David Irving |
i
hebj Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
First posted Friday, April 26, 2013
© Focal Point 2013
In my career, I say, I ignored the exit reading Big Money: This Way, and kept right on. He gasps at the thought.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.PLEASANT and mildly erotic dreams. John O. of Australia pays for the Wolfs Lair tour. That brings us up to sixteen already. I tell him: "The tour will start and end in Warsaw early in September."
I write to Jessica. "A friend has given me a magnificent new fountain pen. It spells badly . . . A Pelikan, appropriately for Florida.
The New Statesman publishes an article mentioning Andrew Moffat, and adds a postscript: "Moffat disputes the fact that he held the position of political secretary to David Irving. . . He may never have been formally employed by Irving, but has worked closely with him in the past." And?
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.BREAKFAST, a baguette at the Banana Café. Three men and a raucous, brassy blonde hog the corner table, getting progressively drunker on champagne; she has a saucer-sized tattoo on one plate-sized breast, most of which gland is spilling out of her top in an entirely unbecoming fashion.
A reader sends me this link and comments: "BBC Big Question programme used this in their title debate, "Is it the case that people believe what they want to believe in spite of the evidence. David Irving, for instance, speaks up for Hitler and denies the Holocaust."
I reply: "Nothing surprises me. I was invited onto a BBC Any Questions in Edinburgh once a few years back, and half an hour later already came the cancellation call."
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.
PAUL S. writes: "I recently re-read Max Hastings' book Bomber Command, and Hastings lists no less than five of your books in his bibliography. Even Andrew Roberts' latest book, The Storm of War, another new history of the Second World War, lists your Hitler's War. Perhaps your writings and their contents are not as "incorrect" or "unsound" as purported."
I reply to him: "You miss out Ian Kershaw, whose Hitler biography is, shall we say, um, solidly based on my Hitler's War! Max Hastings rented my entire research files when he wrote Overlord, having unfortunately omitted to do any research of his own, as he told me. I am glad to say he earned a million pounds for that book. Andrew Roberts borrowed my microfilms of Lord Halifax's secret diaries, before writing his own best-selling biography, Holy Fox. Afterwards he denied it, but I had the proof! Strange.
The oddest thing is Wikipedia. Every top Nazi they have an article on, worldwide, [Hitler, Hess, Goebbels, Milch, Göring, Rommmel] systematically omits my books on them although mine are praised in worldwide reviews, and based on primary sources, while the ones they cite are cheap-cut-and paste potboilers. Not even my Goebbels biography, although I was the one who first transcribed and used his diaries in 1992.When you read the (securely bolted-down and unchangeable) Wikipedia smears about me, then you will see that these omissions are not accidental. How sad: Wikipedia is a great idea, but it has been hijacked by a familiar gang who already control much of the world's media.
[We shall reprint "Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich" later in 2013].
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.TONIGHT is the anniversary of the 1945 Dresden air raid. May God have mercy on their souls. I told the world, which might never have known.
Exclusive: The Dresden target map (right)
proves that military targets
were excluded from the attackI am living in Key West Florida for six months completing Himmler. So tired of being called a Holocaust denier. I am biding my time to pounce. Perhaps the Sunday T. I hit them once, and cleaned up a large amount from them.
Paul S. has replied: "It seems there are no depths of dishonesty and deceit to which some journalists and academics will not sink in relation to their dealings with you and your writings. However, millions of others, including Norman Mailer and of course myself, find your greatly informative books of riveting interest and marvellously well written."
Douglas Laybourne tells me:
I was born on the January 12, 1940. Our father was on active service in the war. He escaped from France and then following a short leave in London he was introduced to us, his twin boys. We saw him fleetingly until he left us, forever, with his regiment on D-Day, 1944.He was killed in action in Celle, in northern Germany on the April 8, 1945. My brother and I were just five years old, when having walked home from school we were greeted at the gate by our grandma who told us, "Mammy is upset because your daddy will not be coming home." We were too young to understand exactly what that meant."
I reply: Very sad letter Douglas, thanks; I was luckier, my father (Royal Navy) came home but I did not see him really until a year or two before he died in 1967.
Right: My father in 1966, writing The Smokescreen
of Jutland; with one of my five favourite daughters
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.BAVARIA is appealing against the lifting of the German ban on me, and citing my website's naughtiness. I am making progress on Himmler. I have invaded Austria and am about to start dealing with the Jews.
Reports of the Dresden ceremonies come in. The city was under siege, cordoned off into sections by four thousand riot policemen. "We were split up and prevented from meeting at the original place of gathering. Ah, these free democracies!
Friday, February 15, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.MORE about the Dresden funeral march. "I was there. I have never seen so many police wagons and riot policemen, thousands, in my life. The German government did not allow our legal march on the pretext that the antifas did not want us to do so."
In the evening I spend an hour transcribing more of Marga Himmler's original diary.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.SOMEBODY sends me a link to interesting exchanges on the Guardian website about the February 1945 Dresden raid (none of which of course mentions that my book started the whole controversy fifty years ago, in 1963). One person cites the post-war Geneva Convention against such crimes, 1949.
Bruce comes and I invite him to supper at the Rusty Anchor.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.HUGH Trevor-Roper once advised me, when considering a new document, to ask myself three questions:
- is it genuine?
- was the person who wrote it in a position to know? e.g. the janitor in the bunker would not be an adequate source for Hitler's decision making;
- why does this document exist? Is it a Deckungsschreiben, written just for window dressing?
Jack Williams asks: "Have you or do you plan to post a rebuttal to that German Historians' Commission which produced that 18-25,000 death toll figure [for Dresden]?
I reply: "Check out my dossier on the topic. I will eventually work up a paper on the topic. The most crucial evidence is our March 24, 1945 decode of the Dresden Mayor's report (above). I am baffled that the conformist 'historians' on the Commission have not addressed this decode."
I HAVE to explain something to my third daughter, Paloma: "A gentleman sent us a $30,000 donation then killed himself. The Bank of America closed the account." It is God's will. She replies: "Blimey....." Good Old English word which adequately describes the situation. [The donation would have funded a lot of reprints, but is apparently lost beyond recall.]
Rick J. writes: "I did have a chuckle at the views you expressed on the other Himmler books that have been published. They are true: Padfield is dry, Longerich offers us nothing but rehashed rubbish, and despite being the thinnest of the three Breitman's is informative. I am hoping that yours will be the thickest, and most informative." I agree about Breitmann: a Jew, but good historian, like Gerhard Weinberg. They are not all as bad as Bernie.
I reassure him: "I am working every day hard on Himmler, delayed a bit by a hod-carrier's strike."
I explain to Eric: "Unfortunately there is not much I can talk about re J. without violating her entitlement to personal privacy. About Gerwich I am free to talk. . ." [and do so]. I took her round fifteen countries in the three or four years we were friends; he took her to . . . Melbourne, Australia, which is closer to the penguins of the Antarctic than to the rest of the world's civilisation."
Fan mail is building up to an avalanche. It mystifies me. A Sri Lankan junior surgeon based in Yorkshire writes: "You are doing a fantastic job in your mission to bring the truth to the public at a time when it is deeply unpopular. I am also undertaking my research doctorate, investigating heart and lung disease. During my own research on human samples, I have uncovered mechanisms that go against much of the established 'animal models' of health and disease, and this has taken a long time for scientists to accept. I was, however, recently awarded the Young Investigator award at the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgeons (EACTS) in 2012 after months of hard work."
No awards lining up for me, methinks. He continues relentlessly:
But yours is a struggle that is more than months of hard work but decades of painstaking research that has seen you sent to prison and your reputation tarnished. Far from the villain of British and International history, you are to be admired as one of the last of the authentic historians looking for truth in a web of sensationalism.I came to the UK in 1986 when I was 3 years old as my parents escaped the civil war in Sri Lanka. I remember when I was at school, our history teacher gave a talk about you some time following the Lipstadt trial. I must say now that the picture he painted of you was a bleak and non-flattering one of a man who had fallen from grace. He was a good man and for many years I believed him.
But evidently no longer. In my reply I tell him I am a British Empire fan, and still call his country Ceylon.
Farewell supper with Bruce James at the Rusty Anchor. He leaves tomorrow for the Everglades and then drives back to Canada. It is nice to see him again. He works on dismantling nuclear power stations -- two-hour shifts before the radiation is too much. He was a good pal for me down here in the early 1990s, and again this month. -- He took a lot of photos at that time, of Jessica in my bike basket, and says he will send them to me.
Somebody sends me this link to an item in the Israel-friendly Die Welt, attacking my old friend Rolf Hochhuth: Der Mann, der Papst Pius XII. den Kampf ansagte: Vor fünfzig Jahren löste Rolf Hochhuth mit "Der Stellvertreter" einen Skandal aus. Das Schweigen des Vatikans zum Judenmord wurde ein Thema. It states: "He ran his mouth off in 2005 defending Holocaust-denier David Irving of all people."
Poor Rolf, how he has suffered because of our nearly fifty-year friendship. It dates back to January 26, 1965 [Photo above, of the moment we met, in Stern offices in Hamburg]. I can take the unkind and lying sneers of the German journaille, but it has been very hard for him.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.A QUERY comes from Romania: "Is the book The Young Hitler I Knew written by August Kubizek accurate, and would you recommend it?"
