David Irving |
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
First posted Sunday, November 20, 2011
© Focal Point 2011
I flatter myself that I am still almost primus inter pares, but it is an optical illusion. . . There is much that I do not wish to know.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Kew, London (England)I TELL daughter Paloma, who is moving across Madrid to a new studio flat: "One tip on packing for a move. Don't put candelabras and chandeliers in Selfridge's bags -- they need firm boxes with polystyrene fluff, etc. We lost both our chandeliers [in the 2002 move] from Duke Street, their arms were snapped off." As she should recall.
Hugo says Jae has mentioned trouble with her car breaking down again. She says: "There was a lot of steam coming out from under the hood."
At ten p.m. I phone Jae at her Indy hotel. I ask her to carry extra water if she's going on longish drive, and a thick cloth to loosen the radiator cap with if necessary.
I have repaired three more Goebbels chapters this afternoon and evening.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Kew, London (England)JESSICA starts work-experience today at The Lady.
A reader Joseph Bozorgmehr asks: "Dear Dr. Irving," -- Grrr --
- Do you concur with the now accepted figure of 79,000 deaths at the Majdanek facility? It was originally claimed that 1.5 million souls perished there, but this has since been disregarded as Soviet propaganda. . .
- By the way, as a scientist myself, I admire your thoroughness and attention to detail. I wish more historians were as clinical and methodical as you are. I know that I cannot pick and choose whatever results I happen to like or dislike. I have to analyze them as they are and not as how I would want them to be.
I reply: "I think the best Majdanek guess now is -- as you are a scientist -- 'of the order of' 50,000. It is a ticklish subject. Numbers matter less to me than the personalities. As the Americans defensively say, guns don't kill people, people kill people."
N. ASKS about November 14. I reply, "My [November 16] speech is on a cruise boat with dinner on the Potomac. Unfortunately I get no fee of course, that's visa regulations. You can find the advert he refers to on my website. . . Looking forward to seeing you and the movies [Tom Selleck as cop Jesse Stone]."
My US bank has a balance today of just $2.53. I chuckle out loud when I see that. Bad start to the week. Plus five pounds cash -- I gave the rest to B. and Jessica. And I have a quarter tank of petrol. Thank you, Turkey and Greece.
I have finished exploiting the files I copied in Washington DC in April. The two Stahlecker reports, which provide many data, will need careful evaluation. A lawyer and mindless mass murderer; a third of a million Jews dead at his behest, and Franz Walter Stahlecker (right) was himself killed at forty-one.
But how relevant is he, and what he did, to the story of Heinrich Himmler himself which I am writing? The final drafting will put things into perspective. Interesting that Hitler is not mentioned once in the two reports or in their distribution list, or Himmler for that matter; just three careful, stereotypical, but still vague references to 'grundsätzliche Befehle' [fundamental orders] relating to the systematische Säuberungsarbeit im Ostland. [systematic cleansing work in the Baltic states]. What and whose orders were they?
11:51 a.m I phone the bank, there is still no trace of the Turkish or Greek money. Charming. I contact the Turks: "I have this morning phoned our bank. . . Very unhappy about the problem this has caused us."
Jae is pleased with the green dress she bought in Warsaw. I remind her:
It was this dress that [impressed the Quiet Australian]. . . Last time I make THAT mistake.Jae has met on our Wolf's Lair tour two months ago, Gerwich Bode, an Australian gentleman. I dutifully dropped him a friendly hint on the very first day that she already has a steady American boyfriend, James, a good young man back in Indiana who has stood by her and helped her through university.
Our Jaenelle Antas (right) with our group, and Polish guide, including two guests from Australia, Gerwich Bode and Brendan StoneThe Australian is tall and burly -- we all called him Teddy Bear, or TB for short. Kindly too, and generous to a fault. I wish her well with him. He is a dance-teacher, an instructor in the Argentinian tango. He has good looks and a wealth of, well, wealth, and in every possible way he is everything that we are not: He does not limp, for example, from a year or two of solitary confinement in a tiny prison cell. He has no criminal record for writing real history, no lefty mobs riot against him, no mounted police come out to quell violence when he lectures, he is not banned from any country, no governments secretly badger Scotland Yard for his extradition, and probably no hate-mail chokes his letterbox.
So, were it not for James, the guy in Indiana, and one other snag, the Quiet Australian is perfect husband-stuff. By day three I see Jae sporting a little diamond pendant, and soon there hangs in her closet, we are told, an Austrian dirndl, which probably cost its buyer more than her last motor car, or as much as a full tank of gas in England now.
And good luck to her. It seems that even as our group, under her expert management, was touring Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia in September he stumbled -- midst the vein of almost worthless dross, like the Kimberlite Pipe that the rest of us folks are -- on the phenomenon which diamond prospectors call the "jewel-box", that priceless nugget of rock that has lain undiscovered for eternities, miles beneath the surface, where the carats/per-cubic-meter coefficient suddenly increases exponentially. Yes, that is Jae.
