Day 17 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial

Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 1.26)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE 1996 I. No. 113 QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION Royal Courts of Justice Strand, London Tuesday, 8th February 2000 Before: MR JUSTICE GRAY B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING Claimant -and- (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED (2) DEBORAH E.

LIPSTADT Defendants The Claimant appeared in person MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and Second Defendants MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell &Company, Clifford’s Inn,

Fetter Lane, London EC4 Telephone: 020-7242-9346) (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company) PROCEEDINGS – DAY SEVENTEEN

Part II: Professor Christopher Browning, Day 2 (2.1 to 114.3)

Section 2.1 to 21.15

<Day 17 Tuesday, 8th February 2000. < PROFESSOR BROWNING, recalled. < Cross-Examined by MR IRVING, continued. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think there is a suggestion that we might at some stage amalgamate the documents really relating to Professor Browning’s evidence which at the moment are in two separate places. MR IRVING: Miss Rogers has very kindly volunteered to do this task and I willingly accept that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just mentioning it to you in case you had any feelings on the topic, but I think it must be sensible. I wonder whether we might not keep the pagination? Otherwise the transcript will make very little sense. Can I leave that to you? Yes, Mr Irving? MR IRVING: May it please the court, I have given your Lordship a little bundle of documents, on the basis of which I wish to cross-examine the witness this morning. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

Let us decide where we are going to put those. MR IRVING: Whatever occurs under the new regime, I think. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Temporarily it had better go into J or L, I do not mind which. MS ROGERS: L. MR IRVING: L. I think the simplest thing to do, Professor Browning, is if we just go through this heap in sequence. You will agree that the first few documents apparently

come from the Himmler papers, is that correct? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They come from the administrative and economic main office of the SS which is under Himmler. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause a moment, Mr Irving, will you? Yes, Mr Irving. MR IRVING: My Lord, I should explain the purpose of the following questions is to go to the quantum, the figures really. That is all I am looking at. It is Operation Reinhardt.

These are documents from a file in Himmler’s papers called Operation Reinhardt. (To the witness): Professor Browning, is it correct that these documents appear to come from the Hoover Library in California, if you look down the slash on the side? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: And can you recognize the initials of Heinrich Himmler on the top copy? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in other words, this document is of high level, shall we say? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are Himmler’s initials? MR IRVING: The HH under the word “Hehler” about three inches from the top right-hand side of the document. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: I am purely interested in the very first line of

the letter under the word “Reichsfuhrer”, where it says: No. 1. Then, when you translate the next sentence, this “Bis 30.4.1943 sind angeliefert”? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “Up until the 30th April 1943 had been delivered”. Q. [Mr Irving]: “Had been delivered the following”, right? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.

Q. [Mr Irving]: If you look then at the list that follows, it is a number of items, a rather sad list, I suppose, a tragic list, of wristwatches, is that right, for men and women? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Fountain pens? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Razor blades and other valuable items, is that right?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These are all the sort of things that would have been in one’s toiletries or personal possessions, yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Where had these items come from? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These were formerly Jewish possessions, but I see nothing so far that says which camps they came from. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.

Can I draw your attention to the reference line at the top of the transcript, the Verwertung, the exploitation of — then comes one of their stock phrases, is it not, “Jewish plundering loot”, is that correct? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In fact, I have not seen that first phrase, but the “Diebesguts”, the stolen goods, yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the way that they sought to legitimate what they are doing, is that correct?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, their stance was all that Jewish property had been stolen by Jews originally, so they were repossessing they claimed what was properly German property. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, a very distorted, perverse, kind of thinking, right? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: A rationale that appears. MR JUSTICE GRAY: How does this help on numbers?

MR IRVING: It helps on numbers, my Lord, because we have numbers of items that had been collected from the victims by April 30th 1943. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not say “from when”. MR IRVING: I am hoping that the witness will assist us on this. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us ask. MR IRVING: Where did these items come from, these valuables? Did they come from victims of Operation Reinhardt?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I see nothing in the document that says Operation Reinhardt. Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. Can I take you, therefore, to page 4, the handwritten number at the bottom? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: And you will notice in the third line of the letterhead the initials “Reinh.” in the top left-hand corner? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “Reinh”, yes.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you to page 10, and on the same letter head also we have Reinhardt? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Those two documents do have the “Reinh.”.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you. And on the page 12 — I am sorry, it is the same document. So, if these items come from an SS folder which is called Operation Reinhardt and these particular documents have the initials “Reinh.” on them, and they appear to be items stolen from the Jews or from victims, Jewish victims in fact, depending on the subject line, on the face of it, this is a list provided to Himmler of items that have been stolen from the Jews up to April 30th

1. Is that a reasonable interpretation?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In terms of the inventory in the first document where we do not have the reference to Reinhardt, it is at least conceivable this was property taken from German Jews about to be deported, and could easily have been stuck in the same folder. I do not see anything there that would necessarily lead us to conclude that the first inventory came from camps in Poland.