I reply:
Yes, I visited Kubizek's widow Paula once, near Linz, Austria, and she confirmed everything in his book (I remember listening to Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C, the "Great," all the way back to Munich in my car). Those were the days. Banned from both countries now! Later I visited Winifred Wagner several times, and she described a luncheon with Hitler (she called him "Wolf") to which Kubizek came in mid-August 1939; the two men shared anecdotes from their childhood. See my book The War Path [which we shall soon reissue].
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I RECEIVE a long and disturbing letter from a stranger, and reply: "That is a fundamentally sad letter Shane, and I read it with great compassion. There are people like you everywhere who have been tricked and trapped into ways of life that are what you never intended when you were young and full of hope. You did not mention gambling, especially online gambling, which is an even worse swamp to fall into than those which already lay in your path. You can still pull yourself clear, but it will be a long and hard process. I wish you luck."
and paid her an unannounced visit. Rang the bell. A little hatch opened, six inches square, and a woman's face appeared. "Frau von Blomberg?" Yes. "I am a British historian, writing..." Clunk!, and the hatch closed. I waited a minute or two but the door did not open. Unlike a lot of women, she stood by her man long after his death in 1946.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.A Matthew H. from Evesham writes:
Enjoying reading your views on world war two on your website, I also like the way you put all the facts forward for both sides and balance the viewpoints overall.Having been born in Germany and having both my parents been British with me growing up in England left me for many years not knowing which side to take. There is always more than meets the eye or what you get taught in school."
Some emails are less complimentary. From an anonymous writer at untame886@aol.com: "Subject: David Irving should die a slow and miserable death . . . sick bastard!"
I reply: "Thank you for sharing that with me. I have asked American Online to cancel your account for violation of its Terms of Use policy." (I have not of course.)
Rense.com publishes an item about the hacker-thug Jeremy Hammond. I send this comment: "You fail to mention that night in November 2009 when he and a gang of fellow thugs descended on our dinner in Chicago, armed with various implements -- and we ambushed them all. All it took was my assistant, a girl much cleverer than I, to notify the authorities in time. They were so surprised when Cook County's guys-in-blue turned up, outside. It started Jeremy's descent into what seems likely to be a pretty long time inside."
Bruno D. writes from Portugal:
Hitler's War is spectacular. An image of Hitler very different from what is shown in the media. Not long ago I saw a documentary where Hitler's personal valet Karl Wilhelm Krause is interviewed. I do not know if you've seen this documentary."I reply: "Krause also wrote memoirs, and wrote in private afterwards about his fury when he saw the book that the German publisher had printed over his name. It was totally changed around, and made politically correct."
Friday, February 22, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JESSICA [youngest daughter] has bought a ticket to Bali, leaving on March 29. I remonstrate. She retorts: "I'm also getting special backpacker travel insurance as we speak as who knows WHAT can go wrong out there. Also this will probably be the only time in my life where I actually have both time and the means to go travelling and see the world!" She knows how to Disconcert with a capital D.
"I am impressed," I reply,"but very frightened for what will happen while you are over there."
She gives me her university scores. "Well those seem good results to me. At least they are not saying 'Where is Jessica Irving?' which I fear I shall be saying from March 29. Bali is disease- and drug-ridden and a lot of tourists are never seen again. Thailand even worse." I then add: "Interesting article in New York Times yesterday about how salmon find their way around the world and get back to their spawning grounds, while humans can't -- salmon map geo-magnetism in their brains. Reminded me of what you were telling me about how humans decide where to settle."
"I'll have a look at the article. I love that sort of thing. Just bought the insurance: In the event of plane hijacking I'll be compensated 250 pounds!"
"Grrr - I never buy insurance. It's what they make their money out of. I buy only the absolute legal minimum, e.g. for the car. In the long run it's cheaper. It all evens out."
I realise the back wheel of the bicycle is buckled, and rubbing against a brake the whole time. Hence the very hard work of riding out to Stock Island.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I WORK on the June 1938 pogroms in Berlin. I found more documents on it in the Moscow archives, which totally support my line that Hitler was horrified at such excesses.
A British gun worshipper Michael D., of Essex, writes a somewhat rude letter about my views on guns. He gets a measured response: "Surprised to see you writing like that from England. I have said my piece about the Americans' stupid gun-worship. I have nothing in common with people who find phoney Second Amendment excuses for the mad woman who legally kept six hand-guns and machine guns which killed twenty innocent infants in Connecticut. . . As for your contribution, yes, it was £20 thirteen years ago. Thanks."
What is it with these gun worshippers, who freak out when they meet somebody who thinks differently?
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.
I GET the impression that, now that Ernst Zündel is back in Germany and effectively neutralised, German prosecutors have been casting around for some other person to victimise.
H. informs me that Gerhard Frey (right) died yesterday. That is sad. He was a good supporter over the years and commissioned several series of talks by me in Germany, which of course led to my "downfall" in the eyes of established publishers (like my close friiend the late Dr Albrecht Knaus) and the authorities. Coming from a free country, England, I did not anticipate it. Should have, but didn't.
I post this notice on the website at 8:03 a.m:
WE ANNOUNCE with regret the death yesterday of our friend Dr Gerhard Frey, of Munich, Germany, founder of the National Zeitung. A shrewd German financier, Frey backed the right-wing German People's Union through its most difficult years, fought and won hundreds of legal actions against municipalities which illegally tried to block his meetings and against newspapers which smeared him, and somehow permanently escaped prosecution under Germany's draconian laws for the suppression of free speech.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.David P. asks: "Are you coming to the Pacific Northwest?" -- I reply: Perhaps at the end of the year, I shall tour the eastern US in the fall."
Can you get your hands on an original The War Path hardback please, as I would like to reprint. The Viking Press issued it ca 1978.9:40 a.m. a fifteen-minute phone call from journalist Simon Yaffe, of the Manchester Jewish News. He has the Will Storr book. I say I have not read it and am not likely to. Asks: Do Jews come on my tours of the Nazi concentration camps? I say I don't ask the applicants if they're Jewish.
Yaffe poses the usual trick questions, incorrigible stuff, and I eventually tell him the problem is that the Jews never ask themselves, "Why us?" He pretends to be shocked that I am sticking to my views despite "that court case." I remind him how much Stephen Spielberg et al. paid to secure the judgment they needed in the Lipstadt Trial: Thirteen million dollars.
He needs enlightenment, but I really can't be bothered. As for the Six Million figure, I say it has the right number of digits. I say that people (He interjects: "The Jews?") have inflated the figures for Auschwitz, and I suggest that the Krakow court in 1947 got the details right.
In my career, I say, I ignored the exit reading BIG MONEY THIS WAY, which Sir Ian Kershaw and Sir Martin Gilbert and others have chosen, and kept right on, on the main road toward Real History, the truth. No big money there. He gasps at the thought. He inquires whether I have plans to speak in the UK this year, and asks if I am not afraid of "Jewish violence" at my meetings, and I laugh out loud and suggest he reads back through the Radical's Diary the last two or three years.
"These things cost money. Somebody is paying them, putting them up to it."
They want to be the centre of attention. They want everybody to talk about them. But, quant à moi, I have other fish to fry.
SAD news about Doug Christie, who defended me in Canada, comes from Yvonne Faurisson -- cancer, and he has only months to live.
Tuesday, February 25, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I WRITE him: "Dear Doug,
I am thinking of you since I got the worrying news yesterday from Yvonne. You are an inspiration to us all, and I know what you are going through -- B. was diagnosed while I was in the Austrian prison in 2006, but it seems to be in remission; and my much older brother fought what you have for eight years. You are a strong fighter, and I am sure that will extend the time frame. We have both always been up against big enemies, and now you are fighting the worst one of all. None of them fights clean. Keep it up. . .A gun worshipper corrects me:
In your blog you refer to an M-15 rifle used at Newtown, Conn, as as a 'machine gun. While an M-15 certainly can be configured to shoot automatically, the subject M-15 was not a machine gun as it was configured to shoot one bullet with each pull of the trigger.It is not helpful at all when a master of language and the written word, as you are, makes wrong and misleading discriptions. We Americans love our guns; they are beautiful, sleek and deadly; some of our guns, like the 10 mm Glock, can kill a man where he stands; Colonel Colt certainly made all men equal. Join us in our love and admiration for guns. I bet you'd be a good shot. I think it would be appropriate for you to issue a mild and narrow correction.
Hmmm.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JESSICA writes: "Don't patronise me!"
I reply: "I can patronise you! Comes from pater - father. Took Mummy's ring to be repaired today. It needs two new emeralds. Will be ready tomorrow."
I am not feeling 100 percent today, and the inability to set up properly upstairs is not helping.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JIM Bacque ("Other Losses") has written to Doug Christie. I thank him. "Dear Jim, nice to hear you write to Doug. He has been diagnosed with cancer which is spreading and they give him six months."
I email to Hugo: "To my surprise the Sunday Times excerpt [from Will Storr's book] was much more defamatory than the book, which does not, so far as I can see, use the actionable phrase 'Holocaust Denier.'
