Day 18 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 18.24)
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Thursday, 10th February 2000
5
6 Before:
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY
8
9 B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING
10 Claimant -and-
11 (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
12 (2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
13 Defendants
14 The Claimant appeared in person
15 MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
16 Second Defendants
17 MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18 MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19 the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
20
21 (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell
& Company, Clifford’s Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22 Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
23 (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company)
24
25 PROCEEDINGS – DAY EIGHTEEN
26
. P-1
1 <Day 18 Thursday, 10th February 2000.
2 (10.30 a.m.)
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: May it please the court. Two or three minor
4 housekeeping matters.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 MR IRVING: Your Lordship requested yesterday or the day before
7 yesterday, you expressed an interest in that remark by
8 Hans Frank at the Nuremberg trial where he said that he
9 had discussed it with the Fuhrer on February 2nd 1944.
10 Your Lordship said you would like to see the passage
11 concerned. That is the top document in the heap which
12 I have left your Lordship there.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
14 MR IRVING: In order that your Lordship can see the passage
15 concerned, I have put it into bold face, and it is about
16 10 pages in, I think. It is easier to find — it is three
17 pages from the end, my Lord.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.
19 MR RAMPTON: Maybe your Lordship has something I have not.
20 MR IRVING: It is there.
21 MR RAMPTON: Thank you very much.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is in bold.
23 MR IRVING: I have put in bold, that particular passage. The
24 entire document is of interest and it may well be that
25 Mr Rampton will wish to ask questions about it. It is
26 Hans Frank, who is the Governor General, which is not
. P-2
1 where Auschwitz was situated, of course, the Governor
2 General, but he is relating his own experiences and how he
3 learned, first of all, of the rumours from radio
4 broadcasts, which may seem extraordinary and how he then
5 went to discuss them with Hitler.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you.
7 MR IRVING: The second point is —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry to interrupt you, but where shall we
9 put this?
10 MR IRVING: Miss Rogers will, undoubtedly, have a suggestion to
11 make of a proper nature.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. She is in charge.
13 MR RAMPTON: Probably in the J file somewhere or other. At the
14 back of tab 7 of L1(iv) for the present.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang on, this is, in effect, an Auschwitz
16 document.
17 MR IRVING: It is.
18 MR RAMPTON: Is it?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we do not want to put it in a —-
20 MR RAMPTON: I do not think it is an Auschwitz document.
21 MR IRVING: It is. It goes to Auschwitz and Hitler’s knowledge
22 of Auschwitz. It is actually the question of the final
23 link. Your Lordship may read this document either way, of
24 course. You may hold it against me, in fact, that Frank
25 is discussing this with Hitler.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to try to absorb it now
. P-3
1 because it maybe you will want to pick this up with
2 Professor Evans.
3 MR RAMPTON: It is Hitler knowledge, really, because it
4 reflects back on the suggestion that Frank was told by
5 Hitler —-
6 MR IRVING: I agree.
7 MR RAMPTON: — or one of Hitler’s people on 12th December
8 1941.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you stick with L as being the appropriate
10 place?
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I would stick with L for the moment. L1, tab
12 8, I am now told.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of 8, you are saying?
14 MR RAMPTON: If there is a tab 8.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know we are taking time on this, but it is
16 really important that one has the documents in some sort
17 of order. Yes, Mr Irving. Next one?
18 MR IRVING: The next point is that yesterday evening at about
19 8.30 p.m. there was delivered to me by courier from the
20 Defendants a very large bundle of papers once again for
21 which Mr Rampton would say, I attach no blame
22 whatsoever to the other parties; obviously, this is an
23 action where that kind of thing happens.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am not so sure about that, but I will
25 guard my tongue at the moment.
26 MR IRVING: Basically, it was answers to questions which I
. P-4
1 had asked of today’s witness, Professor Evans, on January
2 2nd and January 3rd this year, around about that date, and
3 here we are five weeks later; they have now delivered a
4 response of probably 150, something like that, pages.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry. You say you asked questions of
6 Professor Evans on a previous occasion?
7 MR RAMPTON: Written questions.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have seen that.
9 MR RAMPTON: It is perfectly all right within the rules.
10 MR IRVING: Within the rules and with the aim of speeding
11 things up.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have seen the product of
13 your questions.
14 MR IRVING: Well, the product was delivered to me last night.
15 It covers really the first 200 pages of his expert report
16 which means I cannot today address myself specifically to
17 those pages of his report. It would be a nonsense.
18 MR RAMPTON: That is perfectly reasonable. In fact, the
19 answers run only to six pages, I think.
20 MR IRVING: Yes.
21 MR RAMPTON: The rest is what you might call supporting
22 documentation.
23 MR IRVING: Very well.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But why has this come —-
25 MR RAMPTON: Because Professor —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — within hours of Professor Evans getting
. P-5
1 into the witness box.
2 MR RAMPTON: Because Professor Evans is a busy man and he has
3 only just answered them. I cannot answer them for him.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, that, of course, I understand.
5 MR IRVING: I make no criticism of that, my Lord. Obviously,
6 we both have our professional lives to lead, but for this
7 reason it would be pointless for me to cross-examine him
8 on those pages as I certainly shall.
9 MR RAMPTON: That I accept.
10 MR IRVING: Because he may very well have answered the matters
11 in the meantime. But today I was going to discuss more
12 general matters with him. We were going to set the scene
13 as far as we possibly can.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but may I just say something about your
15 cross-examination? I have spent many hours, to put it no
16 higher, on day 16 and day 17 which is, basically, your
17 cross-examination of Professor Browning.