She tells me he is a champion swimmer, a rock-climber, and a triathlon runner too, and I suspect he is something of an Albert Einstein too, to judge from the learned scientific papers he has sired, or co-sired, on the Internet. For all I know he is a brilliant concert pianist and painter in oils as well. There must be a flaw somewhere, I murmur, but No, there isn't, seems to be the reply. As each week passes, this rough Down-Under diamond just sparkles ever more brilliantly, and we mere mortals from the Northern Hemisphere can do naught but stand respectfully aside and doff our hats and politely applaud.
There appear to be no skeletons at all in his cupboard, and startlingly few women in his past, for a thirty-five-year-old, let alone children -- few brainy females having hitherto detected this prize, perhaps because Melbourne, Australia, is closer to the South Pole than to the rest of world civilisation. Well done Jae. I cheer her on with all my pals, and I certainly wish her well with her dreams of happiness.
Our printer is badgering us for payment. They are quite right to badger. I am badgering everybody who owes me money. The world is full of badgers. The world is badgerfull!
I discuss the Quiet Australian with Jaenelle. She says: "He wants me to get a gun."
"Aaaaargh!" I protest, "So you can turn it on me! Even I would not stoop that low."
Just one reason why our world-wide customers like to deal with us at Irvingbooks.comI reply: "I take nothing for granted, least of all the hard work you put into the store. -- Just had a long chat with B.. She says Jessica inherits her inability to save part of her income from her father."
Jessica shows me the results of her first day at The Lady. I proudly forward them to Jae: "She wrote them herself; everybody was very nice to her and spoke elegantly; of course it helps that the editor is Rachel Johnson." "Did she write all of those items?" "I am glowing. She got the job without help from me either."
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Kew, London (England)I RESUME the tedious work on the Goebbels reconstruction -- the scans that the Indian company has made of the Index and 5,500 Source Notes are in a horrible mess.
I bring Jae up to date. "The Turkish money did not arrive. I wonder if the Turks are lying?" Then I add some local color: "I did food shopping at Sainsbury's, using the Baskets Only checkout. You would have been glad not to be there."
[A woman with an immense trolley-load had used it ahead of me. Girl on register had warned her it is Baskets Only, as she told me after. I reproached woman for cheating. "You are the kind of woman who jumps queues too," I concluded. I forget her retort but she used Like as a conjunction (it is a preposition) so I reproached her for Bad Grammar too. She retorted that her English was perfect and she had A-level English. I thought she looked too old to have done A-levels. She called me a sad old gentleman. I said I wasn't sad. She then split an infinitive, and earned another reproach. Black woman, also with a basket, and crutches too, stood patiently behind me and joined in. Etc. As said, I reassure Jae, you would be glad to have missed it.]Familiar with such episodes since her earlier visits to the UK, Jae replies: "I can imagine the entire scene, although I doubt she called you a gentleman." She is absolutely right about my bad behaviour.
Hugo H-T then emails from Berlin, and I reply: "Nice to hear from you, Hugo. All going well here. Jessica has a work experience job at The Lady and is loving it, and making huge friends there. Jae is friendly but calls me the green eyed monster." Amongst other things.
"Did the Russian customer ever send you the Cyrillic script for his address?" asks Jae.
"He did and I opened it as a Cyrillic document, but it was totally wrong, I guess he keyed it in on a Latin keyboard; so I wrote the Cyrillic script in handwriting."
"Having Hitler's War back in stock is really helping your bookstore," says Jae. "More than half the orders are for that book and we've sold a lot of the deluxe editions, too. Took a phone order today from a guy who was so excited that HW was back in stock that I thought he was going to wet his pants."
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Kew, London (England)I ANSWER a correspondent who asks about Himmler's Order to exterminate: "Very un-easy to answer. I am focusing very closely on that week in July 1942 when Himmler was visiting Lublin and touring Poland and the Generalgouvernement. Wait until I reach that in my drafting. Want to keep my thoughts straight until then."
I put in the latest batch of overnight corrections to Goebbels. These worldwide proof-readers are indispensable. Each one spots scanning-errors the others have not. Rather worrying, really.
I ask Jae, "Did you solve the car problem yet? That worries me. Hugo said this morning that if you break down and stand by the car, men are sure to stop. Yee-ee-es, but for the wrong reason. He is naive."
"Car problem seems to be a failing catalytic converter."
"Does James agree? Why would that cause all the steam? Sounds fishy to me."
"James made the diagnosis. It could cause the engine to overheat because it's not able to exhaust properly."
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Kew, London (England)THE ominous silence from Turkey continues. If the Turks bail out, there is a financial hole looming. I wish the Germans would now pay up without further litigation.
I send Jae an email about her coming stay in Baltimore for the HLMC meeting: "I hope all your dreams come true!"
She is cynical: "Oh, so I guess Hugo gave you a talking-to."