It could well be that this was possessed Jewish property taken while Jews were being in the process of being deported from Germany, but stuck in the same folder because it always was relating to Jewish property. Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know what happened to these valuables that were collected in Operation Reinhardt? Where did they go initially? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have seen documents that show a wide variety of distribution.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Where they overhauled, were they recycled in some way

before they were parcelled out? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Once collected at the three camps in Poland they are taken to Lublin where you have several camps, the old airport camp, for instance, where some sorting and reconditioning was done. Some of the properties were distributed there to ethnic Germans and any German unit that needs something can come and ask to be given something. Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you to document 10?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this say that they have a number of, 20,000, pocket watches and various other valuables at present at Oranienburg, and does the next paragraph say that the watches and fountain pens have been overhauled and are ready to be dispatched? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The topic of the document is watch distribution to members of the SS. Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And then below they give you the different kinds. Would you allow me a moment to read the document? Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you read the paragraph beginning with the word “Insgesamt”? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. At the moment in Office D there are for repair 100,000 hand wristwatches, 39,000 pocket watches, 7,500 alarm clocks, 37,000 pens and so forth.

Q. [Mr Irving]: There is no indication of any other stocks of valuables of this nature being processed by this central processing and

overhauling department? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we have all the files, all the documents in the files? I take the point you are making. MR IRVING: This was all the documents in this file. I picked them in California about five or six weeks ago. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the file complete? Is it intact? MR IRVING: I have no way of knowing, of course, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the problem. I see what are you getting at. Professor Browning, can you help on that?

Is this likely to be a complete record? We have only looked at three documents. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Since so much was destroyed I think we presume a lot of them are not complete records. I have seen fragmentary records from the archive in Lublin where less valuable materials is distributed there.

I think very valuable things like watches and whatever do have to be sent in but, if somebody wants furniture or wants clothing, they can requisition that in Lublin from these camps and they are never sent back to Berlin. Small volume high value items would be sent back. It would be something that would be worth shipping back, such as these particular items.

MR IRVING: Do you agree that this document on page 10, which is dated November 29th 1944, and has the heading or subheading Operation Reinhardt in its address list, says that altogether at present there are at Amtsgruppe D at

present being repaired 100,000 wristwatches, presumably a rounded off number and various other valuables? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: That gives an order of magnitude. It does not indicate there are any other treasure troves of such valuables anywhere else in the SS system, does it? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It says these are the ones that are available for distribution.

We have no idea if there are lots of other kinds of valuables that have been sent elsewhere, but at least that much has been taken out for purposes of distribution to the SS. Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you back to page 1 again, which is about 18 month earlier, is it not, 13th May 1943? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: That says that by April 30th 1943 we have received, effectively there have been delivered to us, 94,000 men’s watches?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it likely that these were taken from the victims in the camps? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Again, it may well be that these were taken in Germany. It could be possible they were taken from the camp. In both, at least in the second case, I would presume that there was a selection of the best ones that they were sending back for repair for the Waffen SS.

Cheaper goods in general would not have been worth doing that.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does page 10, Professor, relate entirely to Oranienburg? MR IRVING: Oranienburg, my Lord, was the headquarters was it not? Witness, was not Pohl actually based at Oranienburg, the head of this particular section? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The part of the administrative and economic main office that dealt with concentration camps is in Oranienburg, so Ampt D, which is here, is stationed in Oranienburg, or at least part of it.

It says by the Office D in Oranienburg so we know at least they have one office there. Q. [Mr Irving]: All the wealthy Holocaust victims, either at the time they were dispatched from their places of residence or upon their arrival in the camps, were systematically robbed of their valuables by Operation Reinhardt, or as part of Operation Reinhardt? Is that correct?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Operation Reinhardt, in a sense, is the last stage of a long process of dispossession because the Jews in Germany were disposed of much of their property for that. When they were put on the trains the last things like rings and valuables and jewellery are taken. These are the small personal possessions they would still have been allowed.

