Closing Speech
by David Irving
Part VIII:
conclusion There remain one or two in my view minor
matters. The Defendants allege that I wilfully
exaggerated the Dresden death roll in my 1963 book
THE DESTRUCTION OF DRESDEN, and afterwards and had
no basis for my figures. In fact I have satisfied
this court, I believe, that at all times (a) I set
and published the proper upper and lower limits for
the estimates that I gave, giving a range of
figures which necessarily decreased, overall, over
the years as our state of information improved; (b)
I had adequate basis for the various figures which
I provided in my works. It has to be said that authors have little or no
control over the content of books sub-licensed to
other publishers. Revisions are not encouraged for
cost reasons. I have always been aware of the highly-charged
political nature of the figures quoted for this
event. The highest figure, of 250,000, which I only
mentioned in my works as the maximum ever alleged,
was given for example by the German chancellor Dr
Konrad Adenauer in an official West German
government publication which I showed the court,
DEUTSCHLAND HEUTE (page 154, at footnote 2). The lowest figures only became available in a
book published in 1994 by Friedrich Reichert,
VERBRANNT BIS ZUR UNKENNTLICHKEIT. A copy of this
book was provided to me in 1997. By that time I had
already published the latest updated edition of my
book, now called APOCALYPSE 1945: THE DESTRUCTION
OF DRESDEN, in which I had lowered the death roll
still further on the basis of my own investigations
and considerations. This was the first edition over
which I, and not the publisher, had total control,
as it appeared under my own imprint. In 1965, as the court is aware, I received
written estimates of 140,000 and 180,000 dead from
a rather anxious Soviet-zone citizen, Dr Max
Funfack, who claimed to have received them about
nine days after the raid from the city commandant
and the chief civil defence officer respectively,
both of them his personal friends. That being so,
there was no reason why I should have revised the
135,000 estimate which I had earlier received from
Hanns Voigt, a city official charged with drawing
up death lists, when I was researching my first
book in 1961. In 1966, I received the police final
report of March 1945; while still remaining
sceptical about it for the reasons stated (the
officer was responsible for Dresden's ARP; it was
too early to achieve any kind of overall final
figure; the number of refugees killed was an
imponderable) I took the correct action: I sent a
letter to The Times within a few days of finding
the new documents in the mail on my return from a
trip to the USA. Not only that, but at my own
expense I had the letter reprinted and sent to
hundreds of historians and the like. One hopes that the expert witnesses whom we saw
in the witness stand would have had the same
integrity to do that. As for the Goebbels Diaries, the Defendants do
not now seek to justify their claim that I broke an
agreement with the Moscow Archives in 1992 to bring
sections of the Goebbels' Diaries back to Germany
and London. They have withdrawn the witness reports
of the Russian archivists, and will provide me no
opportunity to cross examine them. I was prepared
to pursue their cross examination vigorously. I
produced a witness statement from Mr Peter Millar,
my colleague in Moscow, and I made him available
for cross examination. He confirmed that there was
no verbal or written agreement, as I had also
stated in my various replies, so I could not have
broken it.186 The Defendants have left no
satisfactory evidence before the Court that refutes
this. Mr Millar also confirmed to the Court that he
did not agree that my conduct gave rise to
significant risk of damage to plates.187 The plates
had been withheld from historians for 55 years or
more. By my actions I made these historically very
important materials available to the world, and
placed copies of them in the appropriate German
archives at my own expense. The Defendants refer to, and seem to rely quite
strongly on, a document allegedly sent by the
Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller to the heads of
the four taskforces (Einsatzgruppen) on August 1,
1941, about "procurement of visual materials",
which were to be submitted to Hitler on the work of
the Einsatzgruppen in the east. (Longerich report,
para 15.6). I submit that in the special circumstances of
this action the Court should not accept this
evidence as admissible. Admissibility: If I had myself found such a
document, I would have wanted to know everything
possible about how and why it had surfaced, where
it had come from, and the surrounding documents in
the same folder which might tell us something about
the ambiguous contents. The Defendants have sought,
unsuccessfully in my view, to devalue the
Schlegelberger Document on precisely the grounds of
a few other documents found in the same folder. The
Court therefore ordered the Defendants to produce
(a) the original document or a facsimile thereof,
and (b) to identify the file in which it had been
found. The expert witness Dr Longerich identified
the file as ZSt Ludwigsburg, Dok. UdSSR No. 401.