So Macmillan's and Storr are off the hook. He is a bit silly in parts, e.g. his fears for his personal safety, and the concealment of his mongrel girlfriend. I find Storr's pseudo-psychological analysis tooth-gritting, but I have forgiven Storr, but mainly because it has prompted a brief stroll down memory lane in happier times: . . . J. spotted correctly that I was upset by my brother John's death although she had left England by then. . . I can only confirm Storr's reports on what J. told him: I did raise my voice at her, once, I do confess. It was in Lake End House and I cursed myself even as it was happening. The [Brentwood School] teacher mentioned was "Captain" Kidd, our seven-foot tall and very intimidating German teacher. Page 306, I don't think I ever use the word "faggot". I always say "homosexual" and not even "gay". I don't mind being called "prejudiced". We all are, one way or the other.
Storr correctly identifies what lay behind most of the problem on the 2011 tour of the Nazi sites: I was almost suicidal with pain from my hip, and did not always manage to conceal it. The Interloper seized this window of opportunity to steal my best-ever companion from me, and can expect no quarter, now or ever more.
Doug Christie, the battling barrister of British Columbia Friday, March 1, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.THE local newspaper on Vancouver Island reports that Doug Christie is dying. So soon?
He invited me to speak there, in Victoria, in 1992 where I was given the George Orwell Award for free speech; at the end of which dinner, eight Mounties came clanking in at the back of the restaurant (I was reminded of Hitler's barbed remark to Hermann Fegelein, "Would you mind just galloping next door and fetching the file, Herr Gruppenführer?") and I was arrested. The local, um, community, put the Japanese restaurant owner out of business as a punishment for allowing the dinner.
Barrister Doug flew to Toronto to defend me in the Niagara Falls deportation hearings that followed; the Crown prosecutor Steve McCaffrey commented . . . and that deportation on November 13, 1992 began the climax of the global ordeal.
Doug and I shared the naïve view that if you have a righteous cause, you are bound to win. As a lawyer, he should have known better.
We were up against a Canadian legal system which is still totally corrupt, and an immigration judge (Kenneth J Thomson, a former customs officer) who was taking orders direct from the even more corrupt minister in Ottawa. Thomson pretended to be unaware of what we later found out -- that US immigration computers all run on Eastern Standard Time, which explained the three-hour discrepancy on the Pacific coast of which he made so much in his findings.
The episode left me with a monstrous bill for legal work in that case, for $14,000 or more. . . that was the beginning of the David Irving Legal Fighting Fund, which saw me through many an action after that. We appealed: the original judge, Murphy, was mysteriously replaced by a Mr Justice Rothstein who -- six months and $28,000 later -- denied our appeal without giving any grounds.
Thomson's baffling ignorance irked me; but not as much as Ernst Zündel's decision, seeing all the live television trucks parked outside the courtroom day after day, to put on his white helmet and come to Niagara Falls uninvited, to show solidarity with me. "Did you really have to come, Ernst?" I chided him.
The broadsheet newspaper support melted away overnight and turned into outright hostility. The Globe & Mail had only a few days earlier run an editorial backing me. No longer.
I wish Doug well in his final struggle. I hope he suffers less than John did, God rest his soul.
I remember when I was in prison in Vienna in 2006, watching CNN coverage of his speech in the United Nations directly after President George W Bush had spoken there: Hugo Chávez mounting the podium, sniffing around, and declared in Spanish, "I smell sulphur. The Devil has been here."
A glorious moment and I fell off my bunk laughing. Bush and Bush, two diablos with millions of lives on their consciences -- if they had them.
Sulphur. With which element I last played as a ten-year-old, making gunpowder. You could buy the stuff (sulphur) and saltpeter at your local chemist in those days. For charcoal, you ground up your own. We did things like that as youngsters, and it still marvels me that I survived, if I really did. [Chávez died on Tuesday, March 5, 2013].
M.'s comments on the Himmler drafting are good as usual, and I reply briefly. "I will comment on your other excellent points after breakfast. I need your input to nudge me off riskier puddles I might otherwise stamp on. The next chapter deals with Adolf Eichmann's first actions in Vienna, and a lot of people won't like that either."
I discover by accident that my book-font Minion Pro seems to have the Czech, Hungarian, and Polish diacritical accents that I need. At 10:49 a.m I send to M. the revised version, adding: "huge crowds - huge is a non-word, which I try to avoid. 'Avoid clichés like the plague,' said Lord Beaverbrook."
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I ASK Jessica: "What kind of week have you had at the Uni. Are rich handsome men hitting on you? Thinking more about the bike? Mine is invaluable. But then, these islands are as flat as pancakes. All Florida is as flat as Calista Flockhart. Getting a lot of writing done here. Glad I got the ring fixed though, it has been in my bag for six months. It has seen all America! and Eton Wick too."
I write to a barrister friend in London, who has had legal reason to be something of an expert on the Jewish holy scriptures: "On the Talmud I want to get it right. Does it hold Our Lord to be boiling in semen, or in excrement? -- I believe expert opinions differ. What is the actual sentence that so claims. I don't want to be shot down by the Lipstadts of this world. They are not going to like my Himmler book as it is."
He is not himself Jewish, of course. He replies helpfully: "My recollection from memory is semen. The tractate Sanhedrin of course desired the Crucifixion, which to them seemed a righteous and justifiable act!"
I reply: "Okay. Maybe there is no difference in Hebrew between semen and excrement." That would explain a lot. It might explain Deborah Lipstadt, for example.
A fan writes: "I was a student of University College Cork, Ireland, when you were politely invited to, and then rudely denied the right to, speak [see photo above, Nov 15, 1999]. If you had spoken, I would probably never know anything about you. Long may they continue to try to stop a man from speaking - this only encourages people to check online. . . If you ever find yourself in Haikou, Hainan, China, I'll stand you a beer or two."
I reply: "Gosh -- Cork, that's ages ago. My youngest daughter Beatrice was studying at the university and was baffled to see the city plastered with posters attacking her father. I told the journalists, never mind me, find out who paid for the printing - and the buses, - that's the real story here. They didn't.
"Beatrice is now married with children, in Brisbane, Australia [and they are all Australian citizens], where I am banned to visit. Ah, the free democracies!"
The avalanche continues. Another fan, Giuseppe, writes from Italy: "Oh my god! but you are the real David Irving? Here in Italy you have thousands of fans including myself. When we can have the honor of seeing you here?"
They are so excitable, these Mediterraneans. I hope that is not a racist remark. One can't be too careful nowadays.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.A Victor asks a series of lengthy questions about History and Zionism. I reply after some thought: "Those are profound questions but as I do not know who you are I am reluctant to - and will not - expend any time with detailed answers."
Still without identifying himself, he asks me if I will at least answer the second question. "Nope."
The bike has another broken spoke; I felt the wheel wobbling all last week.
I concede: "A lot of paragraphs are due for the chop when the book is finished. . . I spent several hours yesterday comparing different versions of the Eichmann memoirs, including those that I forced the British High Court to order released to me, the secret Israeli files. One positive product of the Lipstadt Trial. The Israelis had released them to her, so under the Rules of Discovery [of which her counsel Rampton seemed unaware] she was forced to release them, against protests, to me. I can see why the Israelis sat on them. Eichmann was a man of considerable erudition, and inconveniently pro-Zionist, and (you will find) the Jews collaborated far too closely with him for their own good."
I continue later: "Seemingly pointless passages are all working up to one of the big set-pieces, Kristallnacht. I sow early seeds, ready to watch them blossom a few chapters later.
I intend to read Himmler's (very rich) speeches only later, when the structure of the book is complete, for the material they provide to fill in gaps. As for the Jews: Nobody is going to expect me to go soft on them, and I probably won't. They have collectively spent a lifetime trying to destroy me. What they won't expect is the very detailed and full -- and extremely sympathetic -- analysis I give of the Jewish massacres in the east.Poor Willi Cohn gets his postcard in Oct 1941, ordering him to report with all his valuables to an Umschlagplatz, and that is the last we hear of him. . . The Moscow files I have used contain the most horrifying materials. The conformist historians write turgid, unreadable, and unconvincing accounts of what happened. I am not concerned at all about what people write about me. They still call me -- this last week in heaps again -- a Holocaust denier!
Monday, March 4, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JOHNNY M. has written an immensely long letter to me about the current global media assault on the Vatican, beginning, "Thank you for personally signing the books. I write tonight to ask your opinion about something very important to me, the Catholic Church . . ."
I apologise: "I can't reply at length, but it does seem to me that the Jewish media began their onslaught on the Catholic church at the time that Israel was coming under worldwide attack for their atrocities in a Gaza campaign."
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.PEDRO Varela sends me the Strasbourg European court decision, it is in French. I put it on the website. "Victory in European Court of Human Rights: Strasbourg orders Spain to pay him damages and costs."
I pass it to my lawyer in Germany:
Ich weiss nicht, ob Sie auch französisch verstehen (unten), aber der Revisionist Pedro Varela scheint in Strasburg mit seiner Klage gegen Spanien sich durchgesetzt zu haben. Auch EU-Gesetz! Er wurde inhaftiert, sein Buchgeschäft demoliert und beschlagnahmt, usw."In the evening the news comes that Venezuela's Hugo Chávez has died. I put it on my front page: "Yes, sulphur. Hugo, you are not forgotten."