18 MR IRVING: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your questions, if I may say so, are clear,
20 almost always to the point, but what I would find helpful
21 is if you would usually make a point of, if you can,
22 directing me to the document that you are cross-examining
23 on, or invite the Defendants to direct me to the document
24 you are cross-examining on, because you probably
25 understand when I go through the transcript (and I am much
26 less knowledgeable than you and, indeed, than the
. P-6
1 Defendants), I do not always find it very easy to follow
2 the drift of the questioning unless I know what the
3 document says.
4 MR IRVING: My Lord, I will certainly do so in the written text
5 of my summing up which I shall deliver to your Lordship as
6 a written document as well as spoken.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, remember, I am trying to follow this and
8 digest it as we go along from the transcript so that if
9 you can —-
10 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will have noticed a disparity —-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — accommodate?
12 MR IRVING: — of effort between the man power on the Defence
13 side and the man power on the Claimants’ side of this
14 case, and I do what I can.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. I am really inviting the Defendants
16 to come to my assistance during your cross-examination.
17 The trouble is — I have said it before, I will say it
18 again — that the documents on certain aspects of this
19 case are scattered amongst different files, mostly
20 untranslated, and it does not make life any easier. I say
21 that with some feeling.
22 MR RAMPTON: I am not sure if I see that as a rebuke or not.
23 It is a fact of life, however. To make your Lordship’s
24 task easier because, after all, at the end of the case
25 your Lordship is going to have a write a judgment, we will
26 perhaps, as it were, in conference in open court with your
. P-7
1 Lordship try to put together — we have for some subjects
2 already done it, we did it for Reichskristallnacht, we
3 have done it for Dresden and some other things.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They are fine, those two topics.
5 MR RAMPTON: But there are, obviously, a number of key
6 documents which your Lordship rightly says and,
7 unsurprisingly, since the bundles have not been agreed in
8 the usual way, but are simply the experts’ references,
9 they are scattered all over the place, we need to draw
10 them together. When we have done that, I think we need
11 some help from your Lordship about which ones you would
12 like us to translate.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I agree with all of that, but just
14 looking ahead, for example on Longerich — it is too late
15 on Professor Evans and it may not be a problem with Evans
16 — it would be helpful to perhaps, prepare, a little
17 bundle in advance.
18 MR RAMPTON: I agree, yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be you have done all this already, but
20 if you have not, do you think that could be considered?
21 MR RAMPTON: My working is different. I have taken all the
22 documents already from different experts for use in
23 cross-examination, which is a slightly different exercise.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I will have to leave it to you, but
25 bear in mind I am not rebuking so much as just expressing
26 a real problem.
. P-8
1 MR RAMPTON: I understand it as a plea for help.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In a way, it is exactly that.
3 MR RAMPTON: Which I fully understand. So what we will try to
4 do, if we can, is get a Longerich bundle together, but it
5 may well include some documents from other places.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, there are some other
7 documents here. Should I look at those now or are they
8 for later?
9 MR IRVING: No. I will draw your attention to them when the
10 time comes, but I am going to draw your attention or
11 remind your Lordship of what we call the Kinna document,
12 K-I-N-N-A, which was a late arrival. I am almost tempted
13 to say it is a glamorous arrival. It arrived late from an
14 anonymous source, your Lordship will remember, and your
15 Lordship asked the Defence to take two weeks to find out
16 where it came from. They have know provided that
17 information to me last night.
18 It is a document which I regard as suspect
19 inasmuch as it comes from a 1960’s Polish publication,
20 what we would call a blue book and the Germans a white
21 book an the Nazis a brown book, I suppose, or the East
22 Germans. It is that kind of publication. I make no
23 criticism of that. I am not going to attack the integrity
24 of the document because I am not in position to. But they
25 have also produced in support of the document the
26 testimony of the man who signed it, as I understand it
. P-9
1 taken in.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we first of all go to this document?
3 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. It was, I think produced —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember it.
5 MR RAMPTON: — during the course of — I am going to hand it
6 up.
7 MR IRVING: I am not going to deal with the contents of the
8 document. I understand I will be cross-examined on it.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but if you are saying about it, I want to
10 look at it so I know what you are talking about.
11 MR RAMPTON: There was a translation at some time. I do not
12 know where that has got to. It is a report from a place
13 called Zanosk which is in Poland of 16th December 1942
14 about the transport of some 644 Poles to Auschwitz. It
15 has a real significance so far as, indeed, not just
16 Auschwitz, but the Holocaust as a whole, in its second
17 paragraph on page 2, which somebody, might be the source,
18 has put a line beside, and the question was really this
19 for the moment, what authenticity does it have?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I remember.
21 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving was worried about that. We now know
22 that it was reprinted as a facsimile in a Polish book in
23 1960, which is produced by the Warsaw archive which is, no
24 doubt, where it is, also again in 1979 and then the last
25 document where it was translated from German into Polish,
26 and in the last document is the testimony man Kinna
. P-10
1 himself which I think he gave on 2nd July 1964.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is Kinna the signatory of the document?
3 MR RAMPTON: He is the man who wrote the report, yes. Although
4 I cannot possibly read it, I am your Lordship cannot
5 either, maybe Mr Irving can, these are the handwritten
6 notes of the hearing. What, in effect, we are told they
7 do is to show that Kinna himself verified the contents of
8 his report.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In what context?
10 MR RAMPTON: He was a witness at a trial.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He was a witness as a prosecution of a —-
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes, so I understood, at Frankfurt. The last
13 document in this little clip is, I think, not connected.
14 It is a letter, I think, from Hans Frank to Heinrich
15 Himmler dated 23rd June 1942.
16 MR IRVING: It is from Viktor Brach.
17 MR RAMPTON: You are quite right. It is in the top lefthand
18 corner, but I do not know what it says because I have not
19 read it yet.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
21 MR IRVING: My Lord, can I revert to the submission I was
22 making about the Kinna document?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, absolutely. That is what we are on now.
