⚠️ Historical Documentation Notice
This document is part of a historical archive and is presented for scholarly research and educational purposes.
The content reflects historical perspectives and should be understood within its historical context.
Documents on the I think little of Honsik, on account of his antics on the night I spoke in Vienna in November 1989; but that’s another story. August 23, 2007 (Thursday) Madrid (Spain) THE press announces that Spain has arrested the Austrian agitator Gerd Honsik in Málaga, where he has been living in exile for fourteen years .
Austria’s Socialist minister of justice, Maria Berger — who looks really nice in her photos, reminiscent of some of those People’s Court judges in Soviet Albania and Bulgaria, though redeemed by the fragrant whiff of Cherie Blair about her — used the new “European arrest warrant” procedure. That’s nice. Or, rather: What idiots, and so much for free speech.
For myself, I think little of Honsik, on account of his antics on the night I spoke in Vienna in November 1989; but that’s another story. August 24, 2007 (Friday) Madrid (Spain) I WRITE to one online newspaper, The Jurist , of Pittsburgh Law School: I refer to today’s article: AUSTRIAN NEO-NAZI WRITER ARRESTED IN SPAIN FOR DENYING HOLOCAUST .
I am referred to wrongly in this: You and many newspapers have copied the mistake that I was sentenced in Vienna to three years for “Holocaust denial”, whatever that trite phrase now means. (As anybody knows who has read my works, e.g. my Goebbels biography , this allegation is nonsense.)
After being lured to Vienna by a trick, — I am a London based historian — I was charged and sentenced under a 1945 Stalin-era law, the Banning Law, for the offence of Wiederbetätigung , Reactivation. (Literally: reactivating the Nazi Party, by my writings). Go figure, as they say.
After an appeal court ordered my release after 400 days in solitary confinement (“only thirteen months,” as you so nicely put it) the original judge ( Peter Liebetreu ) began trying to “activate” a new charge under section 3(h) of the Act, maximum sentence 20 years to life, on account of a telephone interview I gave in English from my prison wing to the BBC, broadcast in London.
Ordered held for another night, I was whisked away from the Justice Ministry prison to Vienna’s Police Prison, which comes under a different ministry, and safety; Austrian Police managed to get me to the airport first. The police prison governor entered my cell at 7 a.m. on the last morning, saluted, and formally apologised: ” we are deeply ashamed that this is happening. We do not agree with this at all.”
Courtroom scenes as historian David Irving is brought in from the cells for trial in Vienna
on Feb 20, 2006: Center right – the judge, Peter Liebetreu; bottom right – Irving’s then lawyer (later sacked), Elmar Kresbach. (High-resolution images unfortunately not available.) CHARMING folks, some lawyers. I was completing only yesterday the chapter of my memoirs about the dud German attorneys I have been forced to use, over the years.
Here is the draft passage I wrote in prison about these nice folks: it begins with the very day Ullstein Verlag first published my flagship work Hitler’s War , in 1975. They had carefully avoided letting me see any proofs, and when I bought a copy on publication day at Hugendubel’s in downtown Munich, I saw why. I NEVER regretted the extraordinary step which I now took.
I wired to Ullstein that same day, expressing my anger at the changes, and forbade them to sell any more copies of their book Hitler und seine Feldherren (Hitler and his Warlords). They complied. There have been those who claim that I wrote “sensational” books purely for the money. This was not true. The financial loss that this decision inflicted was appalling. But what was the point of acting any differently, if I was prevented from publishing what I had found out to be fact?
IN GERMANY therefore, of all countries, Hitler’s War was stillborn. There was however even worse to come: I had no spare copy of the German text version of the original typescript. Ullstein maliciously decided to sit on that, and my hands were tied. Years passed. In Munich, where Herbert Fleissner began to publish my books, from a position further to the right than was comfortable to me, I hired an expensive