Again in Poland Jews are dispossessed of their property and moved into ghettoes and, when they are taken to the camps, the last remaining possessions are taken by Operation Reinhardt. Operation Reinhardt, in a sense, is the last cleaning up of whatever property had not been

taken already. Q. [Mr Irving]: Not many more questions on this matter, Professor. Would you be able to make any kind of global estimates on these kind of data and say, well, therefore, the number of victims was not less than a certain figure and it was probably not more than a certain figure, on the basis that of course not everybody had valuable wristwatches or valuable fountain pens, but on the other hand not many people wear two wristwatches, shall we say, so it was probably not less than

100,000 people? Can you say that? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say that this would help us with a minimum figure but it would be nowhere close to a maximum figure because they are presumably skimming the cream and taking the very best things. Most Jews would have traded their wristwatches for food and whatever else long before this if they were in desperate straits, which they were. So it does not give us anything approaching a maximum figure.

MR RAMPTON: Can I intervene to say that I just have done some arithmetic? It is not obviously an exhaustive figure for whatever reason, but the total under A on this page is 200,000 items. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which page are you? MR RAMPTON: Page 10, my Lord, at A. Many of these items may of course come from the same person, one does not know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I was wondering. You can have a fountain pen and a watch.

MR RAMPTON: Of course you can. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What was the number? MR RAMPTON: 200,000 precisely. MR IRVING: Exactly, but it is giving orders of magnitude, in my opinion, my Lord. We are really clutching at straws and trying to arrive at figures. Is it not right, Professor, that our statistical database for arriving at any kind of conclusions for the numbers of people who have been killed in the Holocaust by whatever means, we are really floundering around in the dark, are we not?

Is that correct? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I would not express it that way. I would say we have a very accurate list of the deportation trains from Germany. In many cases we have the entire roster name by name and we are not floundering. We can tell you, as we have seen in the intercepts, 974 on one train.

Q. [Mr Irving]: But I interrupt you there and you say in many cases, but, of course, had we got a complete list of all the —- A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Can I finish my answer. Q. [Mr Irving]: — trains, then —- A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: May I finish my answer? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him finish. You have been very good, Mr Irving, but let him finish this answer.

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In terms again of France, the Netherlands, the countries from which there were deportations from Western Europe, we can do a very close approximation by trains, the number of

people per train. In the area of Poland, there were at least statistics in terms of ghetto populations and these ghettos were liquidated completely, so we can come to a fairly good rough figure of Polish Jews. We also have a fairly reliable prewar census and postwar calculations so that one can do a subtraction. So, in terms of Holocaust victims from Poland westward, we are not floundering. We are coming fairly close approximation.

Where historians differ and where you get this figure of between 5 and 6 is because we do not have those figures for the Soviet Union. MR IRVING: Can I halt you at this point —- A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There is where we are — that the numbers vary greatly.

Q. [Mr Irving]: But can I halt you at that point and say the fact that a train load of Jews sets out from Amsterdam or from France does not, of course, necessarily mean that they end up being gassed or killed in some other way, does it? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If they are sent to camps like Treblinka or Sobibor or Chelmno or Belzec, yes, they are virtually all exterminated. Q. [Mr Irving]: On the basis of eyewitness evidence?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: On the basis of, yes, what I have presented here. We know that —- Q. [Mr Irving]: Which we are coming to later on? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, and they do not come back.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They disappear. Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, the Nazis did not want them to come back, but would you accept that large numbers were also the subject of, shall we say, population movements, particularly in the 1939/1940 period. You talked about the Jews in Poland? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, this is a move from one area of German control to another.

So Jews that are moved from the Warthegau into the General Government are then included in the ghetto population statistics of the various towns in the General Government and those ghettos are then liquidated and they count as part of the disappearance —- Q. [Mr Irving]: When you mean “the ghetto is liquidated”, you mean the ghetto is just wound up? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The ghetto is empty. People are put on trains.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Emptied, but the word “liquidated” is rather suggestive that something else is happening? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, that was the German term. “Ghetto liquidierung” is their word, and that these liquidation, ghetto liquidations, also we know the mode in which they were carried out with extraordinary brutality and —- Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but come back to Poland for a minute.