24 MR IRVING: I am not going to challenge the integrity of the
25 document because I am not in a position to do so, but I am
26 going to deal with that handwritten document which your
. P-11
1 Lordship was just looking at which was the 1963 trial
2 where Kinna was asked about the document. I have
3 deciphered the handwriting at the end I will translate it
4 very rapidly: “Says the witness Kinna” —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause. I have not got there yet.
6 MR IRVING: It has a number of numbers on it, and it has an
7 upside down page 11 at the top left-hand side corner. The
8 final paragraph, the final two paragraphs, translate as
9 follows: “The witness Kinna confirmed the accuracy of the
10 report. He answered the questions put to him by the
11 lawyer Professor Dr Kaul”. K-A-U-L.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am so sorry.
13 MR RAMPTON: My Lord I am sorry, the clip has not been
14 paginated which is annoying. It is the second of two —-
15 MR IRVING: Two handwritten pages.
16 MR RAMPTON: — handwritten page. It has a fax page 10 in the
17 top righthand corner.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have it. I cannot see the upside-down 11.
19 MR RAMPTON: You do not have to struggle with that.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, sorry, Mr Irving?
21 MR IRVING: I will repeat it. “The witness Kinna confirmed the
22 accuracy of the report”. This is two paragraphs from the
23 bottom, “The witness Kinna” —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
25 MR IRVING: — “confirmed the accuracy of the report. He
26 answered the questions put to him, the expanding
. P-12
1 questions, the amplifying questions, put to him by the
2 lawyer Professor Dr Kaul. To the correction of the
3 witness, no further motions were put”, or it could be
4 either “correction” or on the swearing of the witness, but
5 that is unimportant. What concerns me is the final
6 paragraph: “The witness was sworn in, and in agreement
7 with both parties he was released”.
8 I shall draw attention to that. I do not think
9 this is a proper time to draw attention. The significance
10 is the fact that this witness, to what is obviously a
11 criminal document, is questioned only as to the accuracy
12 of the document and is then released by all the parties,
13 including the public prosecutor.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am not saying you are wrong about
15 that. My reaction to it would be that that is simply what
16 happens when a witness is finished giving his evidence.
17 MR IRVING: Yes, except that, since your Lordship has put it
18 that way, I would comment on the remarkable fact that here
19 is a man who has obviously been engaged in a criminal
20 undertaking who could possibly have struck a bargain,
21 shall I put it like that, that if he will testify to the
22 accuracy of the document, then no further charges will be
23 laid against him.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So your position on what we are calling the
25 Kinna report is that, yes, it is an authentic document.
26 MR IRVING: For the purposes of this trial, my Lord.
. P-13
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you query whether it was not the product
2 of a plea bargain.
3 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not challenging the integrity of the
4 document. I cannot because I do not have sufficient
5 apparatus to challenge it. Having read the document, I do
6 not think it seriously damages my position in this case.
7 So, for the purpose of the case, I am going to ask
8 questions on its contents as though it were genuine.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again I ask where shall we put this?
10 MR RAMPTON: This is an Auschwitz document. I suggest it goes
11 in tab 4 of K2.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
13 MR RAMPTON: Chronologically, we will have declip it and sort
14 it out. I suggest it goes as a lump in wherever the date
15 is, 16.12.42. I cannot help on that because I have not
16 got my K2 here.
17 MR IRVING: The final problem, my Lord —-
18 MR RAMPTON: Can I just finish? I am sorry, I am not trying to
19 be discourteous. I do have a translation as well of the
20 Kinna document.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
22 MR RAMPTON: There is one for the judge and one for Mr Irving.
23 He ought to see that in case he does not agree with it.
24 (Same handed).
25 MR IRVING: My Lord the fourth matter concerns the document
26 which you are familiar with, which is August 1st 1941 from
. P-14
1 Muller to the Einsatzgruppen chiefs about which we spent
2 some discussion.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And about the authenticity of it.
4 MR IRVING: A serious problem has arisen because I contacted
5 the West German archives, your Lordship will see that the
6 second page of that little bundle I gave you, the bundle
7 beginning with the words “from Monday”, the second page of
8 that is headed “translation”, does your Lordship have the
9 page?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
11 MR IRVING: A letter from me on February 7th this year to the
12 German Federal Archives saying, this is a translation:
13 There is a big trial in London. I need an original copy
14 of the following document. I give the reference number
15 which is given by our witnesses in their bundles.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
17 MR IRVING: I need it immediately. Crystal Brown is going to
18 be for the next three days only in the witness box. Could
19 you please fax the documents, we need them in facsimile.
20 I attach importance if possible to seeing the original
21 documents rather than printed versions, as your Lordship
22 appreciates. They replied to me yesterday, saying that
23 document is not in the file. And to clarify any
24 ambiguities as to what that letter meant, I spoke with
25 Dr Lens yesterday of the German Federal Archives in Berlin
26 and he said, yes, that means this document is not in the
. P-15
1 file at all, it is full of completely different documents,
2 which he then describes. There may be an innocent
3 explanation for this but I would ask, before being
4 questioned about this document as I understand the defence
5 wish to, that I should be apprised as to where the
6 original is and, if possible, shown a facsimile.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had evidence about that, but I am
8 afraid it is not in my mind at the moment. I think it is
9 been around for a long time, the Muller document, has it
10 not?
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is mentioned in a book, at least this
12 I know, by Professor Gerald Fleming, called Hitler und die
13 Entlosung. It is a German book which has also been
14 translated.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is right.
16 MR RAMPTON: It was published in 1982. I have Mr Irving’s copy
17 which he kindly gave me.