etc. The expert witness Dr Browning cited Peter
Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten
Sowjetunion 1941/42: Die Tätigkeits- und
Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und
des SD (Berlin, 1997), page 342. The archival
source was given as Bundesarchiv Signatur BA R 70
Sowjetunion/32. I requested the Bundesarchiv on
February 7 to provide me with a facsimile. They
replied that the file with that number was
something completely different. On January 28, as
is evident from the fax line on top of the version
of the document now provided by the Institut
für Zeitgeschichte, the institute had already
supplied precisely the same typed Abschrift to Dr
Longerich. It was forty-two days later provided to
me, shortly before close of business before this
last weekend, making it impossible for me to follow
up. On March 9, the Ludwigsburg office has provided
a copy of precisely the same item, microfilmed from
a file USSR 401. This does not advance the
matter. If Your Lordship is minded, despite the conduct
of the Defendants over this document, to admit the
Müller document in evidence, then I submit
these comments on its evidential value: The
document may not be genuine (although it does have
SS runes in the last line, the Russians captured
Nazi typewriters); it is a typescript copy totally
bereft of any authenticating stamps or signatures;
its source is the Central State Archives of the
"October Revolution". The document merely invites
the four taskforce commanders to provide to Berlin,
for submission on a current basis to Hitler,
"particularly interesting visual material like
photos, posters, leaflets and other documents" -
none of which seems to relate to the taskforces'
homicidal duties, so much as to their other well
known functions as intelligence agencies
specifically tasked to raid and secure the
headquarters and files of former Soviet party and
administrative offices. It is difficult to image
what "photos, posters, leaflets and other
documents" would be "procured" that might relate to
the Final Solution in the east. I know of no
response-documents to this appeal - neither letters
submitting materials to Müller, referring to
this message, nor such materials being forwarded by
Müller to Hitler "on a current basis" or on
any other basis. One other matter. Your Lordship will
remember that Mr Rampton put to Professor Funke, on
Day 28 (March 1) in re-examination at page 174, a
document which I wrote to Dr Frey and my Munich
lawyer, Dr Michael von Sprenger, in January 1991.
Starting at P-178 I was quoted as predicting "a
political drawing together of the German speaking
peoples of Europe ... within a framework of a just
settlement with Warsaw", and expressing the
personal view that "the future of England can only
be secured in common friendship with the new
Germany". Mr Rampton argued on the basis of that
letter that any person who sympathised with Hitler
in his desire for peace with England was a
neo-Nazi. On March 5 this year, only a few days
ago, we learned that in 1940 Her Majesty the Queen
Mother held precisely these views and expressed
them in private to Lord Halifax when he was the
foreign secretary.188 The papers of the Viscount
Monckton of Brenchley, which I examined at the
Bodleian ten years ago, have now given up more
secrets except for box 24, which contain, according
to government sources, correspondence showing the
Royal Family's hostility toward the new prime
minister Mr Churchill and their preference for Lord
Halifax, and the Queen Mother's own desire that
Britain conclude an early peace with Hitler. Is it not remarkable that at precisely the same
time that I was being publicly excoriated by Mr
Rampton for expressing those views, which are
sincerely held, in several of my books, it turns
out that they were inherently the same as those of
the Queen Mother? She was well aware from the
Cabinet papers, as indeed are most historians now,
that Hitler had made such a peace offer during
1940, and several respectable historians, including
my friend the late Alan Clark and Professor
Charmley have expressed the same belief. Part 36 offer. It is right that Your
Lordship should be informed that pursuant to the
Act I made a formal Part 36 offer to the
Defendants, many months ago; not once, but twice,
since at first they argued that the new Rules did
not apply. The Defendants refused the offer. Costs. I do not propose asking for my
costs in this action. Although I have lost three
years of my life in preparing for the case, have
had to hire extra staff, and have spent two months
in this courtroom, including about twenty days in
the witness box, I have decided that it would be
too arduous to quantify, in a matter that would
satisfy the Taxing Master, every penny that I have
had to spend to defend and retrieve my
reputation. I do however ask that Your Lordship give
Judgment in the terms and on the premises set out
in my writ and statement of claim, namely: - damages including aggravated damages for
libel; and
- an injunction restraining the Defendants and
each of them whether by themselves their
servants or agents or otherwise from further
publishing or causing to be published the said
or similar words defamatory of the
Plaintiff.
 David Irving Tuesday, March 14, 2000 Back to Part 1 |