You talk about the fact that we had the prewar population census and the postwar census. We are having a major problem with Poland because the whole of Poland was shifted westwards as a result of the agreements, so what do you mean by Poland?

This is the first problem. Is that not right? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, you are talking about territory, but the Polish population in terms of number of Jews left at the end really is not changed or altered by a shifting of borders because there were no Jews in either the German or the Polish territory.

Q. [Mr Irving]: They also have a problem caused by the fact that the Soviet Union arbitrarily declared that everybody who was in the Soviet occupied part of certain parts of Poland became Soviet citizens. After they had entered, I believe,

on September 19th or September 17th 1939, did they not arbitrarily declare after that that large number, the citizens who had previously been Polish were now Soviet citizens? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, but those areas ten fall back under the Germans and they are part of the statistics — I mean, the prewar census we have is pre1939. Q.

[Mr Irving]: Are you saying that the Jews who were in the Soviet part of occupied Poland in 1939 stayed there until the Germans invaded two years later? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think most did. Some did manage to get — those that were saved, for the most part, were the ones that Stalin sent on to Siberia. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it right the figure of those who left and were sent on to Siberia was of the order of 300,000?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The total number of Polish Jews in Siberia I do not think

is even close to that. We know that the estimated number of Jews that fled or were deported from the German zone to the Soviet zone in 1939/1940 was in the magnitude of 200 to 300,000. How many for 1941 are, in a sense, caught in the German advance which in these areas, of course, is the very first territories they overcome, that you do not have any indication that very large numbers escaped at all. Q. [Mr Irving]: But there is an area of uncertainty, is there not?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The point at which the German documents start saying “The Jewish populations have managed to flee” is when you get much deeper into the Soviet Union where it took longer for the Russian armies to get to and there was more warning. The German documents indicate only then are they beginning to find that the Jews had managed to flee before they arrived.

So, while there is certainly a degree of uncertainty, to suggest that significant vast numbers of Jews escaped from these very border territories the very first days occupied by the German Army, I do not think is — it is not one that I can accept.

Q. [Mr Irving]: But is not the evidence, in fact, that the Soviet Union had evacuated large parts of their forward territories in preparation for their attack on Germany, and that when the Germans advanced into these areas in Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 they found the population relatively thin because of these evacuations?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I do not think so. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we —- A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There were deportations of what they — there were deportations of what they considered political enemies. MR IRVING: So, in other words, I am not right in suggesting there is any area of uncertainty about the figures, in your view? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.

What I said is the area of greatest uncertainty is the areas of the Soviet Union and that from that boundary westward we come to a fairly close proximation. After that it varies, estimates vary greatly. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just interrupt because I want to go back to Operation Reinhardt which is where we started and we have rather sort of spread out from there.

Can you — Mr Irving, you are probably going to ask this at some stage anyway — put an estimate on the number of people you would say were killed by gassing at the smaller death camps like Treblinka, Sobibor and Chelmno?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The numbers that the German courts came to in their investigations in which they emphasised that they were using the minimum estimate so that this would not be a controversy between the defence and the prosecution, in the first Treblinka trial, I believe it was 700 or 750,000. By the second Treblinka trial, they had upped that figure to 9 or 950,000. Belzec is estimated at about 550,000. Sobibor, I believe they estimated 200,000, and

Chelmno, as a minimum, I think they said 150,000, but they thought it was more likely in the 250,000 area. MR IRVING: When were these estimates made? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These were in the various judgments of the 1960s in German courts. Q. [Mr Irving]: 1960s and 1970s or 1960s? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These particular trials, I believe, all — and I think the last one was in 1968/69, so I think all of those concluded before 1970.

Q. [Mr Irving]: You say these figures were reached at by agreement between the parties? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These were the figures that were put into the judgment and what the prosecution said — I mean, let me see if I can phrase this right, I want to be very careful on this — that this was the figure that in a sense was in the realm where they had sufficient documentation that it was not contested.

Then you have the estimate, possible additional that they did not want to put into the judgment or the indictment because they did not want that to be an obscuring issue or become a detracting issue, “Well, we did not kill 250,000, we killed only 200,000″. Q. [Mr Irving]: I was going to ask, to put it in common language, was it any skin off anybody’s nose if people added 100,000 more or less?