18 MR IRVING: Loaned you.
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes, of course. I have no intention permanently
20 to deprive Mr Irving. The point is this, not what the
21 authenticity of the document might be, but that it is in a
22 book which Mr Irving has, and that is what I shall be
23 cross-examining him about. I am not going back to
24 history.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but he can rely on this letter.
26 MR RAMPTON: It does not seem that it is now in a particular
. P-16
1 archive.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the file where you would expect to find
3 it does not contain it.
4 MR RAMPTON: The reference may be wrong, I do not know. I will
5 try and track it down. It is a different point. I am not
6 going to cross-examine him about that.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is all of this little clip connected with
8 Muller?
9 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. The final document in that little
10 clip is actually a press report of 1983 in which Fleming
11 refers to that very document. I include it purely because
12 I found it by accident last night in my files. I would
13 certainly rely on this little episode as being further
14 proof of the negligence of the historians adduced as
15 expert witnesses by the Defence in this case.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we know where Fleming got the document
17 from?
18 MR IRVING: No.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is he still —-
20 MR IRVING: He is still extant.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — alive and well?
22 MR IRVING: Yes. I spoke to him a few days ago. He never
23 wrote about it in a letter to me in his considerable
24 correspondence which I searched.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will leave this clip on one side.
26 MR IRVING: We will be coming back to it in the course of the
. P-17
1 cross-examination of Professor Evans, my Lord.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have some photographs of Winnona
3 Brown.
4 MR IRVING: We do not need them until halfway down the
5 cross-examination of Professor Evans when we get the
6 little ditty.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Any more?
8 MR IRVING: That is my only submission.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
10 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship again has probably got something
11 I have not. I knew what the first part of this exchange
12 was about, because I know what the document is.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have not got any photographs?
14 MR RAMPTON: I have no photographs.
15 MR IRVING: Miss Rogers is sitting on everything.
16 MR RAMPTON: May I enquire through your Lordship where the
17 correspondence is with the Bundesarchives, or whatever it
18 is?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have a clip which I think you have
20 headed “from Monday August 23rd”.
21 MR RAMPTON: We will sort it out later. I do not want to waste
22 time.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. Now shall we have Professor Evans?
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
Part II: Introduction of Professor Richard John Evans (18.25 to 110.4)
Section 18.25 to 41.7
25 < Professor Evans, sworn.
26 < Examined by Mr Rampton QC.
. P-18
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Professor Evans, first of all, your full names please?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Richard John Evans.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you made a report, a long report, for these
4 proceedings?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you made some corrections to it?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: More recently, have you answered some questions in writing
9 from Mr Irving?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So far as those documents contain statements of fact, are
12 you as satisfied as you can be that they are accurate?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In so far as they contain expressions of opinion, are you
15 satisfied that those opinions are fair?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you. Would you remain there to be cross-examined.
18 < Cross-examined by Mr Irving.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Good morning, Professor Evans.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Good morning.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I intend this morning to try and deal with
22 matters generally, particularly some of the matters that
23 are large in recent public coverage of this case and try
24 and dispose of them, and then go seriatim through
25 particular points which are contained in his expert
26 report. I shall also try to bring in the reports of those
. P-19
1 witnesses who are not going to be cross-examined or
2 presenting themselves for cross-examination and test your
3 Lordship’s patience in that respect, and have to use this
4 cross-examination or the cross-examination of Professor
5 Longerich as a vehicle for introducing certain documents?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We have discussed that already and that
7 is something that you are perfectly entitled to do. But
8 do bear in mind, if I may say it again, that it is
9 important that I can follow it, preferably by reference to
10 the documents.
11 MR IRVING: By reference to the documents, yes.
12 Professor Evans, first of all, we learned
13 yesterday from Professor Browning, rather to my surprise
14 that he is effectively in the pay of the Yad Vashim
15 Institute, that he received 35,000 dollars from them for a
16 task which he has not completed, so he is in their debt.
17 Can you assure the court that you are not also in some way
18 indebted to the Yad Vashim Institute or to any similar
19 body?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends rather what you mean by “any similar body”.
21 I am certainly not in debt to anybody, as far as I know.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, the significance being of course that Yad Vashim was
23 the body which commissioned the work which is complained
24 of in this action.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have never had any dealings with the Yad Vashim
26 Institute of any description.
. P-20
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where would you position yourself in the political
2 spectrum? I think it is important that we know, when you
3 are describing somebody as being an extremist of either
4 left or right, where you position yourself, your own
5 vantage point from which you view them?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am a member of the Labour Party. I do not suppose that
7 means that one is left wing these days.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. Never mind the Labour Party’s politics. What is your
9 own personal political standpoint from which you view
10 people like myself, or Margaret Thatcher, or John Major?
11 Would you regard Margaret Thatcher as being moderately
12 right-wing or extreme right wing?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I said, I am a member of the Labour party and, broadly
14 speaking, I take the Labour Party’s point of view on
15 current affairs in so far as I interest myself in them.
