David Irving’s ACTION REPORT No.25, Jan 2004 (August 2004)

No. 26, August 1, 2004 [ German translation ] continued, part 2 TWO pm flight to Copenhagen. Inside the terminal a noticeable police presence — ten armed officers in each baggage hall; their chief says he knows who I am, and radios a message to those outside. Protestors have been cleared out of the airport buildings. The 6:30 pm Danish Television bulletin announces: “Police expect disturbances because of Holocaust denier” — sic.

At 9 pm Danish Television bulletin shows the airport interview: [Den berygtede engelske historiker, David Irving, ankom i dag til København] “The notorious English historian David Irving, today came to Copenhagen”. Note how the Holocaust denier becomes the historian when they show the Interview. I sleep fitfully; difficult climate, strange room, etc.

A. says he tried two other locations; both asked if the planned meeting has anything to do with “Mr Irving”, and refused when he admitted that it did. They do not want violence on their premises and I really can’t blame them. But two television programmes have asked for interviews. He has told them he will ask me. He doesn’t get it. I educate him, “Alex, it doesn’t matter if I can’t speak to fifteen people in a room, if the outcry results in my speaking to fifty million people on television!”

The programs cover all Scandinavia. He seems simple minded sometimes. He is very nervous, has to be led through every step. I go downstairs at one pm. Two police officers in the hotel lobby, to provide round-the-clock security. That embarrasses me; I don’t feel I need that kind of security. They know differently. The first TV team is laid-back. They were also at the airport. The second asks more abrasive questions — about the Holocaust.

I say I haven’t written about it — I find it boring — but I’ll answer questions; the shootings on the eastern front happened, but even Judge Gray found it baffling that while these are documented, there is no documentary evidence of gas chambers, or of Auschwitz as being a “factory of death.”

Responding to a question, I say I have hundreds of friends here in Denmark, including many academics who would like to hear me address university audiences, but all fear for their careers if I am invited. That is what universities are for, I say, to hear both sides. I am not interested in money: I will be very rich long after my death; I will have the satisfaction of knowing that it is my books that are being read in the 22nd century, not those of my opponents.

The books by the conformist historians all draw heavily on my biography, Hitler’s War, I add; but I have not drawn on any of theirs. * * * AT two pm an unexpected visit. Pierre H., 87 years old, not known to me, brings two big packages: the diaries — Terminkalender — of SS Obergruppenführer Werner Best. They are now in secret Swedish archives. He was in the Danish resistance, is highly interested in my work.

I am effusive with my thanks; the diary will be of great help in the Himmler biography I am writing. Alex is in a state of nerves. The hotel has informed him that his Visa card is cancelled. Phone calls establish that every other card he carries has also been cancelled following calls “from him” reporting them lost during the last 24 hours. He is a state of rage, I am more laid back; it is his cards that are affected, not mine.

I tell him that ten years ago the Deutsche Bank tried to cancel my account, which I first opened in Essen in 1959 as a steelworker, but backed off when I had German lawyers threaten them with a lawsuit. There is something wrong with the other side’s History, if they resort to methods like these to protect it from exposure. Up at 9:30 am, the sun beaming in across a sea of Danish rooftops. 1:05 pm I go downstairs.

Waitress reveals that the police informed the hotel of our intention of having the meeting there and has instructed them not to allow it, because of “trouble.” Alas, this is thanks to A., who trusted the police with the information yesterday evening. He is a novice. I lay it on him gently that the police have obviously leaked it to the enemy. Nobody else knew. He is abject with apologies. I ask what happened to the newspaper interviews: more apologies.

We hail a cab, to drive over to the Hotel Angleterre. A. asks why, and I say there may be stray enemy who will see us there which will disperse their forces. A. unfortunately has no alternative location readied. A novice, as said. Once I ask him, as I am cramped in the back seat: “Can you see if we’re being followed?”

He says we’re not, but we are: a car with four heavily built men in their forties or fifties in it, wearing working clothing, open shirts, pullovers etc., has tailed us over to the Angleterre. As we pull up there, near construction barriers, their car screeches to a halt, and three of them jump out; one aims a film camera, as the other two start running over. I shout to A., “Back into the cab. Quick!”

We pull away just as the men reach it; the driver, suitably bribed, shakes them off by cornering several blocks at speed. A. is rattled, but I am not: “That will convince them that we’re planning something at the Angleterre after all,” I chuckle. Over at the Radisson, Eric tells him a large police force is now surrounding the hotel. I check into the Airport Hilton around 3:30 pm.