Friday, October 28, 2011
Kew, London (England)I PHONE the bank: no sign of any cash from Turkey. So I write the publisher again.
This is a most unusual situation, and we have never had this difficulty with a publisher before. Has the money been sent or not? Please reply today.
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Kew, London (England)A PRESS item is emailed to me: Film about Nazi general: Rommel Family complains of Falsification. Field Marshal Rommel's Granddaughter accuses scriptwriter of lifting passages from "extreme right-wing" author David Irving's biography (in German)
Well, that's interesting. If they have based the film even partly on my book, I should get a fee for it. I write to my lawyers in Kiel, Germany, to start proceedings therefore.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Kew, London (England)K. ASKS: "Hopefully income is flowing from book sales?" -- "Just beginning to pick up. I am working this month reconstructing Goebbels, a hellish job. Everything was stolen from the Trustee's warehouse. . . Half the original photos are missing and I am trying to retrieve them rather than scan those in the book. Perfectionist."
Monday, October 31, 2011
Kew, London (England)I WRITE to my gang of Goebbels proof-readers: "Hi guys,
I have set another ten chapters of Goebbels in PDF format for you to run your expert eyes over them spotting flaws. At risk of boring you I will remind you below of things to look for -- typical scanning errors.I have caught a hell of a lot of the errors, and believe me the real nightmare is the Sources and the Index, which are not included here. (There are over 5,500 source-notes in the book, and although I will include them when finished I do not expect any of you to undertake the heroic task involved in weeding out the last flaws from them. I scrutinize them myself in large typeface for an hour or two a day until I go cross-eyed.)
The book went through eight drafts from about 1990 to 1995, the first three of them handwritten, just for those of you technically interested in authorship. I then typed it onto a very early Mac -- the SE30 which is now their icon. It had a 40MB hard drive, and 1MB of RAM, and it lived in a black and white, not colour, world. And it never crashed. Those were the days.
4:55 p.m Three invoices sent to India for payment.
Jae reports: "James says he thinks he knows what is wrong with my car. He says the air conditioner compressor basically had a meltdown, but that he thinks it is safe to drive and that if I want air conditioning again next summer, it might be kind of expensive to fix. But thank god it is not the catalytic converter! I would not have been able to justify that kind of repair."
I answer: "I don't see how that would generate all that steam from under your bonnet, uh, hood. But as you know I like James, and respect his opinions. He can't be all that bad to have kept you tamed all these years."
I add: "The drive belt: it drives the water pump, magneto (alternator) and fan and air conditioner compressor. If something stopped it running, like a seized-up compressor, that is what caused the famous fire in our Rolls-Royce when Pilar drove it to the South of France in 1981. I don't understand why it would start running again. But I trust James. A regular guy."
"Yes, the drive belt might have been what he said. It's turning again, but the compressor is f****d."
"I am praying that that is the only thing that gets that these next two weeks. We are starting today legal action in Germany against the German TV producer who has plagiarised my Rommel book. My lawyer appears to be really good."
More links on the Rommel film are emailed to me: I forward them to the lawyer in Germany.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Kew, London (England)ONE of my editors carps at my giving the word Gold a capital letter in the Goebbels book.
I reply: "It is my personal quirk. Gold is the root of all evil, on a Wagnerian scale. So I capitalise it. It has even been called anti-Semitic to do so. Touchy folks!"
Hugo says that the HLMC meeting in Baltimore is some kind of computer-guru function. I find it is the H L Mencken Club. Quote from Mencken: "The Jews could be put down very plausibly as the most unpleasant race ever heard of. As commonly encountered, they lack many of the qualities that mark the civilized man: courage, dignity, incorruptibility, ease, confidence. They have vanity without pride, voluptuousness without taste, and learning without wisdom. Their fortitude, such as it is, is wasted upon puerile objects, and their charity is mainly a form of display." -- The last bit, about charity, seems particularly true.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Kew, London (England)JESSICA has been invited by Oxford University for their gruelling interview. She emails me: "Please read this. So you can see that an Oxford interview is NOT just another school or job interview where you can bluff your way through. They are notoriously difficult to pass. Each year Oxford gets 17,000 dream applicants all with straight A*s -- but only a minuscule percentage, something like seven percent, makes it past the interview. . . They take a huge amount of preparation."
I reply: "I have read it. I have commented on one Comment by one Andy Stevenson. He begins his comment: 'Myself and a friend had a 2-day interview to study English at Jesus College, Oxford in 1998.' I wonder why they didn't accept him. Uh, no I don't."
I continue: "You don't have to worry, Jessica. You are very good at all interviews. My advice is the same as I gave before the Latymer interview. Do not prepare for it. Be your own person. No one's going to blame you if it doesn't work. It will be Oxford's loss, not yours. - Daddy."
Jae has arrived in Pittsburgh and checked into a hotel for the night. "Soooo tired.... The whole drive I kept remembering things that I forgot to bring including (don't kill me!) your Himmler binder. I'll have James post it if you need it in DC."