16 I would not describe myself as an expert.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you allow the Labour Party to dictate your politics to
18 you or do you have any ideas of your own in this respect?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you mean by politics. Of course I make up
20 my own mind about things.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your writings appear to be left of centre, if I may put it
22 that way. You would not expect David Irving to write a
23 book, for example, about feminism or the women’s movement
24 or something like that.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, though I have to point out that my work on feminism
26 has been heavily sharply criticised by a number of
. P-21
1 feminists.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, maybe feminists are the kind of people who will
3 never be satisfied. Would that be correct?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot really comment on that. It depends what kind of
5 feminists you are talking about.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have written about 15 books have you, about 15 titles
7 so far?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 16, I think. Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: They have been published widely around the world?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They have, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: How would you describe yourself? None of your books have
12 been on a best seller list, have they? They are academic
13 works, are they not?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are academic works, though some of are written —
15 I always try to write for a wider audience. That is to
16 say I always try and write in a readable manner, and some
17 of my books have sold I think quite well for works that
18 are scholarly. My book “In Defence of History”, which
19 came out two and a half years ago, has I think sold about
20 20,000 copies.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are referring to this book, is that correct?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed. That is the American edition. I have no idea
23 what that sold.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: It spells “defence” differently.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed. That is why they had to reprint it. It is also
26 appearing in Turkish, Japanese, German, Korean and a
. P-22
1 number of other languages. My book “Death in Hamburg”
2 I think sold about 20,000 copies in English and German.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you talking about hard book copies or paper back
4 copies?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Both.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Altogether?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I should also say that I have one won a literary
8 prize for history and I have recently been elected Fellow
9 of the Royal Society of Literature so it seems that my
10 books are regarded as being literary in some sense.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is quite difficult to write literary history, is it
12 not, especially when you are quoting from document? Would
13 you agree?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is difficult. One has maintain a balance between
15 accuracy, which is of course one’s first duty, and
16 readability.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you are translating a document from Chaucer in English,
18 then you would not use the old language, you would use
19 modern English, would you not? You would put it into
20 modern English and this would not be considered in any way
21 distorting the original. Is that right?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends. There are different versions of Chaucer.
23 I cannot say I am an expert on Chaucer in any shape or
24 form.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Obviously, if I am referring to translating from French or
26 from German, it is sometimes very difficult to get an
. P-23
1 exact shade of sense on a word. Frequently there is no
2 exact comparison between the two words, between the
3 English and the German?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is, well, I think what I would say is that, of
5 course, you cannot do an absolutely literal
6 translation because the word order is different and words
7 have slightly different meanings, but the first duty of an
8 historian is to translate from a foreign language in terms
9 that render faithfully the meaning of the original.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And I think that any literary pretensions that one has
12 must surely take second place to that aim.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: How would you decide what is the faithful rendering of a
14 particular word in translation? Would you look just at
15 that word or would you take into account your own general
16 knowledge of what is going on or would you look at the
17 surrounding countryside, so to speak, of the paragraphs
18 before and after?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you have to do all of these things and reach your
20 own judgment as to what is an accurate translation.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but the fact that you have used a word that is not a
22 mirror image from one language to the other of a word in a
23 translation is not necessarily evidence of a distortion or
24 an intent to distort?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends on how you do it. I mean, as you know,
26 dictionaries give a number of different alternative
. P-24
1 English equivalents for German words and you have to
2 decide which one is the most accurate in the
3 circumstances.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I will be dealing with this probably next week with
5 you when you come back, Professor, but you will accept
6 that, for example, a 1936 dictionary in German will
7 probably give a different meaning of a word from a 1999
8 dictionary?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In some cases, most certainly, in some cases, not, and of
10 course they give range of meanings which one has to use in
11 different circumstances. It may well be, for example,
12 that in 1942 or 1943 in some circumstances a word is used
13 somewhat differently from the way it is used in 1936. So
14 I would not take a 1936 dictionary as being absolute
15 gospel for the usage of words in some circumstances in
16 1942 to 3. As I said, you have to look, as you said
17 indeed, at the document itself and the surrounding
18 documents, at the meanings, at the time, the people who
19 wrote it.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: And take your own expertise into account, is that correct?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have to use your judgment which is based on your
22 reading of other documents, most certainly, yes, and,
23 indeed, other people’s of course. Other people will have
24 worked —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Sometimes the document itself will give you a clue. We
26 looked at a document with Professor Browning, October
. P-25
1 1942, relating to the Umsiedlung of 20,000 Jews from
2 Reslatosk. Just from that sentence, it was not plain what
3 the word “Umsiedlung” meant, but two pages later, as
4 Professor Browning correctly pointed out, the 20,000 are
5 referred as anschossen, shot. So there is no question
6 there, is there?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not really want to comment on it without actually
8 having the document in front of me.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Later on in the same paragraph we have the sentence that
10 half the inhabitants of the village of X were shot and the
11 after were umgesiedelt to a neighbouring village in which
12 case the word quite clearly has a different meaning, does
13 it not, in the same paragraph?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Again I really do not want to comment without having the
15 document in front of me.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take it from me it is right. We went through
17 it and it is obviously right.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid have not read the transcripts for that
19 particular day.
20 MR IRVING: So it seems it is possible to have the most glaring
21 inconsistencies even within the same document as to what
22 the meaning of a word is?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Words may be used in different senses, yes, and certainly
24 as euphemisms in some senses and not as in others. If you
25 use an euphemism, well, almost by definition, in other
26 circumstances it going to have its actual real meaning.
. P-26
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it is a minefield then, the translation of documents,
2 or it is either a minefield or a sweet shop, a candy
3 store, depending on which way you are looking at it. If
4 you want to go into those documents with an evil intent or
5 with a perverse intent, then you can fix a meaning which
6 just fits the meaning you want, is that correct?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, if you are referring to yourself, yes. I mean,
8 I would not do that.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is sauce for the goose is source for the
11 gander. In a way, I understand why you are asking these
12 questions. I understand the point you are making.
13 MR IRVING: I am just rubbing it in, my Lord, the fact that, as
14 Professor Evans rightly said, if this applies to myself, I
15 could distort the document one way, but, of course, if it
16 applies to a left wing historian or a Marxist, they could
17 distort exactly the same document the other way, and he
18 was quite right to point this out.
19 (To the witness): We will leave the matter of
20 meanings of words because we cannot do that really at this
21 point without having a little bundle of documents to look
22 at which I shall bring on Tuesday, I think, which will be
23 a bundle of documents about the “Ausrotten”, so you might
24 like to prepare yourself intellectually for the word
25 ausrotten and what it means.