I mean, was anybody going to get a shorter sentence because the numbers were lower or a longer sentence because the numbers were higher? What I am

getting at is were the figures properly tested in court? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The figures were reached in general by historical expert witnesses that submitted these to the court and they were open to cross-examination by the Defence. Q. [Mr Irving]: And these witnesses were German or? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The most, the most active witness was Wolfgang Schafler who was a German historian. Q. [Mr Irving]: A German historian?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that the very reputable German historian too. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: A very reputable German historian, who, in fact, looked at —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if you challenge these figures, I think now is the time to do so. I do not know whether you do or you do not.

MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not in a position to challenge them on a numerical basis, but I do wish to plant or implant doubts in your Lordship’s mind as to the rigour with which the figures have been arrived at, shall I put it like that? All I have to establish, if I have understood it correctly, in your Lordship’s mind is the position that I am entitled, as a writer myself, not to be called a Holocaust denier because I question figures. I can put it as simply as that.

Your Lordship has a different take on that, I ought to be told it now perhaps in order that I can —-

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure about “ought”, but I understand the way you use this evidence. MR IRVING: I mean, this is not a court of law, criminal law, where they are trying somebody for murder. We are just trying to establish a matter of Holocaust denial really which is a different standard of proof, I think. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Would it be helpful if I said a little bit about how Schafler arrived at his figures?

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it might be in the sense that Mr Irving is really saying, “Well, I question the figures” and I think he must by implication be saying, “and I have good grounds for questioning the figures”. So I think if you wanted to add something about the way in which the figures were arrived at, I think that would be helpful.

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, the figures for each of the camps he did by trying to trace the ghetto liquidations at the different periods into which camps they were sent.

So we have a very accurate reduction of the Lodz population, which trains went to Chelmno, when, and we can come very accurately to the number of people deported from Lodz to Chelmno, then one is on a little bit less secure grounds for the various other surrounding towns where we do not have a day by day deduction or a train by train calculation, but we do have statistics of what the populations were there before the whole operation began.

So with some rough estimate of how many would have been selected for labour, he came to a figure for Lodz as a minimum figure and then a more probable but not putting forward as necessarily a somewhat higher figure. He did the same calculations for the other camps. We know how many Dutch transports went to Sobibor. We know which regions were cleared that were directed to Sobibor.

We had the figures of the Jewish populations in those ghettos before the liquidation and the number of workers that were shifted to some of the work camps, and it was on the calculation, on that basis that he arrived at his figures. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very helpful. MR IRVING: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do ask anything you want, Mr Irving.

Section 21.16 to 40.20

MR IRVING: I think this is probably an appropriate point to ask the witness about the atmosphere in Germany for historians. Is it possible for an historian in Germany now, whether reputable or disreputable historian, to advance opposing hypotheses in any degree of safety? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Oh, absolutely.

For instance, in this court earlier I saw in the transcript you said that no one could refer to the Himmler guidelines without risking that — the intercept of the Himmler guidelines, and, of course, Christian Jerloch has published that in Germany, and has suffered absolutely no repercussions and there is no question that

he would, that there is a very vigorous discussion among German historians on the Holocaust. Q. [Mr Irving]: But would I be right in saying this discussion is skewed or distorted by the fact that anybody who goes to the other end of the spectrum, shall we say, and starts saying, “I think the figures are much lower because, for example, it was not a systematic liquidation” or anything like that, anybody who accidentally says one of the taboo phrases in Germany is going to end up in trouble,

in prison, and that this must certainly cast apprehensions in the mind of somebody about which side of the debate he takes? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that is nonsense. For instance, Hans Monson shares your view that Hitler did not give an order. Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you tell the court who Hans Monson is? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Hans Monson is a very notable historian at the University of Bochum, now retired boss tonne.

Q. [Mr Irving]: He is not a Holocaust denier, is he? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: You asked me with taboos and one of the things that has generally been seen that you have been identified with is the argument that Hitler did not make the decision. Hans Monson and Martin Broszat have accepted or have argued that Hitler did not give an order or a decision—- Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I just halt you there?

It would be useful if you would—- A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am still talking.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are interrupting a little bit, Mr Irving. Try and restrain yourself until the end of the answer. MR IRVING: Your Lordship will know why I want to interrupt there. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Far from being thrown in jail or fearing, Hans Monson currently is the Shapiro Visiting Scholar at the United States Holocaust Museum. There is a wide of range of debate covering a wide spectrum of opinion.