I reply: "Pittsburgh to DC is an easy drive. Often did it in the days of the MAX Show. But keep halting for a rest. Don't worry about the Himmler. No big deal. Your safety is vital. Keep your eyes open."
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Kew, London (England)A Roberto in Munich offers me original Degesch gas chamber documents: "These large and secret documents showing a so called delousing chamber and a so called circulation gadget for AREGINAL and Zyklon B. I further have a lot of copies and 1 original letter by the DEGESCH company. The topic of each letter proves to 100 per cent, that Zyklon B was ONLY used for delousing clothes and barracks. I also have a 7 pages instruction by DEGESCH about AREGINAL. The topic shows that AREGINAL was only used for disinfest."
One of my proof readers, John J., writes:
Speaking of matters of the heart, your writing about Goebbelses infatuations, lusts and loves certainly takes the attention by two things, I think. One is your use of the historic present, putting us in the picture as if his personal things are happening now. The other is your breadth of feeling -- from believing in Love to cynicism about the opposite sex, which shows itself, in psychological insights into the personalities involved and fitting pointed comments, summing up the episode in a line.Another quality which makes your work very readable is your sense of anticipation, like when Goebbels just gets into the parliament to gain immunity from police prosecution while the police are chasing him across town and try to literally grab him but miss, just as he is about to enter the parliament. Lovely stuff! Up there with Dumas père.
I reply to him: "I had huge fun writing about Goebbels and women. Having had dealings with them all my life, I think I have sized them up right. I met Lida Baarova (left) personally, and from what she told me I doubt there was anything between them more than what we call heavy petting now.
"We have much the same material coming in my Himmler manuscript, of which the first twelve chapters are complete. (I have paused on that to reconstruct Goebbels). . . You will understand my fury at being called a Holocaust Denier. What the Jews did not like, I suspect, is my quotations about them."
Friday, November 4, 2011
Kew, London (England)JAE reports in from Baltimore, at the HLMC meeting:
In my opinion, far and away the best looking guy in the under-35 crowd of this movement turned out to be a smoker. . . I told him it lowered my opinion of him to see him smoking.I tell her: "The Smoker probably snored too. Lucky escape!"
Jessica texts to ask if I went to the Festival of Britain in 1951. I reply, "Yes, the Skylon! The Royal Festival Hall!" She replies: "You're so cute. We're learning about it in the History of Art. Hahaha." I tell her: "Went there with my Mother and Nicky. There was a typewriter which composed musical scores."
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Kew, London (England)ELEVEN a.m. over to Paddington.
The New Right meeting turns out to have four speakers: a Croat, who speaks endlessly and inaudibly, and keeps saying, "And if I may make another digression here…" (I want to call out loudly, "No!") Martin Webster, who narrates the history of the National Front, and is surprisingy lucid and well organised, but suffering from sciatica, as he calls it; a third brief speaker, then Jonathan Bowden the organiser himself. He is as usual a very good speaker, dilates at length on Agamemnon and European civilization, and does not lose one listener. The meeting lasts from one p.m. (I arrived at noon) until six-thirty.
It takes an hour to get back to Kew, as Holland Park Avenue is at a standstill.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Kew - Slough - Eton - Kew - Gatwick - Kew (England)I SEND Jaenelle this rather rude message about the Quiet Australian [Gerwich Bode]: "If you can drag yourself way from your new friend's fascinating brain filled with high-gain hollow-cathode metal ion lasers and improved predictive current regulation algorithms and hysteresis loops and frequency-domain analysis . . . please answer my question(s) of the last few days. Some do not brook delay." The questions are about the bookstore which she so skilfully runs. Can't afford to lose her, but with my bluntness I probably shall.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Kew, London (England)I finish reconstructing the main text of Goebbels at 8:20 p.m. I inform my score or so proof-readers around the world,
Dear friends, The main text of Goebbels is now completely reconstructed and I have uploaded the final harrowing chapters: ... (about 40 pages). Professor Gordon C Craig, doyen of the US historians, said in a six-page review in The New York Review of Books (although the Jews had by then ensured that no US edition ever appeared!) that the chapter describing how Magda (right) kills her six children is the most harrowing he has ever read. So we can't afford any flaws and typos!
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Kew, London (England)A STRANGER, Enrique Geiger, evidently a more distant admirer, writes me:
- Awful David Irving:
- You are well known as a Holocaust denier and an apologist for Field Marschal Milch (yes, he was fully Jewish, but Aryanized by Hitler) in your biography derived from his personal notes. You are in great company with Mel Gibson and his father (another Holocaust denier).
- The evidence, including personal knowledge shows that the six million Jews were murdered (also by public admission of Adolf Eichmann under oath during his trial) during the Holocaust.