This being the United States, Miami's Channel Seven News leads with scenes of jubilation in the streets, each woman interviewed being immensely fat and frighteningly ugly. How Washington hated that man! He could show himself fearlessly to the crowds without armourplate and bullet-proof glass, in the way that Popes and populists still do. He supplied a quarter of this country's petroleum. I wonder if ordinary Americans, suffering each time they fill the cars (the price of gasoline down here in the Keys is now way over four dollars a gallon, and rising) connect that pump-price with these hatreds -- Venezuela, and now Iran, whose oil production has been embargoed to spite Ahmedenijad, but to please that sh*tty little country in the Middle East. Europeis still sailing rudderless as the Bismarck, in the wake of Washington and Tel Aviv.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.A SWEDISH fan writes: "I am a young researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden. You are a hero. You are a role model for me. The only and true purpose of science is searching and finding truth, and that's what you are representing for me - courage to not giving up a truth, despite all hatred and hostility. . ."
Hugo HT rambles on about J. I chide him: "You are right on one point: I miss her companionship very strongly."
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I TELL my German lawyer that nothing on the documents marked them as confidential. Enjoyable even so, to see the extreme discomfiture, even panic, of the swine Denunziant, Clement M. of Potsdam.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I TELL Mark Weber: "I am now being indicted anew by the Lüneburg courts because I published on my website their earlier indictment for setting foot on German soil (for two days in 2010). I identified the Denunziant - a historian in Potsdam - in my Radical's Diary, resulting in a new indictment. He has written a panicky, pants-urinating three-page letter of complaint to the prosecutor, fears assassination by neo-Nazis, which I also cannot publish. In Germany it is a criminal offence to publish an indictment before the case has been heard. Nacht und Nebel, ich höre dir trapsen!"
Kevin: "Another indictment? Not good -- clearly efforts being made to ensure you don't get back in!"
I ask the blogger Alex Holmes if he can help me find a famous high-res image taken of Dr Joseph Goebbels by the Jewish photographer Eisenstaedt in Geneva in 1933. St Martins Press used it for the jacket of my biography, "Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich".
He replies, "You might be the most famous person who has ever contacted me regarding the blog. . . I had my computer stolen recently in India, so I don't have my backups anymore, I am afraid. . . .Would you be interested to write a guest blog post on a photo you consider to be iconic?
I reply that Life want $230 for the image. "I'd have to think about the blog. Oh, wait a minute: How about this: (the requested blog):
I found the son of Wilhelm Kube, the Nazi governor of what is now Belarus (White Russia); Kube was blown up in Minsk by a Soviet partisan woman in 1943. His son lives in Argentina and yes, when I wrote to him he did have photos of his father (I wanted some of Himmler visiting White Russia).The son sent me rolls of about 200 35mm negatives, which I scanned at high resolution on a big Nikon machine I had bought (for 120-size roll film). You never knew what you were going to see next, it took about five minutes to scan each image. I did something else while waiting, the machine "snoring" next to me, that was the noise it made. None of Himmler, but ... this extraordinary picture [below] of three captured Soviet partisans came out. You can guess what the next two or three images show - the actual ceremonial public hanging of the three partisans. Nobody looks good when they've been hanged, so I have not put their hanging on the website. See some of the other images here.
Back to this one. Study it hard. See the bravery on the faces: the defiance! Not an ounce of fear in either of the youngsters, who know they will be dead within five minutes while a crowd of rubbernecking locals and German soldiers looks on. Tears are coursing down the young man's cheeks as he waits behind the noose, as he has seen his girl hanged first.I later found that this large one is quite a famous image - and here I was with the original roll of 35mm negatives portraying them and their unhappy end. And the deaths of many other partisans too, singly, hanging from lamp-posts in Minsk, presumably, etc. I don't think the son realised when he sent me the negatives (which I have of course returned to him in Buenos Aires seven years ago).
In 1961 I also found the extraordinary and now famous photos of the horrors of the air raid on Dresden: those "aftermath" photos too are iconic now. They were taken by Walther Hahn, twelve days after the RAF fire raid killed 100,000 people in three hours. 80,000 to 100,000 were still listed as "missing" (i.e. dead, incinerated) on March 24, 1945 (we British decoded the Dresden mayor's report that day to the SS).
Hahn was given special permission by the Gauleiter that day on February 25, 1945 (he showed me the permit) to go through the police cordons and take photos for history. I went through the Iron Curtain, in 1961, and found Hahn, still living in Dresden. He secretively produced the photos for me and to my amazement even had them in full colour too. Only I now have those: see my website at link.
He supplied copy transparencies to me, his originals went lost in Eastern Germany after the communists were overthrown in 1989. In return he pleaded with me to send him two boxes of Kodak hard-grade photo paper, which you couldn't buy in Soviet Zone of Germany. I did (back in 1961). They arrived safely, he later wrote me, each box containing a printed note from the communist security police: "This box has been officially opened and exposed to the light." So much for freedoms under communism. Germany is not much more free, even today.
Saturday, March 9, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.HUGO HT tells me he has received an acidulous letter from his highly-placed sister. She says that Robert Harris the novelist, who lives two villages away from them in Wiltshire, is much nicer than Hugo's friends. "I could name thirty or more big names," she says, "but won't as you will just hold me to ransom on that."
Hugo inquires: "Do you know him personally?"
I don't willingly betray friendships, but reply:
In 1977 Harris invited me to address the Fabian Society at Cambridge of which he was President. I gave him an audience of 1,000 students including the son of that Jewish widow who lives opposite you, Mrs Leo Abse. Harris is one of the nicest folks I know.He went from University to be a BBC producer at Panorama or Newsnight, I forget which. I did a BBC morning television interview with Gill Hornby (in which I mentioned about Prince Philip having four sisters who resided in Germany during WW2, married to gauleiters and SS-Gruppenführer), and as we said our farewells I remarked to her, seeing that she wore no wedding band, that she could do worse than contact a BBC producer named Robert Harris, who would make an ideal husband.
Her response: "Mr Irving, I am already dating him!" (Well, blow me, I thought). (Coulda knocked me dahn wiv a fevver). They are married now with children.
He came to one or more of my cocktail parties at Duke Street, bringing Jeremy Paxman in tow once, as Paxman reminded me in 2000, explaining why he intended to go soft on me in that night's interview (about the Lipstadt trial defeat), which he did.
Diary, April 11, 2000:
...Newsnight with Jeremy Paxman at 10:15 p.m. I have to wear just a waistcoat, as the jacket is still a battle casualty [fracas outside the courtroom with Lipstadt's admirers]. Paxman is suave, remembers coming for a cocktail party here with Robert Harris. We swap memories. There is no real edge to his questions, though he pretends to apply one. They show an interview filmed with me in 1983 with Robert Harris: I look young and eager, on top of the world as I claimed even then. "I am indestructible." As I leave, Paxman is just starting an interview with Lipstadt on a large screen: she refuses of course to be seen to debate with me. Ho-ho.
After the Hitler Diaries scandal in 1983, Harris contacted me about his decision to write a book on it. Because I had good expectations of Harris' integrity, I did what I always do in special cases: I gave him total access to my diaries and telephone logs (verbatim transcripts of my phone conversations), and that formed the backbone of his research, and the book Selling Hitler (1984) became a best seller. I fell off my chair laughing, reading it in the Spaghetti House in Duke Street, because he wrote it so well.
He often features in my diary:
January 11th, 1986 (Saturday)
. . . At 11p.m. Robert Harris called by with lady friend Gill Hornby (both of BBCtv) and we had a coffee and talk. Told her (in continuation of my Fourth World speech to her last year at Breakfast Time television) that I have a theory that the opening bar of Beethoven's Fifth is not Fate knocking at the door, but Mrs Ludwig von Beethoven knocking at the door and nagging: 'Ludwig? Ludwig! Haven't you finished that symphony of yours yet?'
(I will not irritate you now with details of my Fourth-World speech; it is about the female of the species, somewhat more backward in most ways than the Third).
Harris went on from that to write Fatherland (1991), about Europe if Hitler had won: in line with my policies, familiar to you, I deliberately did not read that. Writing that, he consulted me several times about the Hitler people I had known, like Nicholas von Below, picking my brains for the human details about them which he subsequently wove into the book. With that kind of backbone of course, a book is bound to succeed because it enabled him to approach all the other dramatis personae (I expect [Sir] John [Sawers] will complain that he does not know Greek) knowing far more than they did, and persuade them to spill the beans too. It has a rolling-stone, snowballing effect.
Harris's book was a vast best seller; it made his fortune and he bought a mill house out of the proceeds, and he deserved every penny. Harris has never to my knowledge spoken ill of me, at a time when many others have found it profitable or politic to do so. On the contrary: When St Martins Press (in New York) in May 1996 broke the contract (under pressure from the ADL as they admitted) to publish my Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich, the product of eight years' work, it was Harris who - without asking me - contacted Steve Wassermann at Random House, and Wassermann asked me immediately to FedEx two copies of the book to him so that Random House could offer for it. Wassermann, a Good Jew, has since then remained a friend. He carried the project some way before it was leaked to the New York Post, and Random House had to shy away from it again.
I do hope that John has meanwhile learned about the influence of "the Jews". They get books squelched; they trick people into wars and losing empires. The truth is somewhere between the books he read at school and the Protocols of the Wise Elders of Zion (which I hasten to say I ain't read either).