There is in Germany a law that outlaws Holocaust denial, but I know of no German historian that I have come across that has lost a night’s sleep worrying that this prevents him from arguing from documents and from carrying out a full academic discussion. Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you heard of Dr Reinhard Seitelmann? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have heard of Dr Reinhard Seitelmann. I know him.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the course of his career after he made certain statements? Was he originally a historian at the free university in Berlin? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think this is a digression really. MR IRVING: Very well. Would you explain to the court then who Professor Martin Broszat was? Was he an eminent German historian? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. He was the head of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich.

Q. [Mr Irving]: His opinion on my hypothesis that Hitler did not issue an order or that there is no Hitler order, are you familiar with that? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He takes your view that Hitler did not know of this, or that it was kept secret from him, or he would not have authorized it. That it was done by others behind his back he does not accept.

He does not think that Hitler gave an order for or made a decision for the Final Solution, but that rather he —- Q. [Mr Irving]: It just happened? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He encouraged it, he instigated it in the sense that he made known his feelings and that others clamoured, or strove to gain Brownie points to get credit by realising the programme that Hitler hinted that he wanted to see done.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the word Verliegenheitslosung, a way out of an awkward solution, a way out of an awkward problem? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He used the phrase that it was a way out of a Sackgasse, out of a dead end. Q. [Mr Irving]: He picked up this word from the introduction to my book and said this was probably correct. Are you familiar with that?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know if he picked that expression up from your book, but he did. In so far as the issue of the Hitler order, Monson and Broszat have argued for a long time, as

you have, they do not think that Hitler gave an explicit or formal order. Q. [Mr Irving]: It would be a grave injustice to call either of those two professors Holocaust deniers, would it not? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. The argument over whether Hitler gave an order or not is not commonly part of the issue of Holocaust denial. Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you very much for saying that. Hans Monson, would you identify him? Is he a Professor at the Royal university in Bochum?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, he was. He is retired. Q. [Mr Irving]: A very eminent historian, is that correct? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. I hope your Lordship pardons me for having made that little excursion? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.

You picked up the answer that Professor Browning gave about whether denying Hitler’s having given an order was an aspect of Holocaust denial, but I do not think the Defendants really say that it is. MR RAMPTON: We do not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was checking your summary of case. MR RAMPTON: The Hitler exculpation, exoneration, apology part of the case has nothing to do with Holocaust denial at all. They may have a similar motive at the end of the day but that is completely different.

We have focused on Hitler’s exoneration to prove what we call distorted history.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think what you do say is that it is part of Holocaust denial to deny that there was a systematic programme. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not the same as denying that it was Hitler who instigated that programme. MR RAMPTON: That is right. It is number 3, no systematic programme of exterminating Europe’s Jews, whether on the part of Hitler or the Nazi leadership.

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that Professors Monson and Broszat would say that Hitler instigated it in various ways. They would simply say there was no formal order or decision in the sense that we understand that is the way —- MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say that yourself. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. MR IRVING: Is this the debate between the intentionalists and the functionalists?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is one aspect of that debate. Q. [Mr Irving]: By instigating it, would you say that Hitler instigated it by raising the climate of anti-semitism in Germany, or was it more specific than that? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that was the beginning of it, but it gets also more specific than that when one continually indicates that you want this whole problem to disappear, that you want a settlement to this.

You prophesy a disappearance of the Jews, which is in a sense to set the climate in

which people are to come forward to you with proposals which you then can approve or not. We know the pattern that Himmler comes to Hitler in mid September with the proposals for the ethnic cleansing of western Poland. Q. [Mr Irving]: September 1939? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He comes to Hitler. They bring the Madagascar plan to Hitler. They bring proposals about marking and deportation to Hitler.

In terms of concrete proposals Hitler is not the micromanager, but the proposals are a response to the signals that he gives of what he wants and wants done, and this is what I would say we would call instigation. Q. [Mr Irving]: You refer to his prophesy, that was the speech of January 30th 1939? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is one example. Q. [Mr Irving]: That was January 30th 1939. Did the killings start immediately? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.

That is a prophesy that could be realised in a number of ways. Q. [Mr Irving]: Nothing really happened for about three years, did it? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I would not interpret that as understood yet as total destruction.

But when this does not work and there still needs to be — that is, expulsion, ethnic cleansing, does not work, the reservation plans prove to be impractical, then the demand that something be done is still there, and then one brings more extreme points.