- Milch was a terrible human being and he knew about the Holocaust (his notes are self serving), as he was involved in deportations, torture and worse (most people in Germany claimed they knew nothing, which was disproved by the accounts soldiers brought back to Germany and evidence smuggled from death camps that reached the English Parliament and the New York Times, and all high ranking Germans cooperated, as well as foreign unrepentant collaborationists).
- Shame on you.
- I don't believe that you are crazy; I believe that you are evil.
- You would probably pretend believe Hitler's account and Mein Kampf, which is full of lies, just to serve your evil ways.
- Six million Jews and their descendants point an accusing finger at you.
- I wish the worst to you and your lot.
- Enrique Geiger
I reply in my usual courteous way: "Dear Mr G.,
- How nice to hear from you. Unless you are Jewish, and you are probably not, then neither of us has a dog in this particular fight. So what's your beef? I was very impressed at your command of words however, if I may say so without sounding condescending, and I will go the extra mile with you to assist you in getting the picture.
- I do not think I can provide much more in initial correspondence than you will find in my website which I have built single handed since 1998, largely with the aim of countering false images provided by the media about myself (particularly in Australia!) and it now runs to about 5,500 files. So get a Coke, switch on the music low, and start browsing…
- You will be baffled to hear that I have never written books or articles on the Holocaust. But to see what I have written about the fate of the Jews, have a look for example at my Goebbels biography and search for the word Jews as an interesting exercise. Then decide whether in your view I show any hatred of the Jews, or have concealed the Nazis' liquidation of them where it did happen. (Yes, that is why I called Mr Justice Gray's final adverse judgment against me "perverse" to the press).
- I am constantly adding to the data on my website, about what really happened. See for example my dossier of interrogations on the men around Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS and you will find some very stark details indeed.
- To get the feel of the Holocaust controversy and the Lipstadt trial, I would suggest you first read my trial diary (it is a pdf file) at and then read our printed version of the final judgment because we have provided our version of it (which is of course not altered in any way) with illustrations and annotations which you may find useful.
- If you are more closely interested in the "Holocaust controversy", have a look at the Auschwitz index on my website and perhaps have a look at the Introduction to my Hitler biography. As for the famous Lipstadt ("Holocaust denial") Trial itself, you will find all you need at these addresses on my website: the "pleadings" are on my Lipstadt index. As said, the judgment, download it direct at this link. The daily transcripts of the actual court proceedings are sometimes quite interesting to follow (and you can of course paste snatches of the dialogue into your essay); they are on my website. You may find our subsequent appeal pleadings of particular interest. We learned the negative result of our appeal on July 20, 2001: the appeal judgment. If you have specific questions, come back to me by email! or even phone.
Jae is still in Baltimore. I send her this:
- 1. Got another invitation today to speak at University College Dublin -- but on Nov 22, when I shall be in DC. And I was SO sure it would not be withdrawn before then.
- 2. [. . .]
- 3. Talking of rock-climbers: my best friend at University was a climber. I may have told you.
Bit of early Memoirs:
"My flatmate in the "conservatory" in Gloucester Road, Mike Gorb, shared [Peter] Levin's religion. He was very popular. We went out one night with a pot of -- I hope washable -- paint, changing a well-known local street-name to Kensington Gorb in his honour. Mike was at that time involved with a pale, willowy ballet dancer from Finland, Ulla.
- "You know the problem with sex," he said one morning with a friendly leer. "When you pee next morning it comes out in two streams and you don't know which to aim with."
- It was a problem I was not yet familiar with, but I nodded knowingly. Yes, Mike, a chemical engineer and keen Alpine mountaineer, was one of my closest friends for two years. I broke off at a tender, indeed almost historic moment in my relations with Sugar [Sheila Chester] one evening in the little conservatory, explaining that Mike had promised to supply the necessary item should need arise, at which indignant point the operation was abruptly interrupted -- "You told Mike," being her only remaining words that I can recall. Since they were clearly mood killers, I decided never to get involved with such items again.
- I bumped into Ulla a few years later in Hyde Park, pushing a pram, and asked after Mike. "Oh didn't you know," she replied, words that usually presage ill tidings. "His rope snapped in the Alps and he fell a thousand feet."
- I spoke formal condolences but as we separated I began instinctively to calculate: thirty-two feet-per-second per second. How many seconds would Mike have been in free fall, aware that it was all over; I stopped before I reached an answer."
I add: "If the Rommel TV film in Germany generates cash, I can divert a lot of it to you. The production company has not replied to my lawyer yet but we are in a powerful position, since their own expert complained in the press that the final script was largely based on my book. They had until today to show us the script, and we are giving them until Friday I believe. They have already finished filming, so they are locked into it. . . My lawyer's advice. And one doesn't hire advisers and then ignore their advice. He is GOOD. First time I ever said that about a lawyer."
I risk asking a few questions: "When do you hit the Appalachians? English are more demanding than, uh, colonials."
She replies: "We did the West Virginia section of the Trail yesterday, but the terrain was very rugged and it was slow, difficult hiking. We were going to do part of the Maryland section today."