26 Professor, you are in charge of this magnificent
. P-27
1 team of stallions who have been preparing the defence, is
2 that correct? You were the leading, the chief expert
3 witness, am I right?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I some research assistants. I have helped the defence
5 in suggestion as to whom should be called as expert
6 witnesses, but not all the expert the witness have been
7 called at my suggestion. I certainly have not been in
8 charge of them in the sense that I have directed them what
9 to write.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of course, you would not dictate to them what to write,
11 but have you dictated what field of research they should
12 apply their minds to in connection with this defence?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not dictated, no. I suggested to the defence that certain
14 witnesses might be called to cover certain fields and
15 then, of course, there were lengthy discussions as to how
16 this should be made more precise and exactly what areas
17 should be covered and by whom and so on. Not all of my
18 suggestions were accepted, of course.
19 MR RAMPTON: Can I just sound a warning note? We are getting
20 towards forbidden territory.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are on privilege.
22 MR IRVING: I certainly would not have asked him privileged
23 questions.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you are the right side of the
25 boundary, but Mr Rampton was putting down a marker.
26 MR IRVING: I was going to ask here, did you look specifically
. P-28
1 for left orientated experts or right-wing orientated
2 experts? I mean, you did not ask Professor Faurisson, for
3 example, did you, to give evidence?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not consider him an expert.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would not consider him an expert?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think he is a charlatan.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are right; he was stripped of his Professorship, was
8 he not, by the University of Lyons or Lille, one of the
9 two?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is more his work that I am concerned with and I do not
11 think it is reputable work. My only concern in suggesting
12 the names of expert witnesses was that they should be
13 experts in their particular fields.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So a right winger is a charlatan and a left winger
15 is acceptable. Would that have been your standard?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not at all, no. Had, for example, Professor Hilgrubber
17 still been alive, he was a decidedly right-wing historian,
18 but I consider him a reputable expert in certain fields of
19 Second World War.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about Professor Hans Monson? Might he have come up
21 with the wrong answers, perhaps?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really do not want to get into discussions of whom we
23 might have called, and we did not.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I do not think you are actually being
25 asked the question in that way, and I think it is a
26 legitimate question. What is the answer?
. P-29
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What was the question?
2 MR IRVING: Might you have called Professor Dr Hans Monson of
3 the University of Fulkum(?) who is an acknowledged expert
4 on this field?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But — in the end, he has not been called.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you would not have considered calling him?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is such a hypothetical question; I mean, I would have
8 considered calling him. There are many people whom
9 I would have considered calling but we did not in the end
10 consider calling them.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you the question this way which
12 I do not think infringes any privilege. Have you gone out
13 of your way to recommend historians who have a particular
14 point of view which happens to coincide with your own?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
16 MR IRVING: But you have had your knives out in the past for
17 right wing historians or Nazi historians, have you not?
18 In your book “In Defence of History” you make minced meat
19 of some historians?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is also right to point out that I have very
21 heavily criticised some left wing historians as well. If
22 you take my book “In Defence of History”, for example,
23 there is some very sharp criticism of the Marxist
24 historian, David Abraham, there; there is some sharp
25 criticism of the Marxist historian, Christopher Hill. So
26 I do not think I direct my criticisms only at historians
. P-30
1 who might be identified as right-wing.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have stepped into the shoes of Sir Geoffrey Elton at
3 Cambridge, have you not?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you not hold the Chair of Modern History at Cambridge?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but he held the Reader’s Chair.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he still there?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is dead, I am afraid.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, he is not still there, is he?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: How would we position him on the political spectrum?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Very difficult. I mean, I think in some ways he was an
13 unconventional character. I did not know him very well,
14 I have to say, but, on the whole, I think you could say he
15 was right-wing.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the difference between “unconventional” in your
17 vocabulary and “extremist”?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I meant more in terms of his rather unpredictable views on
19 some subjects.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: A bit of a loose cannon?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I would say that.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not politically correct?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is a very slippery term. I mean, it depends
24 exactly what you mean by “politically correct”. I am not
25 sure that the term political correctness was very much in
26 vogue at the time when he held the chair.
. P-31
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let me assure you, I am not trying to lay any traps this
2 morning or, indeed, for the rest of today. We are just
3 generally exploring the terrain. So you do not have to
4 have any sense of reserve in answering the questions I am
5 putting to you because —-
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: — there are no traps.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I am not an expert on Sir Geoffrey Elton whom I only
9 knew very slightly and I did not read, by any means, all
10 of his work. I admired, what I did read, I admired it
11 greatly. I thought he was a tremendous historian and also
12 a very interesting man with pungent, strongly held views,
13 some of which invited disagreement, some of which did
14 not. But I thought, as an historian, he was in his own
15 chosen field of Tudor Constitutional History, he was a
16 very good historian.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Pungently held views or pungently expressed views. Is an
18 historian entitled to express views pungently which are
19 different from those of the common place?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Most certainly, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: So what makes an acceptable pungently held view and an
22 unacceptable pungently held view, in your view? Is it the
23 supposed political leanings of the person who does the
24 expression?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I think that historians, what makes it, as it were,
26 debatable within conventional academic, scholarly terms is
. P-32
1 whether historians’ views are accepted — I am trying to
2 think of an accurate way of putting this — whether
3 historians views are put forward on the basis of documents
4 which are available and on a —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: The objective sources?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — reasonable interpretation of those.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: You attach great importance to the objective use of
8 sources, is that right?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think the sources, as it were, have a right of veto on
12 what one can and what one cannot say.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Express.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But within the area that is covered by the sources that
15 you use, there is, of course, scope for some disagreement.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have done a certain amount of research into the Nazi
17 period, have you not?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: This was not originally your speciality, was it?