That should please him.
I work all afternoon, and at four-thirty pm go down to Higgs Beach for a stroll, and read the New York Times in the beach café. On the way back on my bike I see a penny glistening a hundred yards ahead. I of course look around to see if J. is somewhere in view -- she who used to scatter surreptitious pennies ahead for me to chance upon. But no, it is genuine good luck this time.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.AAARGH, the clocks must have gone forward last night.
The phone rings; caller ID says Washington State, 425 791 7988. After a pause and some crackle, a male with an American accent says just, "I am sorry, uh --" and hangs up.
A couple of orders today. Mystery why so few. We have currently (7:49 p.m.) 434 visitors browsing in the bookstore!
Monday, March 11, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JESSICA writes: "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you! I met my friend's sister's boyfriend the other day, and one of the first things he said was, 'Oh I heard your Dad was David Irving, bla bla'. I immediately went on the defensive, but he had nothing but praise! He was like [grrr], 'That man got me my First in History (at Bristol) on my dissertation on BARBAROSSA, he's so well researched, its a shame his later works were so controversial cos his earlier ones are brilliant'. Very refreshing!!"
7:56 a.m: I reply: "A lot of people now buy Hitlers War at the beginning of the uni year. Thanks for telling me. A nice start to the week."
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.SHOCKING news from Canada, Doug Christie died at four p.m. yesterday with his family around him.
Australia has replied unhelpfully, enclosing the January 10 letter (which never reached me). Because I did not reply within seven days, the case is closed, visa application refused, no appeal.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.A NIGHT filled with small dreams, of which I remember only bits now, like a beach littered with tiny flotsam after the tide as gone out.
My German lawyer informs me that the Court in Lüneburg wants to set May 7 as a court date, re: Verstoß gegen Freizügigkeitsgesetz, the two days I spent there visiting Himmler's death house and the two historians with J.
A reader writes me with word that "I just read that Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist of the anti-Nazi resistance has passed away at age ninety."
I reply: "He was a monstrous liar, and dined out after the war on his supposed Resistance activities -- because that was the way to stardom in post-1945 Germany."
Another sends me the Telegraph clipping, which reads: "Others were subsequently hanged with piano wire, or on meat hooks, after being tortured by the Gestapo. (Hitler had some of the gorier deaths filmed for him to watch.)" He asks: "Is this true? Frankly I've never thought of Hitler as the sort of fellow who would like to see a brutal death. I should think he is different from Obama and Hilary Clinton who were photographed eagerly awaiting the real-time snuff movie of Bin Laden's killing from cameras in the helmets of the executioners."
I reply: "It is completely untrue, and Kleist was a nondescript who was never in the plots, but dined out on his Resistance after 1945."
Thursday, March 14, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I WRITE to Jessica: "I have to be in Germany for a court hearing. Hmmm. Rather wrecks any summer plans. . . Yesterday there were fourteen nineteen- to twenty-one year-old girls lounging round the pool, all Whites, and no men: all very fit. They tell me it's because they are from an athletics team at their university in Boone, North Carolina. But they are very noisy once darkness falls."
I write all morning and early afternoon, and in the later afternoon I work preparing another book for our reprint series, The War Path. . .
For some months I have been getting unsolicited messages, i.e., spam, from a Congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, apparently a Cuban émigrée, or even an émigré, to judge from her looks. It seems impossible to cancel it. I send her this polite message: "For **** sake stop sending me spam. There is no way I would vote for you, you fat lump, even if I could." It won't get through her filters, but I feel better afterwards.
Colin Wright is angry that I disparage Kleist as a traitor. I reply:
If you are an officer in an army, and you accept the pay and the promotions and the glory, and then decide you're going to kill your commander in chief because you don't like him, you are a traitor.My personal hero is somebody like the clockmaker Georg Elser, who actually tried (Bürgerbräu Nov 1939), single handed, and nearly achieved what the entire illustrious General Staff thought about doing, but singularly failed actually to do.
As for the piano wire and so on. (1) I have a lengthy first-person narrative by the actual hangman at Plötzensee, which decribes the hangings in great detail (Hugh Trevor-Roper gave it to me); (2) Hitler's adjutants (including Fegelein's, Johannes Göhler) described to me what ACTUALLY happened; (3) the Goebbels files which I located in the Potsdam archives make plain that MI6 produced a fake film of the hangings which was shown in Switzerland to the enthralled gentlemen of the world's press.
The traitors around Stauffenberg managed to kill four innocent people: the chief Wehrmacht adjutant Schmundt, the chief of the German air force Korten, an army colonel Brandt (who was one of their own, as it turned out), and the civil service verbatim-stenographer Berger.
I personally met the widows of two of them. One of them cried all over again as she showed me the crumpled telegram she received that afternoon. I do not think they would share your view that the murderers of their husbands were anything but traitors.
If they had succeeded in killing Hitler, the Red Army would have been in Berlin within a week, and at the English Channel not long after. I guess the Stauffenberg gang and their fans never bothered to think that far ahead. As Hitler said, Did these idiots imagine there is one German soldier who would have followed their orders?
The mental picture I have of the little clockmaker letting himself into the beerhall night after night for three weeks, hammering and chiselling the hole in the pillar, lining it with cork and insulation so nobody would hear the timing clock, and nearly achieving his aim . . . it beats the Stauffenberg gang of complacent, lazy, blueblooded swine, as Ley called them, the July 20 lot.
Friday, March 15, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.ANOTHER dream-littered night. I have for two days had the impression that my titanium hip is beginning to ache; hope not, it has changed my life around since January last year.
Another over-the-top fan and flatterer, a Sikh this time: "This is just a sincere THANK YOU letter for your life's work. . ." -- I forward it to Jessica: "Here's another one. Every week, three or four total strangers write to me like this. A bit embarrassing really. If only they would buy books. I suspect they download them free."
Another unsolicited message comes from Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, with two photos and a link to YouTube. I send her another polite reply: "Stop sending me your spam, you fat slug."
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.NICE dreams all night, including walking with Jessica to school and telling her that it is the high point of my day (which it was.)
After breakfast I phone her in England. Sounds very cheerful. Says, "It is so long since I heard your voice!" She is thinking of going to South Africa and I tell her I have been invited there for December to speak. I remind her she was conceived in South Africa, at Outeniqua. "Yes I knew that, and I don't like thinking about it."
Then I phone L. in East Prussia and say we will want her service as an official guide again in September.
Part of our group at Hitler's Headquarters last time: including Graham, Will Storr, paunchy Ozzie, J., official guide, and Hugo HT | 2013 tour details | registration
Monday, March 18, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.SEVEN days left before the Big Birthday, for which I have made no plans at all. I contact a hotel near Belzec:
I am organising a road tour of Poland in September 2013 and ask: Can we reserve fifteen rooms for one night September 5/6?
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.TODAY the twenty-year-old ban on my entering Germany is lifted by court order; by the time the summer comes it may very well have been reimposed. Bavaria is seeking leave to appeal. Ah, the great and powerful free (and taxpayer-funded) democracies! Long time since I last did a Radical's Diary.
I ask Bill Panagopulos if he still has this Lot 435, an original photo of the arrest of the 1938 assassin Grsynzpan.
It is believed that Grynszpan actually survived the war. Dr Goebbels's state secretary Leopold Gutterer told me in 1993 that Grynszpan was at the back of the courtroom during his 1953 denazification hearing."
I have not noticed my name on the obituaries page of the New York Times, to which I turn uneasily each day. So: Not yet, it seems.
Friday, March 22, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I HAVE yesterday started the big mailout of a thousand brochures for our tour to the Wolfs Lair in September. We shall be inspecting two "Reinhardt camps," not just one -- involving one all-day six hour-drive.
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.CRAB-cake salad at Half Shell Raw Bar. My lower right back is hurting badly; it has disabled me all day, which is most unusual. I am hoping it is just a kidney infection or something harmless like that.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.
BIG birthday. Wow. Two weeks, no, ten days, after the Austrian Anschluss, not that we knew that at the time. - But we blamed That Man for having no toys, I do remember that: No Hornby train set. . .
I must try to phone Nicky my twin brother today (that's him on the right, 1939) to congratulate him for also having made it this far, each along our different paths. -- One message of congrats, from Vladimir M in Tokyo. -- Then congratulations come in all day -- from Bruno K, Larry M, Anthony W, Marcus G, David St. ("Knowing you has inspired me, and made me a better man.") All rather over the top.
Somebody corrects me, "Julia Gillard [Australia's prime mistress] has never married, her current 'partner' is Tim Mathieson, her former hairdresser: he is a heavy drinker."
I thank him: "Judging by her looks, all the men must have been drunk; very drunk." But that was not very chivalrous of me, and I regret it afterwards. I won't say it again. Oops. Just did.
Hugo HT writes: "If it's your birthday today, have a happy one. Perhaps it's an occasion to turn over a new leaf and be polite to everyone from now on."
He never gives up. Gilbert Harding was grumpy too. Look him up.
Jessica has texted: "Happy Birthday. Have a good one. Don't party too hard!!" I laugh out loud. Kevin sends greetings and adds: "I guess you will be having Lobster for lunch!" Pantomime season evidently. I reply: "Nah, two poached eggs. Berezovsky [death] news is interesting. He used to live in Down Street, right opposite us."