I roast a chicken for supper; Jessica says it was ho-hum.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Kew, London (England)YESTERDAY'S hate-mailer responds:
- Dear Mr Irving
- I apologise to you for my use of intemperate language. I accept that it was out of order.
- What I cannot understand is that you are a very intelligent man, far more so than me I suspect, yet you appear to have an irrational and paranoid hatred and fear of Jews. There is no Jewish conspiracy and people with their religion, just as with any group, are variegated; some good, some bad. As a people they have contributed an awful lot to Western thought and culture and I thought you may have recognised this debt given your intelligence and education. The Nazis were an evil, stupid, ignorant bunch of thugs and there can be no excuse for what they did -- not just to Jews, but also to Slavs, Gypsies, and anyone else they did not like.
- Anyway, I have set out my position. Incidentally, I do not agree that you should have been imprisoned for your views or for expressing them and I regret that you were.
I reply: "That's okay. As for my 'hatred of the Jews', as you call it: I am English, and I fight back. Wait until my Himmler biography is published, that will set your mind at rest."
Friday, November 11, 2011
Kew, London (England)I FIND in the trash folder a very useful email from Kjell Lundahl: He encloses a photo (below) of a document stating the fate of Magda Goebbels' Jewish stepfather Richard Friedländer: He died of heart failure in Buchenwald on February 18, 1939.
I reply: "I presume the facsimile comes from Buchenwald camp records? The date of incarceration, June 15, 1938, coincides with the first pogrom Goebbels organised in Berlin. Not very nice."
I now write to the Turkish publisher: "Dear Emir
- Since the money has not arrived by close of business today, the Hitler's War contract is hereby cancelled. I need not tell you how disappointed I am. This delay has cost me personally a lot of money and inconvenience, and you have made no attempt to explain it or respond to our latest messages.
- A formal notification of cancellation follows. Kindly return the book and disc which are our property to the address below, properly packaged.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Kew, London (England)A GRADUATE student in History, "Jenny," writes:
For one of my classes we will be reading [Deborah Lipstadt's] Denying the Holocaust. I will have to write a few pages of critique of the book, and I was wondering what for you are the biggest weaknesses of the book that one could comment on in a grad-level critique? I fully support your quest in looking at these events in History with a critical eye, but for the purposes of the paper I don't want to write anything that will make my prof. think I agree with your overall historical interpretations (I just want a good grade in class; factual debate can wait till later!) Thanks!
She may be an agent provocateur, but I reply:
- Great question, Jenny, but I am glad to say that my famous Hitler's War biography is now also being put on university reading lists, while Lipstadt's book is increasingly remaindered as unsaleable.
- I gather that Lipstadt's book does not mention that the British court upheld my claim against her for several of her original book's libels, e.g. that I associate with Hizbollah terrorists, or stole (or damaged) the Goebbels diaries from the Moscow archives. But (under Section 5 of our Defamation Act) they were considered lesser than the main libel I complained about, Holocaust denial, and which her side spent $13 million dollars defending. If it was that obvious, why so much, and why a three month trial?
- You might want to look at these two or three items: twelve standard questions with which to challenge Lipstadt and my Trial Diary and my Closing Speech to the Court and our printed version of the final (adverse) Judgment and finally a few frequently asked questions.
I add: "You will find that I was not even mentioned in the original draft of her book; but that Yad Vashem wrote instructing her to shoehorn me in somehow! That comes out of the documents which she had to produce in Discovery to the court."
Photo: Gabriela Leonor Márquez, narrowly defeated in the Miss Peru contest two years running, was one of our two best assistants on tour, and very popular. Above, relaxing just after I spoke downtown in San Francisco in 2008. She is said to have been killed in a road accident in Bogotá on April 22, 2011,
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Kew, London (England)I TELL my German lawyer that I am in Washington DC from tomorrow, and that an article on the Rommel film controversy has now appeared in the US movie paper Variety: "Rommel TV biopic stirs controversy | ARD production accused of unfair portrayal." I draw his attention to the sentence, "Yet historian Peter Steinbach, who also consulted Teamworx on the project, defends the use of Irving's research."
I tell Hugo, who is in Germany: "I will call you in an hour or two. The Quiet Australian leaves today Sunday for home."
Süddeutsche Zeitung also carries an interesting article about the Rommel TV film: "She accuses Stein of relying for his script on the 1978 Rommel biography by David Irving. His book is regarded at least in part as well researched. But the author in later years made himself impossible as a revisionist and convicted Holocaust denier." "On August 28, 1978 Der Spiegel published an article by Manfred Rommel, then Stuttgart's lord mayor. The occasion was the Irving book's publication. Rommel wrote that before his father's death he was with him day after day, and that his father certainly did not regard himself as a member of the Berlin Resistance Movement. 'My father knew nothing in advance of the Stauffenberg assassination attempt on Hitler.' There was nothing new about that, he wrote in 1978."