Q. [Mr Irving]: How realistic was the Madagascar plan to which you just referred? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Do I think they took it seriously? Yes, I do think they took it seriously. It is fantastic but of course Auschwitz is fantastic, too. Q. [Mr Irving]: In what way is Madagascar a fantastic plan?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Fantastic in the sense that one is bizarre, the notion that you could take 4 million Jews and put them on ships and send them to Madagascar, and that anything other than the vast bulk of them would die under the conditions of being dumped into the jungle of Madagascar. Even that a plan that clearly in its implications involved vast decimation, they still talked in these words of resettlement.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this not exactly what happened with the state of Israel? Millions of these people were taken and dumped in Israel, so to speak, although they did it voluntarily? It was an uprooting and a geographical resettlement. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The number of people coming into Israel of course came in gradually and there was a structure and an organization to arrange for and assist their reception.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen in the German files references to the planning for the Madagascar settlement? In other words, the necessary retraining, the agricultural specialists and everything being set up by the Foreign Ministry and by the German Navy, the Naval staff?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I did not see some setting up retraining. I saw them planning to take all the property and who would be in charge of gathering the Jews, and that it would be an SS state at the other end, but I certainly did not see, as part of the files on Madagascar, retraining.

There was some toleration of Zionist groups in Germany setting up agricultural camps in the prewar period when they were trying to encourage the emigration of Jews, be it to Palestine or anywhere else. Q. [Mr Irving]: Adolf Hitler repeatedly referred to the Madagascar solution, did he not, from 1938 in the Goebbels diaries right through until July 24th 1942 in the table talk?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The Madagascar plan is a concrete plan, in which people are actually working on it. It is the period of June to September 1940, but there are references to Madagascar earlier and later. It is an idea that had floated in a number of anti-semitic pamphlets and the Jewish expert of the German Foreign Office in fact, who sort of arrived at this on his own, claimed that he got the idea from reading one of these pamphlets, so it was an idea in the air.

This was one of the sort of anti-semitic fantasies that this problem would disappear if all of these Jews could be sent to the most distant island they could conceive of. Q. [Mr Irving]: Out of mind, out of sight. Would you agree that it was Hitler’s pipe dream? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would not call it pipe dream, because I think, if

England had surrendered, they would have tried to do it. They would have tried to implement it just as they tried to implement the Lublin reservation plan and just as they tried and succeeded in implementing the death camp plans.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen indications in the negotiations with France over the peace settlement with France, the armistice negotiations, that there was an attempt by the Germans to secure permission for the Madagascar plan because Madagascar was a French territory? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought it was British. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, French.

MR IRVING: Madagascar was French but it became British after May 26th 1942, my Lord, or thereabouts, when we did the usual thing. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They sent people to the French colonial ministry to get information on Madagascar. They certainly did not need French permission, and I am not sure how much this was a topic in armistice negotiations that were going on after the armistice, I do not know how much that was a topic between them.

Q. [Mr Irving]: You think it was a totally impracticable proposition, the idea of sending 6 million Jews, or whatever it was, to an island the size of Madagascar? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think they would have attempted it, and I think the results would have been disastrous. Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would they have been disastrous?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Because I think a large percentage of the people sent there would have perished. Q. [Mr Irving]: I think that the Jews are a very sturdy people. They have shown that by their forthrightness in Palestine, have they not?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think the conditions under which they arrived there, an island which the documents said clearly was to be an SS state, would not have been anything remotely similar to the conditions of an attempted and organized reception of refugees in Palestine after 1945. Q. [Mr Irving]: The population of Madagascar at that time was about 1 million? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I could not say.

Q. [Mr Irving]: The population of Madagascar now is over 13 million? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I could not say. Q. [Mr Irving]: So it could have housed that number of people quite easily? It is a country the size of Germany, is that correct? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It would depend on the circumstances and indeed bringing Jews in, and all of their property taken, and under SS custody, I do not think one could say that they would have been housed easily.

I think it would have been lethal. Q. [Mr Irving]: If Hitler’s intention was to exterminate all the Jews systematically, then why would he have had a pipe dream of sending the Jews to a country like Madagascar where they would have survived?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is where we get to the interpretational issues of the intentionalist and functionalist. I do not believe at that point that he intended to destroy the Jews systematically. He wanted a problem to disappear. Q. [Mr Irving]: When did the intention then develop? This is important I think. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Let us get on to that.

