfilm now. In them he recounts reading the (a) duplicated, then (b) printed transcript of his own testimony, and finding much that had been altered or left out. I went to Washington, NA, and listened to (and subequently ordered on tape) the audiotapes (wire tapes) of Milch's testimony in chief and cross examination. He was right. The transcripts had been heavily doctored: no changed to yes, damaging statements by him omitted entirely. At that I decided the IMT transcripts were too suspect to use as a primary source. (Ann Tusa deprecates me for not having used the Blue Books. But does not mention why!) I still have the NA tapes of the Milch testimony here, if you wish to borrow them; they are rather large, and reel to reel. Book will be posted today.