Hugo sees the 1939 pram photo. He says: "Did you show J.?" -- "I don't think she saw that one. I found it in my late brother's huge album of purloined family photos, along with this one (right) of my father, who was a bit of a scamp."
Hugo says: "Your father looks curiously modern. He looks like a star from an Ealing studio war film?" We all do.
I tell him: "That photo stood on our family curio table throughout my childhood. On my bedroom wall as a child was a wartime photo of HM King George VI inspecting sailors on parade in Liverpool. My father, who was a gunnery officer, is marching one step ahead of HM the King with drawn sword, wearing naval uniform and gaiters. My siblings have lost the photo. It was framed in glass with green passepartout. I never saw him again until 1966, when he came to live with us, dying of cancer, and we collaborated on his book about Jutland, and I was writing The Destruction of Convoy PQ.17."
Paloma joins the chorus: "I hope it's a good one." At five p.m I finally speak with Nicky. "Do you feel it too?" he asks. I joke that I don't know, I would have to speak with him in ten minutes' time about that, as I am ten minutes younger than him. He sounds very lively, an educated voice just like the Thirties. Which is of course where we both come from.
M. also sends greetings from Berlin. I reply:
Bin mitten in der Reichskristallnacht. Ein Unfug, dass Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte das Goebbels Tagebuch 1938 in dieser Hinsicht analysierte, kommt zum Ergebnis, dass Hitler alles bewusst inszeniert hat, meint sogar, dass bis Longerich und Reuth niemand die GoebbelsTagebücher verwertet hatte, vergisst meine Aufsätze im SundayTimes bzw Spiegel Juli 1992, meine Goebbels-Biographie, 1996 usw. Ich werde mit keinem Wort erwähnt. Und bringt alles falsch, basiert ihre Meinung auf Goebbels bzw seinem Tagebuch. Dabei lügt er ... "der Führer mit allem einverstanden" usw.Inundated with birthday greetings all day: from Kiev, Nikita Trofymenko: "As a personality you become my hero in certain aspects. You have correctly chosen your life path and became a famous historian. You are not afraid to tell the truth, despite hard pressure from a very powerful group of people." And more of the same.
And this comes from Germany, Land of the, um, Not Yet Quite Free. The writer asks, "Do you know if you will be in the north part of Germany too (near Bremen, Oldenburg or Wilhelmshaven in the county of Niedersachsen)?" I reply: "I will be in Lüneburg, facing an Anzeige. We can meet then perhaps. I am writing Himmler at this moment." No harm in telling him that, even if he's a government agent. They already know.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.UP at 8:30, heavy rain briefly, and a $1,000 gift from an elderly (97) Dane, P.H., the gentleman who gave me the diaries of Werner Best in Copenhagen. -- So the printer bill will be paid.
I thank him immediately: "I have been using the Werner Best diaries in my Himmler writing, and that book will be finished this year, God willing. Jessica, my daughter, is by the way a Danish citizen (the British would not give her a passport!). She loves visiting her grandparents in Århus, and is learning Danish. She wants to work a month in Denmark this summer. I am very proud of her."
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.THIN night, populated with many eminently forgettable dreams and worries, including the Rolls-Royce. A smaller twinge is followed a minute later by a major, Ow!, twinge, when I stoop to pull on the left sock.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.
CHRIS F. sends me a story from the Bournemouth Echo. "David: Something to brighten your morning."
The journalist Clifford Luton, aged 88, arrested for indecent assault against young boys: "He also interviewed infamous historian David Irving in the 1950s."
Yes, The Curse of Irving strikes again: He is the Daily Mail reporter who on May 1, 1959 ran the story "MILD FASCIST PULLS A FAST ONE," which the Jews have draped around my neck ever since. As a Christian, I feel sorry for him. The British media have two current obsessions, racism and paedophilia. Being named Luton was not a good start for him: Cheltenham or Gloucester, or Wellington or Nelson perhaps. But it might have been Neasden.
I give him my expert opinion: Too much alc*h*l, otherwise known as Gerwich's Disease. Just joking, I add.
He is puzzled by the sudden appearance in Germany of my Hitler biography again. I reply:
It turns out that this minor German publishing house, from whom we withdrew all rights and formally cancelled the contract a year ago, because after ten years they had failed to publish Hitler's War, have now quite illegally gone ahead and done so. I am furious.Sunny down here today, but a chilly wind coming off the Gulf. I tell a New York Newsday journalist:
William Shirer's was a great book, for its time. My editor at The Viking Press was the legendary Alan Williams. On his wall [in Madison Avenue] was a framed memo he wrote at the time [1950s]: roughly, "I am not sure that the world needs a book on the rise and fall of the Third Reich, and I think we should pass on this Mr Shirer and his project." They did. Oops. Global best-seller. Alan W became a good friend. He never regretted publishing Hitler's War.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.CANADIAN Rob McP reminds me he is coming tonight (I had thought it was the end of the week).
I am writing you because my great uncle and my great grandmother both survived the bombing of Dresden. They survived by having dug themselves down beneath their garden shed. My great uncle got phosphor which had not started burning in his eyes. Their house burned to the ground and after the raids they helped to pull dead out of the ruins and laying them in the parkways along the Grosser Garten. The bombing of Dresden, where my family had lived for over eight generations, was the start of the things that spread our family all over the world, never to return to Dresden and Sachsen, at least not yet.I have read a book by a man called Frederick Taylor (above) where he says "it was a legitimate target" and that "only" 25,000 people died. This made me rather upset to read, I don't think Dresden was a legitimate target just like Coventry was not a legitimate target. AND ALSO, how can he say "only" when it comes to the deaths of human beings, this man obviously doesn't share my point of view on the value of one single life, but then, I am a religious person and therefore perhaps oversensitive.
I reply: "I presume he was well paid for his lies. On the deathroll, see the attached document (below) which I recently discovered in British Intelligence files, a decoded message from police chief in Dresden, March 24, 1945. (Verm., Vermisst in this case is equivalent to dead, of course.)"
Rob MacP. sends extraordinary news:
This is just incredible. I was refused entry to the U.S. at the airport. They gave me some forms to get myself cleared (hopefully) but the whole trip is kiboshed.Wow. I reply: "That is very worrying. I have NEVER been refused entry to the USA. . . Your problem is, you are White. That nearly happened to J., at London airport, coming to England. She was told they have [racial] quotas to observe."
The Newsday journalist writes:
I spent three years in [William] Shirer's archive in Iowa, and saw what he went through to get Rise and Fall published. It was horrific. Plus, the academics tore it to pieces when it came out - they hadn't written it, so they didn't like it. Simple as that. He only found a publisher when a friend at Simon & Schuster came to his rescue.I reply:
Glad you've written on Shirer. I always said he was under-rated. To write a fair book based largely on the prosecution documents (none of the Nuremberg defence documents was in the printed volumes) is not easy.Simon & Shuster also published my early books. When I first met [their CEO] Michael Korda, I thought he was a boy, and looked around for his famous father [Alexander, the film director]. Rommel was a great success as a book because of my editor, Tom Congdon, and in my latest edition I have added a memorial page to him, giving him, "credit where credit is due." He taught me all over again how to write. When I sent the Rommel manuscript to him, and cleared my desk -- relief! new contracts! Money at last! -- I was stunned to get a letter from Tom a few days later beginning, "David, that is the finest first draft of a book I ever read." Had to retype it all again, on a steam typewriter, and it benefited enormously of course.
I don't share your politics at all, I am of socialist inclination and have very internationalist leanings, but I would just like to say that I have just finished reading your book Hitler's War. I think it is a great book. I have read other books on Hitler and the Second World War.
I particularly like Ian Kershaw's books, which you probably disagree with a lot. I agree with his stance much more than yours. However I do feel you have written an honest account and do not feel you should be maligned for portraying Hitler in a light that might be considered, shall we say, rose tinted. You are honest in that you state in the introduction that you are attempting to portray that period of history from Hitler's perspective and I believe you succeeded very well.
Even though I abhor National Socialist politics, I have wanted to read a book about Hitler and the war from the perspective of the millions of Germans alive during that period who admired and supported Hitler. Your book is probably the closest account we will get from that point of view. My mother was brought up in Nazi Germany and my grandfather was captured at Stalingrad, returning home in 1948, hence my interest in that period.
I also really enjoyed your book about the Luftwaffe. I've ordered the Hermann Göring book from the local library. Yes, you can still get your books from the local library!
I promise him: "You will hugely enjoy the Göring book. I had a brilliant editor, Tom Congdon, sadly now dead. If you liked the last chapter of Hitler's War, stand by to be shaken by the last chapter of Göring."
In the evening I phone poor Rob MacP. in Canada. He says the stupid official at the US immigration desk in Calgary at first got his name wrong, McP; I reply that that may well be the problem, it is not an uncommon name and their system probably has a McP. with a long criminal record. It happened to the INS record on me in 1998 with nearly disastrous consequences -- if the chief immigration officer at San Francisco airport had not happened to be a fan of my work (he had a two volume copy of Hitler's War).