20 Originally, you came from a different era of history?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have researched on eras of the 19th and 20th
22 centuries.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: For some reason the Nazi era is a profitable era of
24 research if one writes books? I do not mean this in any
25 sense as a criticism.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I have to say the only book that I have done that is
. P-33
1 based on archival research on the Nazi period, a book
2 called “Rituals of Retribution” on the issue of capital
3 punishment in Germany since the 17th century, has sold
4 very badly. It is far too long and I am told that Penguin
5 regard it as something of an albatross.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: It contains acres of sludge, does it?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not describe it as sludge myself, no.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: But I know the temptation. Is it true one finds documents
9 that oneself finds fascinating, but the readers probably
10 do not?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I think its length has daunted an English language
12 readership. It is about to appear in German and I think
13 Germans are less daunted by very lengthy books. But it
14 does cover 300 years of history in a major area and not a
15 handful of years. It does cover a large subject.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have a confession to make, Professor Evans. I had not
17 heard of you before you were actually nominated as a
18 witness in this case. This is not a criticism in any
19 sense at all, and I wondered where on earth I could get a
20 copy of your book. Then I found a copy of your book
21 actually on my desk. Somebody actually sent it to me
22 months earlier. I looked through it, and probably rather
23 the same as you looked through my book “Hitler’s War”, you
24 have never read my book “Hitler’s War” from cover to cover
25 except when this trial began, is that right?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is true, yes.
. P-34
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: You state in your expert report that you picked it up once
2 and leafed through it, is that right?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. It was not really essentially on
4 areas with which I was concerned.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: At that time you were not dealing with the Third Reich or
6 with Adolf Hitler or with the decision-making processes?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Only in terms of teaching. I have been teaching courses
8 on the Third Reich for some years.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And it would never have occurred to you to put my book on
10 the list of recommended works?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not really. I think it is more concerned with military
12 history than anything else. I do not know if you would
13 accept that.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the courses that are taught in universities and
15 colleges do not cover military history, is that correct?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Some do, but not the courses that I teach.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: In looking at the book, did it occur to you that I had had
18 access to sources that no other historians had had, and
19 that this might, therefore, have made it valuable for
20 teaching courses?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I have said, I mean, the sources — of course, it
22 occurred, of course, it was clear to me that you had a
23 justified reputation for obtaining sources which other
24 historians had not had access to, but these sources and
25 your treatment of them were not, I felt, really useful for
26 the kind of teaching that I was doing on the Third Reich.
. P-35
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask the witness to be given one of these little
2 bundles, please, Miss Rogers? I am purely using you,
3 Professor Evans, now as a means of getting this document
4 before his Lordship. Are you familiar with the Internet?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you ever use the Internet?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Occasionally, yes. I have to say not very extensively.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am going to ask you at this stage to look at the first
9 document, but you can leaf through if you wish. Are you
10 familiar with the H Net which is an aspect of the
11 Internet, a kind of communication between experts?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not very, I have to say.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that there are various H Nets. There is H Net,
14 Anti-Semitism and so on?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: H German, and so on, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar, Professor, with a Dr David Aaron Meyer,
17 who is the Associate Professor of History and who runs the
18 particular discussion group on the Internet called H
19 Anti-Semitism?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At Dickinson State University?
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not, no.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: He expresses an opinion in his e-mail to me dated August
24 23rd last year in which he says, “I have been familiar
25 with your works for a very long time”, meaning my works,
26 “and find them exceptionally well written and
. P-36
1 researched”. Would you share his opinion?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is familiar with my works and he finds them
4 exceptionally well written and researched. Never mind the
5 “well written”, but he finds them well researched. And
6 you do not accept his opinion?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you mean by “well researched”. I mean,
8 I do not dispute the fact that you have very wide and deep
9 knowledge of the source material for the Third Reich,
10 particularly during the Second World War, above all, and
11 of course it is quite right, as countless historians have
12 pointed out, that you discovered many new sources.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: What have I done with these sources? Have I made them
14 available immediately to the community?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I was about to go on to say that the problem for me is
16 what you do with the sources when you then start to
17 interpret them and write them up.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: But do I do two things with these sources, is this
19 correct? On the one hand, I write my books based on them,
20 on the other hand, I automatically placed the entire
21 collection of these new sources in various institutes
22 where people like yourself and your researchers and other
23 historians around the world can immediately go and see
24 them; is that correct?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Some of them you have placed, you have made available, and
26 the others you have not.
. P-37
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with any collections that I have not
2 immediately made available? Can you identify any?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, the interrogations of Hans Aumeier, which have
4 already been discussed in this courtroom, it took you four
5 or five years to make those or six years to make those
6 available.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: We have actually discussed them at some length in this
8 courtroom, and it is true that I did not make the actual
9 bundle of documents available to other historians after
10 I discovered them. This is true. Can you suggest there
11 may be a reason why I, having discovered that little
12 scoop, did not make them immediately available to others?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It seemed to me that they were somewhat embarrassing
14 for your position on the existence of gas chambers at
15 Auschwitz.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the letter that I wrote to Professor
17 Robert Jan van Pelt in May 1996 drawing his attention to
18 this bundle of documents?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is four years after you discovered the documents and
20 a letter to one person. That is not the same as making
21 them generally available immediately.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that Professor Robert Jan van Pelt was the
23 world’s acknowledged expert on Auschwitz and he was the
24 appropriate person to have his attention drawn to this
25 file?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but I repeat, that is not the same as making them
. P-38
1 generally available immediately which is your initial
2 claim you made a few minutes ago.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that there is a difference between my
4 visiting elderly widows and persuading them to part with
5 their diaries, on the one hand, and, on the other hand,
6 something which is in the public domain already in the
7 British public archives and where anybody can go and find
8 it if they have sufficient nouse, and nobody else has
9 bothered to. There is a difference there.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure. It was in a very — it is in a somewhat
11 unexpected place where you might not expect to find it in
12 the Public Record Office in the files of the Political
13 Warfare Executive.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you expect a researcher on Auschwitz to have
15 sufficient acumen to go to the Public Record Office and
16 look in the files of the War Office Military Intelligence,
17 WO208, and in the catalogue find a file called
18 “Interrogations of Hans Aumeier of Auschwitz”, would that
19 take much intelligence, do you think?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have to know exactly where to look for in
21 19 — I think these were only released in 1991 and 1992.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask the same question in a different
23 way? If you had come across the Aumeier diary, I think it
24 is a diary, what would you have done with it if you felt
25 it was your duty to place it in the public domain?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Published an article about it, I think, in a learned