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: As I say in my report, my feeling is that there were two separate phases of decision making. Both of them stretch out over a period of time. MR IRVING: With particular reference to Hitler, please? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is an incremental decision making process.

We have in the Spring of 1941, in preparation for Barbarossa, a number of his statements about what kind of war this is going to be, a war of destruction, a killing of what he calls Judao- Bolshevik intelligentsia and this kind of thing.

This results in proposals coming to him, one of which is the creation of the Einsatzgruppen in its arrangement with the army or logistical support, the Commissar order, and that in the opening weeks of the war this led to the selective killing of adult male Jews in the regions that the Einsatzgruppen enter. Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I halt you there for a moment and say, when he talks about the Judao-Bolshevik enemy, which half of that adjective weighs strongest in his mind, the Bolshevik or Judao?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think for him it is a package deal, but in terms of what is wrong with Bolshevism is that it is the latest manifestation of the Jewish threat, so the Jewish issue is the prime one and the Bolshevik is the current manifestation of this Jewish threat as he understands it, because he has seen previous manifestations are the French revolution and the liberals. Christianity is the first Jewish threat.

Q. [Mr Irving]: There have been more recent manifestations, have there not, for example in the Spanish Civil War? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, this is getting a bit discursive. Can we just pin it down a little bit? MR IRVING: I am trying to pin it down. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Browning, I know we are interrupting an answer and I want you to resume it, but can we just anchor it to particular dates?

The date that is in my mind, and I would be interested to see the document if possible, is the 25th May, and I think it was 1940 rather than 41. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The May 25th document is the Himmler guidelines for the treatment of the peoples of Eastern Europe, in which he wants to reauthorize the ethnic cleansing from the western territories, which Frank and Goring had managed to whittle down. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that not, in a sense, the start of it all?

A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, that is still in the ethnic cleansing phase. That is

the document in which Himmler is still referring to a total extermination as unGerman and impossible. MR IRVING: I was going point that out, yes. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is the following year, 1941 in the spring, when Hitler begins to talk about this war of destruction in the East, the destruction of the Judao-Bolshevik intelligentsia, that leads to the selective killing of adult male Jews in the opening five or six weeks of Barbarossa.

MR IRVING: Can I halt you there and say which documents? Are you referring to the Kommissar order then? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at some of these documents? A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We are referring to a collection of documents, the agreement between the military and the Einsatzgruppen in which the Einsatzgruppen will get its instructions from the SS but its logistic support from the military.

Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not possible to argue that these are purely military measures at this time? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at the document? I really do want to look at this document, the Kommissar order. MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will excuse me for interrupting. You will find three relevant documents cited, or rather utterances by Hitler in a military or a semi-military context on pages 55 and 56 of Dr Longerich’s first report.

They are all three of them in March 1941 before Barbarossa starts. Perhaps Professor Browning might be given that, so that he can see it.

MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is quite important because, if this is too broad brush, it is perhaps not as helpful as it could be. MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord, because I shall want to draw attention to the military nature of these orders. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do so please, but let us do it by reference to the documents. MR IRVING: They are criminal, there is no question, and they are Draconian, but they are military. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that.

So 55 and 56 of the first part of Longerich, Mr Rampton? MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. I think, if we look at the very first one, in fact he makes clear that his campaign has both a military and an ideological side. As he says, the coming campaign is more than just a struggle of arms. It will also lead to a confrontation of two world views.

Then he goes on, it is does not suffice to defeat the enemy army, Jewish and Bolshevik intelligentsia must be eliminated. So this campaign from the very beginning is to be conceived as more than a conventional war between armies. It has a strong ideological element and that ideological element relates to race, and particularly to Jews, and that tenor I think is very strong in his spring of 1941 declarations. As I say, when we then look at what was the

Source Information
Original Publication: 2000-02-08
Digital Archive: Focal Point Publications
Accessed: June 4, 2026

See Also

• David Irving v Penguin & Lipstadt — Jan 1995 (Article)
• Index: Lipstadt Trial Documents (Article)
• The defeat of the denierDanuta Kean reports on how Penguin p (Article)
• Irving v Lipstadt: Trial Documents (German language) (Article)
• Documents on David Irving's early clashes with Professor Deborah Lipstadt (Article)