["Sie wirft Stein vor, dass er sich in seiner Version auf die 1978 erschienene Rommel-Biographie David Irvings beziehe. Sein Buch gilt, zumindest teilweise, als gut recherchiert, doch der Autor hat sich in späteren Jahren als Revisionist und verurteilter Holocaust-Leugner unmöglich gemacht."["Am 28. August 1978 veröffentlichte Der Spiegel einen Beitrag Manfred Rommels, damals Stuttgarter Oberbürgermeister. Anlass war das erschienene Irving-Buch. Rommel schrieb, dass er vor dem Tod seines Vater Tag für Tag mit ihm zusammen gewesen sei und dass sein Vater sich "gewiss nicht als Mitglied der Berliner Widerstandsbewegung" betrachtet habe. "Von dem Anschlag Stauffenbergs auf Hitler hat mein Vater vorher nichts gewusst." Auch dies, schrieb er 1978, sei alles nicht neu."]
"Of course he read the Irving, says Stein, and he has developed scenes from that version. But those are all episodes that appear in other writings about Rommel. Stein made it all available to SWR television and Teamworkx [production company], and provided the script with footnotes. The irony is, that that has made it so easy for Cornelia Hecht [rival historian] to prove which passages are quoted from Irving's book."
[Zitat: "Selbstverständlich habe er Irving gelesen, sagt Stein, und auch Szenen aus seiner Darstellung entwickelt -- das seien aber alles Momente, die auch in anderen Schriften über Rommel vorkommen. Dem SWR und Teamworx hat Stein das alles zugänglich gemacht und das Drehbuch mit Fußnoten versehen. Die Ironie ist, dass er es Cornelia Hecht damit leicht machte nachzuweisen, an welchen Stellen er aus Irvings Buch zitiert hat."]Let's see the production company duck our claim for plagiarism now! They will be foolish to defend it in court.
A writer Eddie Edgren asks:
- I have attached a file that might be of interest for you.. It's a page from the interrogations of Dr. Leonardo Conti, the Reichsgesundheitsführer of the Third Reich. I assure you that I have not falsified it, it may be found in the NARA archives (if you want to know the exact position of the file, please ask). Conti had a tendency to lie in the beginning of his interrogations, but that was in a sense so that he would not have heard about experiments on humans and things like that, yet he admitted to talking about "euthanasia" with Hitler.
- I'm very interested in your views on this and would greatly appreciate a reply.
I reply at once: "Yes, I discussed this with Conti's widow and she vividly recalled the episode, when Hitler phoned Conti in Zoppot in September 1939 and told him to start a major euthanasia program. The word was unfamiliar to Conti, and he had to look it up in a dictionary, she said. You will find the story in my book "Hitler's War" (Millennium Edition, 2002)."
From two to 3:30 p.m. with B. (left, in 1993 with Jessica) at Café Valerie off Sloane Street. She is surprisingly pleasant. Smartly dressed in a tight grey woollen jacket and skirt. Supercilious and witty as always. She has hardly changed in the twenty years I have known her, and apart from a loss of weight the terrible illness has left no visible trace.
I tell Jae, "Spent 90 minutes with B. again today, as I'll be away many weeks or months and you never know. She looked good and was in surprisingly cheerful mood. I told her about my bet with Hugo. She told me I should mind my own business. What a global mafia you women are."
Monday, November 14, 2011
Kew, London (England) - Falls Church, Virginia (USA)A FAN writes: "I read the controversy over the new Rommel film on your website and despite some of the language they use about you in the article, I think it is a victory for you. If they are using your book to make the film and despite everything a German historian is defending you (as he does in the article), that shows that your account is the considered the most accurate. Incidentally … You have another victory. Dresden's refurbished military musem is reviewed in the magazine Conde Nast Traveler and in the review they say 'Dresden is still sensitive ground. In 1945, the city was destroyed by an allied firebombing that killed more than 130,000 people'. Maybe I'm wrong, but I interpret the expression sensitive ground to mean the argument over how many people were killed offends peoples' sensitivities."
Jaenelle arrives shortly, offers a chaste embrace, and is looking beautiful. She has slimmed even more, which comes (she teases) from having done a lot of dancing these last two weeks but, she adds, with a pause, that Gerwich, her Quiet Australian, trod on her foot when they were dancing. He left for Australia yesterday.
On the drive into Falls Church she reveals that she regards herself as his fiancée, which rather throws me. For some reason, which I did not quite catch, she has refused to accept his ring yet. In the Air and Space Museum he got down on one knee and proposed. She told him not to make an exhibition of himself.
He is going to buy a house for her. . . She thinks a condominium would be safer, and perhaps close to Indianapolis or her parents. Gerwich brought her breakfast in bed including gourmet omelettes. It seems he has overcome his earlier compunctions . . . she wonders how long before I will break.
Overall, she is intensely flattered by the attention and cash that he has lavished on her. I ask her if she has told James [her fiancé] yet, and she says "not all the details."