Friday, March 29, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I LIE awake brooding on the smear campaign which has been generated in Germany for twenty years. Dr Albrecht Knaus predicted it to me when I first began speaking to Frey's audiences on Rommel, and I did not believe him. That was a wrong turning, that is for sure. The lefty mob turned up and started rioting against me even when I was doing the first tours on Rommel for Hoffmann & Campe, long before Frey. Mild twinge . . . I hope it is gradually going away, whatever the trouble was.
Jessica emails me, and leaves me more worried than ever: "So excited for my Asian adventure I'm so restless to leave now! I'm bringing about a zillion books for the plane. I should arrive in Bali (touch wood) at seven pm on the 30th. Really nervous but again excited. . . If you don't hear from me I've been 'taken'! Gonna be scary to be alone, but hey-ho."
I keep worrying. I write her: "When you get to your destination tomorrow, please use the US card somewhere so that (a) you know it works and (b) I will see it on my bank account and know you got there safely. Do not get involved with any men, of any age. Daddy."
Hugo HT reports: Well, Jessica should now have been airborne for thirty minutes. Before she left, she willingly did all the things that a departing guest should do (after I'd provided her with a list!) and then we set off for the airport. Jessica was the picture of happiness and I was rewarded with a huge hug before she hastened into check-in with ne'er a backward glance. She has also done various sensible things like equipping herself with anti-malarial pills and photocopying her passport."
Something very odd going on here. A stranger writes: "I wanted to tell you that I have recently discovered your immense body of work. I have always wanted to know why Britain went to war with Germany and why we lost the Empire . . . Now, having been exposed to your work I have a better understanding of what the truth might be."
Crab-cake salad at the Half Shell Raw Bar, but a very rubbery salad and surly waitress.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.MICHAEL K. has paid his $500 deposit for our Wolfs Lair tour.
Jessica has sent a sign of life: "Greetings from Singapore! Nicest airport EVER. They are sooo efficient."
I reply: "Wow Jessica. Tears in my eyes. I worried all night about you. You are now setting foot in places where I have never been. I am so proud of you, and I am sure your Danish grandparents are too. . . Singapore is where my Uncle Campbell, your grandmother's brother, was captured by the Japanese and held in Changi prison throughout the war. He was a rubber-planter. When he was released in 1945, his faithful manservant was waiting outside the prison gates and said he had been there all along, 1942-1945. . . Singapore used to be a main fortress of the British Empire. The Asians there are very clever at banking and things. As clever as the average Black is stupid."
I confide to Hugo: "It is impressive, what she has undertaken by herself. . . My big fear is she may meet the wrong person and do a J. on me." I add gloomily: "G. did not exactly strike me as a get-up-and-go type. More like a lie down and drunkenly snore type. I lost my fourth daughter to an Australian, and have not seen her for five years.
I cycle out to Rusty Anchor, against a fierce headwind, and bowl back effortlessly.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.9:07 a.m to Jessica: "Glad you got as far as Heathrow anyway, to judge by my card, but why have you not message'd us since Singapore?"
Monnday, April 1, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.HUGO continues to defend J. quite ruthlessly. I send more Himmler chapters to my gang of editors:
. . . I can already hear the tinkle of breaking glass. I shall have to do major chopping later. This is building a structure, so I can get an idea of the problems. The source-basis for Himmler is so vast that there is really no other way than to lower ones head like a blind elephant, and charge into the forest, trumpeting loudly. Enjoy the jungle blare.8:10 p.m Hugo continues with his hopeless defence of her.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.HUGO persists. Word from Jessica, she knows how to inspire alarm with all her blithe reassurances: "I'm at [an] hotel in Legian, Bali. . . Went surfing today. Despite applying suncream religiously am horrifically burnt. Travelling alone is such fun. I'm meeting so many people! We've formed a little gang. Everything is stupidly cheap as well. Might go whitewater rafting tomorrow." -- Aaaaragh!
Anthony D. writes about the Wolf's Lair tour in September.
I am already planning a trip to Germany and so I could meet the group in Warsaw. Then after the tour I would fly back to Germany. How would this effect the cost?Answer: "The short answer is it will have no effect, as the September tour starts and ends in Warsaw, because everybody is arriving there from a different part of the world."
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.FROM Jessica: "I'm onto my second book, its called Magda, about Goebbels's woman, I think its shaping up to being my book of the year, it's absolutely fantastically written and unputdownable. The author's a GENIUS. Wish I'd brought more books as I'm fast running out."
I hint: "You can download my Goebbels book free at and find out more about Magda. I found wonderful original photos of her ... [right] I'll write more later, just got up."
Wednesday, April 4, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.THE book makes very slow progress, I don't know why. Computers slow things down. I tried to fix the scanner yesterday, a minor problem, and of course totally trashed it. So I have a new one coming tomorrow, Canon, and although they say it works with OS 10.4.2, I am steeling myself for problems.
I am being inundated with eulogies, and don't know why. I don't THINK I have died yet.
I tell Paloma, who has now moved back to England and is using the Pigmobile: "Just got back from Rusty Anchor on the bike. Van is a trusty vehicle, before I wrecked the engine. It carried me down to Cadiz and up to Kiel. "
Jessica writes 10:56 pm: "I only drink sealed bottled water here and don't touch the ice. The area is very like Bangkok from what I hear, noisy brash and full of drunk Ozzies."
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JESSICA reports from Bali: "We leave the hostel tomorrow at 6am and head for Gili Islands, we are staying here: . . . restless to move on."
I work until after long midnight assembling the photos for The War Path. I still have a surprising number.
Sunday, April 7, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.P. translates from the Finnish an excerpt for me from the diary of the President of Finland about a confidential visit from Himmler's masseur, Felix Kersten, on October 14, 1943: "Very many thanks yet again. They are super-useful passages, and I am sure no other historian uses them. Kersten of course is a difficult source, something of a liar and exaggerator of his own importance."
I email to Albert, who's away in Georgia:
I heard a loud cheering and frantic applause outside the windows a few nights ago, and it was thundering and pouring with rain and all your flowers were ecstatic and cheering. They look gorgeous. So many passers-by stop and take photos, it is incredible.He calls me in the evening, updating me on things. Will not close on his deal in Georgia for two weeks.
Monday, April 8, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.A WORRISOME, dreamladen night. Curses. There is no defence against dreams. I ask Paloma:
How was first day at work? I have a great 16mm film of your first day at the Lycée. Standing in the school yard blubbering and not wanting to go in. Those films are all in storage. I will get them scanned, digitized, this year, when I get some money. If.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.D SIGNS on for the Wolfs Lair: three in the last twenty-four hours. R will be a nuisance though, as he is endlessly chatty and will not stop. We seem to be having a larger final group this year, and without J. to help it will be hard sledding. But with my leg now fixed, I can handle it.
Jessica writes, her teenage grammar flailing as always:
Me and Soph went cycling in knee-deep floods it was fun but I definitely caught typhoid/cholera. Our hostel isn't as nice as one before, it's next to a mosque with non-stop praying.I reply: "Well that's the local religion. Try this: Sakit: sick, ill. Sakit kepala: headache. Kepala oerang: chief, boss, head man. I know these because Walther Hewel, who was liaison man between Hitler and his foreign minister, wrote a diary (his widow gave it to me) and wrote some bits in Javanese, as he had been a rubber planter for twelve years. Had me baffled. I thought it was a secret code, tried every method of cracking it. Then Uncle John read them and translated the bits. He had been in Borneo with the air force.
So it's the rainy season. You can always come here, where it's the sunny season.
G. phones from Oklahoma, wants to come on the Wolf's Lair tour, has been there before, inquires about which building No. 16 is, etc. His brother will be making flight arrangements. I say we look forward to his deposit. I successfully make the bookings for our tour's hotel near the "Reinhardt" site at Belzec.
I tell Jessica:
Today's newspapers report an English girl has been sentenced to death in Bali for smuggling 2kg of heroine or cocaine or something, and will be shot by firing squad. Her appeal has been dismissed. That will upset her parents, I bet. - DaddyPaloma agrees: "It takes one nice-looking guy to say, 'Please carry this box for me, I've gone over my allowed weight'."
Greg signs up for Wolf's Lair. I chide him, "You're not supposed to get the discount on the deposit Greg. That's clever."
I tell Hugo: "ZDF broadcast the film about the Hitler Diaries. Marcus G tells me that my contribution was shrunk to about 24 seconds, including about ten seconds calling me a 'Holocaust denier.' I guess the producer was got at."
7:50 p.m I write to my gang of editors with chapter 37, "Five shots Fired in Paris":
These "action" chapters may seem straightforward - even simple - when finished, but they are tricky and take a long time to research and get right. Even now they are subject to the most rigorous chopping when the whole structure is complete. I had expected to get Kristallnacht into this chapter, but the foothills have proven a longer slog.The picture is however already emerging of an unsuspected dichotomy between Himmler/SS/SD and the Party; Himmler is getting the blame in History for what the Party and the gauleiters and Goebbels were doing. Later, of course, he gets the blame and deserves it.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.ANOTHER poor night, and a spurious caller from California twice, calling from 916 92 3175 at 4:18 a.m., and then from 661 748 0240.
[661 748 0240 is a scam. The caller says he's "from Microsoft" and they've detected a problem and will fix it in return for your credit card details.] [And see this link]
An Australian writes: "I live in Cairns in North Queensland, Australia. I have a friend who is now in his 90's who was a Bomb Aimer in the RAAF during the fire bombing of Dresden. He told me that the bombers came in two waves. The second wave was a few hours after the first. They were all flying in Lancaster Bombers.