Two or three hours later A. comes and says that Danish radio has contacted him to ask about a report that “Mr Irving has been assaulted by leftists outside the Angleterre.” So it is pretty plain that the men’s job was to rough me up while the third filmed the fight and the fourth manned the getaway car. Just like the Richoux episode, July 12, 1992, with Bente. Back in London.

At 3:21 pm I send this email to Post Office: “I am now back in Hertford Street, having been in Copenhagen over the weekend. We are now missing three packages from Key West, Florida.” Tidying up, this letter goes to Dr Christian Lindtner, “hero” of today’s Ekstrabladet article: As you know, I spent four days in Copenhagen, for two meetings which we had many weeks preparing. Without consulting myself as speaker or A. as organiser you invited three or four extra friends.

We naturally assumed that you personally vouched for the integrity of each one, and that you knew them all by name. One of them struck me as odd and that’s why I refused his request for a photograph. It now turns out that he was hostile journalist using a false name. The result was that the enemy was informed of all (or most) of our plans, causing great loss and anxiety to myself and cost to the police. We take very great care with our security measures, because personal safety is involved.

Your extraordinary carelessness in inviting these friends is unforgivable, and you will not receive any further invitations. Evelyn P. asks why we did not respond to her latest missives. I send her letter to the Post Office: “A lady in Edinburgh wonders why we have not acknowledged her letters. They have all been stolen from our mail: she is out of pocket and so are we.” Larry M. informs me that our latest Action Report was on offer for $7.50 on eBay.

I check up: it is our old friend Harry Mazal who has bought it. No mail at all comes this morning. I tell the Post Office. Persons have contacted me about publishing my books in France. Alas, I think they’re extreme right-wingers, not a route I intend to take. At twelve noon exactly we walk into the Court. Registrar Jaques again hears the case [ Deborah Lipstadt vs. David Irving and the Trustees ]. The hearing, set down for fifteen minutes, lasts two hours.

It revolves around the question of my historic “archive”. Is it valuable or not? An expert shall decide. It is immaterial anyway, as it is certain that the archive will be returned to my possession eventually, as a result of my application of Oct 15. But today I do not speak: I am a silent spectator in the back row of the Registar’s Court room.

Andreas Gledhill, counsel for Lipstadt, speaks well, but on balance my own is better — less clipped in his manner, though slightly indistinct in his elocution. The barristers are both experts in the Chancery division, but have different styles. The final decision after much argument back and forth is this: that the “expert” will be an academic historian appointed by Lipstadt; but that Lipstadt shall pay his costs. That will run into thousands of pounds.

My barrister makes effective use of the fact that Lipstadt has published on her university’s website several thousand pages of the documents which I provided by way of Discovery — including my private letters and diary pages of the most private nature, which were never in the public domain. Registrar Jaques directs that the new expert shall be allowed into the warehouse in Brighton to assess my archive’s value, but that we are to be allowed to supervise.

Quite right too — no more thieving of my files. We leave the Law Courts at two pm, well pleased. The other side — both Lipstadt and the Trustees — will now appreciate that I am a fighter, and don’t take things lying down.

One ironic novedad: Lipstadt will be unable to visit England so long as she continues to violate what used to be called the “implied undertaking” — given on using documents disclosed under Discovery rules — unless she wants an unfriendly visit from the High Court tipstaff, who will escort her straight to Holloway (or Pentonville, as the case may be). Saturday. I send the daily thief report to the Post Office.

Persecuted New Zealand historian Joel Hayward — whom Dov Bing and others hounded out of his position as Senior Lecturer in Defence and Strategic Studies in New Zealand — reports in. “Dear Joel,” I reply: The whole world has been following the saga with baited breath, and I have to congratulate you on how you have kept your head in the midst of such an onslaught. Well done too, finding such fine champions.

Three cheers for the Internet; allowed a free rein, it will eventually defeat and confound our enemies. Dr Hayward now responds in more detail. Please accept my apologies for criticising you in 2000. I was then going through hell and, perhaps like a lot of others who followed your trial, felt bothered by your ditty. I remain convinced that the number of citation and transcription errors in your works are very few and far between.

I am saying precisely that, by the way, in my forthcoming autobiography. I amplify that for his benefit: The enemy (Professor Evans, whom you know) claimed to have found “nineteen” errors, after spending twenty man-years scrutinising all my books (thirty books). The judge reduced the figure to twelve. Not bad going: half an error per book. But it makes me a “falsifier and manipulator.”