While we are chatting, her Sprint phone rings. I say it's probably him, from Australia. And it is &endash; his plane has reached Sydney. I politely leave her alone to talk. I say that no doubt things between us will now have to alter, and she (with a hesitation) says probably, and when I say again I will not now hold her to her promise to come to Key West; she asked wistfully when precisely that would be, and she does so like Key West. Besides, I remind her, she is still married to the vanished Pole, Andzrej! .
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)
WE drive into downtown Washington and visit W. at his office. He digs out the "Himmler" microfilms for me. There are far more than seven -- more like 25, the documents having been microfilmed in large format end to end. W. has done nothing with them for years. Nobody has ever seen them. I offer $1,000 if he loans me the five most promising microfilms for one month, Nos. 3 D through H, which prima facie contain unfamiliar materials on Himmler including unknown documents on the Stahlecker reports and Einsatzgruppen, etc.
I am buying a pig in a poke, but I suspect it will be worth the outlay. The documents do not look like anything I have seen in any other archives. W. says he bought the films at a high price from a Russian. . . I suggest he should sell all the films to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. At first he is offended by the idea, then warms to it. The films come . . . from OKW files located in Zossen and seized by the Soviets from there. The OKW bit seems unlikely, but Zossen is less so.
Afterwards Jae drives me to Tyson's Corner and we buy a blazer -- it needs altering and brass buttons fitted.
[. . .] A lot of his [the Australian's] lines do seem pretty glib, even corny, but perhaps that is just my way of hearing them, being somewhat older than them both. I tell her that really genuine pick-up lines are never word-perfect, but more often the floundering, stumbling, stuttering, panicking utterances of a very frightened young man.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)JESSICA has written today: "Just got an offer from Bristol University! BBB for archaeology -- didn't even mention archaeology in my statement! It's incredible as they only give low offers to candidates they are sure about, otherwise they normally specify A*s, and its the hardest uni to get into due to the sheer volume of applicants, harder than Oxbridge in some aspects! Its called a 'superselector' for that reason."
I reply: "I think all five universities will offer places to you. You are a star pupil."
At five p.m. we leave for the wharf, and eventually identify the cruise yacht berthed at Alexandria. About a hundred or more dinner guests pack into the lounge, which is spacious though poorly lit, and the boat puts out into the Potomac river.
Jae is looking the best I have ever seen her, in a dark-grey two-piece suit, her hair down in a pony tail. The scamp. I talk for forty-five minutes or more -- not at my best, as it is already long after midnight UK time -- and sign my books afterwards, while irritating people come over and, well, irritate. She is right, I have become very crusty (US: boorish) recently. At one point while their second speaker is ranting on, I go on deck and hedonistically enjoy the miserable drizzle outside, then hide myself away at the darkened rear of the dining room, trying to find a comfortable angle for The Leg. She is suddenly standing in front of me, asking, "Are you all right?"
I flatter myself that I am still almost primus inter pares, but it is an optical illusion. . . There is much that I do not wish to know. On the drive back to my apartment I again say that I really want her to be happy, and I mean it, but the other half of my brain is mutely cursing me for saying it. I am selfishly frightened of losing her to Down Under, as I have lost [my fourth daughter], who has wrapped herself up totally in her new world and newfound family and friends in Brisbane.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)JAE tells me that she will leave tomorrow afternoon for Indianapolis, as James needs her back there on Sunday afternoon for something, and she meekly accepts that. Today she takes me to the Pentagon Mall on a shopping expedition. . . I don't think I've ever been to a Mall before. I gather that she has.
She has now upped the number of times she saved my life from three to four, as she has recalled one other episode. Supper at an Italian restaurant in King Street, Alexandria. She wears the new red dress and looks a billion dollars. I tell her, as we drive back, that her Polish husband has been a schmuck about returning the papers. She has manoeuvered herself into a position of great power. She laughs out loud.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)SHE turns up at at mid-day, and drives me over to the Holocaust museum archives, before setting out on her single-handed 1,200 mile drive back to Indianapolis.
Upstairs, they are happy to let me use a film reader to review the contents of the first W microfilm, reel 3F: I make this note --
This reel is a positive film, printed from a perforated original, evidently ordinary camera film, as the sections are simply stapled together. This reel contains about 1,000 pages of Ordnungen, Erlasse, Rundschreiben, letters signed by Heydrich, Streckenbach, Müller, Schellenberg, Nebe, Ohlendorf and other Amtschefs, dated 1941 to late 1942. Each file is preceded by a brief handwritten description in Russian.I print some 250 pages -- that alone is good value for the money we have paid -- including a most unusual 1942 Gestapo document about Himmler's earlier conspiring with the lawyer Carl Langbehn.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)THE lawyers for the Rommel film production company have answered evasively, as expected, and still make no attempt to show us the script. So they want a fight. I instruct my lawyers that we may have to seek a court order, or even apply for an injunction, what German lawyers call an e.V.
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