He was in the first wave and he said that it was a bright moonlight night. The whole of Dresden was brilliantly lit by the moonlight. He believes that the people in the first wave were the last to see Dresden as a complete city.Their bomb load was high explosives plus an incendiary device. This consisted of something like a steel pipe about 100mm (4 inches) in diameter and 120 cms (four feet) long sealed at both ends. The device contained petrol under high pressure. At one end there was a nozzle through which the high pressure petrol sprayed out. . . Hundreds of these devices were dropped by the bombers in the first wave.
I reply at 8:11 a.m: "Yes Bill, that was called a J-bomb. A nasty device. As you said, not much way of putting it out."
The Belzec Holiday Inn sends us terms, which are so reasonable there is no point arguing.
A no-doubt distant admirer emails me: "You f*cking fascist c***" -- but I do get tired of it after a while.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.MY friend in Berlin comments on my transcript of Karl Wolff's conversation with Wilfried von Oven and Gerd Heidemann in Chile in the 1970s: "Gullible as ever . . . messy. R."
I reply:
I will mail to you the CD with the recording. Three old Nazis, all filled with wine and cognac - any conversation about old times is going to be messy, and Von Oven was a real pain with his interruptions. I learned a long time ago during interviews to let the guy speak himself "dry", and then only ask the next question. Heidemann was good, he kept trying to get back to details which mattered.From Ecuador comes more praise: I automatically reply at length in Spanish, then notice he wrote me in English.
Friday, April 12, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JESSICA reports: "Moving from Gili to Gili Air today, apparently it's less touristy and more idyllic. Then back to Bali in two days, we are going on an elephant-ride safari. We are thinking Cambodia next. I'm happier here than I've been in so long."
I reply:
Meeting people: well, be very careful, especially with boys. Pass my advice on to the other two. I understand that a year or two in a foreign prison can be quite unpleasant. I forget who told me. And remember, Mummy doesn't do prison visits. Says that kind of thing is beneath her.I hope you are keeping Danish grandparents in the loop. Your English grandparents are looking down on both of us, and very proud of you.
Somebody calls me half a dozen times during the night. The same number. 661 748 0240.
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.A THIN sleep, peppered with unimportant dreams. I tell Hugo that his sister looks a lovely, bubbly person. "When you coming here? (Bring her). (Anthrax supplies are limited.) (Perhaps her hubby has some?)"
H. sends me a heap of stuff from Berlin: I write him,
Ich glaube nicht an der Version, daß Grynszpan im KZ Sachsenhausen getötet worden ist. Erst recht nicht im Jahre 1942, das war ja der Höhepunkt der deutschen Erfolge. Hitler wollte ihn m.W. für einen Schauprozess nach dem Ende des Krieges aufsparen, wie auch z.B. gegen Canaris.
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.MY LEFT eye is becoming unfocused and cloudy this last month. I worry about everything. I need a stiff dose of hypochondrodene.
Email from Jessica makes as usual pleasant reading:
We went to this beautiful remote island called Gili Air for two nights and barely saw any other people, but we're back in Bali now in the cultural capital of Ubud. There are monkeys on the roof of our bungalow. Later we're going to the 'temple of the dead' in monkey forest really excited. Also we've decided against Cambodia as flights to expensive, going to Goa instead on the 18th so exciting! Very cheap flights. What's your news over there?I tell Berlin: "I spent yesterday evening reading up documents, and found eventually the note Himmler allegedly dictated on Kristallnacht, in the affidavit of Luitpold Schallermeier. Undoubtedly the SS by and large kept out of the rampages, but it is thin ice --- and I am heavy."
I comment to Hugo on a certain incident: "It was like having to identify my Mother on the slab (I was the only next of kin in the UK): It wiped all happy memories and images in an instant, that is now the only picture I have of her in my memory. . . Your advice for Jessica was very good and I instantly passed it on to her. She is pure Gold as a daughter, very conscientious."
Hugo agrees, tongue in cheek, "though there are a few tiny wrinkles which can easily be ironed out by a good finishing school in Switzerland!"
Marcus sends me a lengthy extract from Die Zeit, about an Alexander Langsdorff; it ends: "Er wurde Adjutant von Himmler. Und dann, als er begriff was von ihm erwartet wurde, hat er sich am Fensterkreuz erhängt." -- But the briefest research by me establishes that Langsdorff died in hospital of an embolism in 1946. So much for history in Die Zeit.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I COUNSEL Jessica: "I hope you are writing very fully and clearly in simple English, and tactfully, to your grandparents who made this journey of a lifetime possible. They are the only grandparents you have, your others died nearly fifty years ago."
I have never written fan letters, before or since, but I wrote Davis afterwards, and he replied - I still recall his letter, and may even still have it -- saying that it was so encouraging as a newcomer to get letters like that. I was thrilled. -- Davis had just broken into conducting, sideways so to speak, after being refused by the academies because he could not play the piano.
So Adolf Hitler could in theory have become a great conductor instead: Henriette Hoffmann, later von Schirach, told me he used to play the piano to her.
Tuesday, April 15, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.AT 11:24 a.m. a male calls . . . from the same California number 661 748 0240. I answer without giving my name. He says: "Haven't you got my number? Can't you call me back?" "No." I add: "You're the person who has called several times these last few nights." He repeats that he wants me to call him. I do not. I am not stupid. I know what he's up to.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.DREAMING seems to have a mental garbage-disposal function, like writing a diary.
8:30 a.m Hugo phones from London, Jessica has emailed him from Indonesia, is worried not to have heard from me since Sunday. I explain, my power charger burned out so I have been unable to communicate all week.
Saturday, April 20, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.Jessica reports from Bangkok: "Had a nine hour overnight stopover in Singapore airport (it's incredible there, pool, cinema, the works; so no big deal)."
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.I write to Hugo at eleven a.m: "I see one document I would like next time you are at the Bundesarchiv, Berlin: NS.19 /1794. Reiseplan of von Herff in the Generalgouvernement, May 1943. It is important for what is called the Franke-Grieksch report. They visited i.a. Auschwitz. Jessica is now in Thailand, sending me schnoddrige emails. Look it up."
A student asks me at length questions about the Holocaust.
I reply: "Himmler's encouragement" -- I would say "Himmler's endorsement." You are right - the initiative came from the periphery; the centre (Berlin, FHQu) had very little to do with getting the shootings moving. Himmler found out what was going on (the shootings) when he visited the front, which was frequently, and he effectively gasped and said, Carry on Chaps.
I think the only mass shooting (into pits, and not necessarily all of them were Jews) he ever witnessed was at Minsk in August 1941.Operation Reinhardt (April 1942 - October 1943) was a different kettle of fish, totally planned, but from Heydrich (and Müller, Amt IV) downwards; very little evidence of the details, reports, or orders above that level. It then freewheeled after Heydrich's death.
Do not overlook the importance of time and context: things happened in war that could not happen in peace. Thousands of signals decrypted by us show the SS men at the eastern front being informed of the saturation air raids killing their families back home, burning them alive (Hamburg, Dresden etc). It does not justify, but it does help explain.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JESSICA has written from Thailand: "How about finding somewhere to live in UK!" I reply: "Yup that is high on my list of priorities; gotta get the family together again; love. Daddy."
11:11 a.m G. phones from Peru, could come May 17 to 25, is heavily pregnant now.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.Imperial War Museum sends an estimate for providing low-grade scans of fourteen images: "14 images for new digitisation @ £30.00 per image = £420.00" -- with other charges the total would be over £600.
I think I shall have to write them off. Hugo writes: "I hope you will use the information in Alvensleben's letter to 'Puppi' --"
I reply: "I have. Christa Schroeder told me that before leaving for Prague [March 15, 1939], after getting rid of Hácha, Hitler also pointed to each cheek, and said to his two secretaries, to her and Gerda Daranowski, 'One kiss each here . . . and here."
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Key West, Florida, USA.JESSICA sends a photo of a mountain and river.
Just your average vista. Don't think you get this in Florida?
Well you write that because you know Florida is flat. Good photo.
She then writes:
In Guantánamo Bay they use 24-hour unbearably loud music as a form of torture on inmates. This is not dissimilar to my experience in our new hostel in Ko Phi Phi (where The Beach was filmed) which turned out to be next to a NIGHTCLUB, a fact which had been unavailable to me during the day. Literally bass vibrating the whole room until 5am; I felt like crying into my pillow.
I console her: "Fortunately here in Key West I am five blocks from the nearest night-club. I would have thought that being surrounded by them would be Paradise for you?"
Yes, I am still not dead. I finish the chapter on Kristallnacht and mail it to my informal gang of editors: "Took this long to digest all the material on the 1938 Night of Broken Glass and come up with a clear line and structure. . . Thank goodness he [Himmler] has gone on leave, and we now enter four years where I have his diaries. I am working twelve hours a day on this writing, not that it shows."
I write Jessica: "Incidentally I am impressed by your messages, and by your use of the semi-colon, which exists in few other languages but is so necessary."
I shall publish a Radical's Diary in the next day or two. Book sales have collapsed, along with the world's economy.
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