I decide to start writing a chapter about Josephine for my memoirs to preserve her memory and honour her courage. I complete eight pages by 2:29 am, when I go to bed. Up at eight am and take Jessica to school by cab; she looks pale and unwell today. Cab drivers, the Soul of England-As-Was. Bente joins us upstairs for part of the evening, looking better. She is beautiful when she is well. She even watches a movie with us.

Today is a relaxed day again; I do virtually none of the jobs on my to-do list. We’re down to our last ten pounds and searching pockets for coins again. Quoi de neuf. Midday: a message comes from Tibor G., publisher of Felkeles , the new Hungarian language edition of my 1981 history of the anti-communist, anti-Jewish Budapest Uprising of 1956. The first edition has sold out but they’ve run into problems: The printer who printed the first edition has been put under pressure.

Nevertheless we have finally found another printer and they are promising to deliver in a few weeks’ time, approximately end of March. The old enemy methods. If they can pressure my publishers, they do: they forced Macmillan Ltd to destroy their entire stock of my books in July 1992. If they can’t, they intimidate the printers.

After our Swedish publisher lost every printer for my Goebbels biography, they signed up with the biggest print firm in Denmark; that firm then cancelled, explaining they had come under pressure. In England too we lost the printers of both Hitler’s War and Goebbels after both firms — the most prestigious book manufacturers in the UK — came under pressure.

Then Biddle & Co., in Guildford, tendered a satisfactory estimate for reprinting my Nuremberg, the Last Battle; we arrived there by appointment, with the production film and brasses, but after half an hour the production manager was called out, and returned to say that his bosses had ruled that they were not to print any books for our firm, Focal Point Publications. “What us, a global conspiracy?”

It reminds me of my attempt to bring a libel action against the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard , for saying on Melbourne radio that I had a string of “criminal convictions” around the world. I had to abandon the attempt after every firm of solicitors who accepted the instructions withdrew — one of them apologizing, e.g., that his Jewish secretary had threatened to resign.

Which reminds me of the prestigious London law firm of Goldsmiths who accepted my instructions to act in the appeal in the Lipstadt Trial — and then pulled out, because their senior partner, Mr G., had . . . etc.

BENTÉ is up all evening, looking much better; even comes with me to fetch Jessica, a real treat for the little mite — who is no longer little: she’s shooting up like asparagus, and I have a standing joke that I must buy some coarse sandpaper to wear down the top of her head and the soles of her feet a bit. Up at 8, a chilly morning, biting wind; I take Jessica to school. She thrusts her warm little paw into mine as soon as we step out of the front door.

She’s looking very pale, however, does not get enough sunshine. News bulletins bring graphic pictures of a shocking incident in Madrid: nearly two hundred commuters killed by ten bombs placed in or under commuter trains including two at Atócha. It’s a pity no journalist thinks of putting it to Mr Sanctimonious Blair or Mr Lugubrious Straw that bombing railroad trains is something which the British and American strategic forces have been practising with some expertise in recent wars.

I remember the vivid images from the camera in the nosecone of a cruise missile as it streaked towards a train on a bridge in Kosovo — the final image being of terrified faces looking out of the train’s windows. The brave pilot came round as the stricken train lay crippled on the bridge, and punched a second missile through its rear, along its length, ensuring the death of, one suspects, rather more than a hundred passengers.

Was not NATO’s Secretary-General at the time of these outrages against the people of former Yugoslavia a mousy Spaniard, Javier Solana , who tried to mask his insignificance behind a dagoe’s goatee? Did he not rejoice in front of the television cameras over each successful bombing raid? And wasn’t the former Labor politician, who followed him, Lord Robertson , below , that rotund little Scottish redhead, equally repulsive in his sniveling justifications of these mass murders?

Last year I posted on my website a shocking thirty-minute video of a US gun-ship attack on a mosque in Afghanistan; the soundtrack has the laconic drawl of the American gunners as they kill each shadowy figure trying to flee through the surrounding countryside. It is the hypocrisy of these politicians that grates. They rely on the short memories of their voters: and it is our duty, out here in the real world, to remind, even if we cannot hope to see them called to account.

I spend the afternoon and evening down in Wiltshire, scanning a box of old photos which my brother John has inherited from Uncle Harry. There is a score of photos from an old album of his father’s, who was headmaster of a school in Oxford for forty years; his wife was Clara Cawdell , whose mother was a daughter of Sir Charles Napier. The box also contains yellowing press clippings of the 1920s, covering my father’s adventures in the Discovery.

The Oxford Mail prints photos of the ship and her crew as she departs for the Antarctic. I get