. P-39
1 journal. It is a somewhat problematic document, but
2 I think it is of some interest and importance.
3 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, have you seen a letter of mine in
4 the files which are disclosed to you by way of discovery
5 in which I wrote to the Institute of Contemporary History
6 — disregarding your views about that Institute at this
7 moment — and suggested precisely that, that this item,
8 the Aumeier papers, should be published in some learned
9 journal?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which Institute of Contemporary —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: The one in California, the IHR?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, that is the institute Of Historical Review, so-called.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I am sorry. I gave you the wrong name, yes.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do not regard that as a respectable academic
15 Institution.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: But was this not an offer, a suggestion, by me that this
17 document should be placed in the public domain by way of
18 somebody writing a learned paper about it?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you place your letter in front of me, a copy of it,
20 I would be happy to look at it.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking a general question here, what degree of access
22 have you been given to all the documents that I made
23 available to the Defence by way of discovery? Have you
24 seen everything or have you had everything available to
25 you or have you been able to pick and choose or have you
26 had just limited access?
. P-40
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Everything has been made available, but, of course, as you
2 will appreciate, there is an enormous quantity of material
3 and —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read my entire correspondence between myself and
5 the IHR?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have certainly had access to it and it has been looked
7 through and some of it, of course, is cited in my report.
Section 41.8 to 54.26
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, you expressed the opinion in your report
9 that my diaries may have been written for some ulterior
10 motive?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point to the page in my report where I say that,
12 please?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: That sounded to me as though it was a rehearsed remark.
14 I shall avoid wasting the court’s time. It is in the
15 first few pages and I shall say, is it true that it is
16 your opinion that I may have written the diaries for some
17 reason other than one would normally write a diary? What
18 are your suspicions about why I wrote that?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Would you like to point me to the page where I — you see,
20 I have a problem, Mr Irving, which is that, having been
21 through your work, I cannot really accept your version of
22 any document, including passages in my own report, without
23 actually having it in front of me, so I think this may be
24 a problem for us.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: If may make things easier for you, of course. That is
26 precisely why I do not and I do not think his Lordship
. P-41
1 will accept that kind of answer to my questions either.
2 Let me phrase a simple question to you. You have read all
3 my diaries or you have had all my diaries made available
4 to you and you have read extensively —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They have been made available. I have to say they were
6 not particularly useful for my report. My report is
7 concerned almost entirely with your published writings and
8 speeches.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you find frequently in the diaries of the 1970s
10 descriptions of my meetings with members of Hitler’s
11 private staff?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I refer to that in my report.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. Did the other experts —-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are one or two references in my report.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: — Professor Levin and Professor Eatwell have access to
16 these diaries as well and also their researchers?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed they did. I think they — yes, they did.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you form any kind of consensus about these diaries?
19 Did you form any kind of opinion as to whether, for
20 example, the diaries were written with a view to
21 publication?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not discussed the diaries with Professor Eatwell or
23 Professor Levin.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you form an opinion yourself about whether the diaries
25 were perfectly ordinary diaries written for whatever
26 psychological reason people have to write diaries, or were
. P-42
1 they written rather like Alan Clark with an intention of
2 publishing later on or somewhere in between?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is really getting into the realms of speculation
4 about your psychology, Mr Irving, which I would rather
5 avoid.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking you about your opinion. I am asking your
7 opinion, having read the diaries. You have expressed an
8 opinion in the report and I am asking what your opinion is
9 now.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you direct me to the place in the report where I
11 express this opinion?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking you what your opinion is now. Do you think
13 the diaries were written genuinely or were they written as
14 a camouflage?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me try to find this place that we are trying to
16 discuss here in the report.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not trying to trap you into providing a useful
18 answer. I am trying to lay the groundwork for questions
19 which will be based on the diaries, Professor Evans.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just looking at the very end of it,
21 Professor Evans, but I cannot quite find what I think
22 perhaps Mr Irving has in mind.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is page 16, paragraph 1.5.6 which I said I have had
24 access to his complete private diaries, where I simply
25 describe them as “private diaries”.
26 MR IRVING: Can you not just answer simply my question? Having
. P-43
1 had that access to these private diaries, have you formed
2 an opinion?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not really. I mean, I do not, I do not really want to
4 speculate as to why they are being written. Certainly
5 some of them, as you know, are published, you have put
6 extracts up and you publish extracts. So, from that point
7 of view, certainly, I would imagine there was an intention
8 of publishing at least part of them because you have
9 actually published them.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But whether that applies to all of them is a completely —
12 is a rather different matter. It is rather similar, in a
13 way, to Goebbels’s diaries. As you know, those which he
14 published in his lifetime, those were the early 1930s, he
15 did excise quite substantial chunks before he published
16 them.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: In Goebbels’, for example, and I do not accept there is
18 any comparison, he wrote handwritten diaries and he
19 dictated typescript diaries, did he not?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes, and he signed a publishing contract,
21 as you know, of his diaries.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: And he published, for example, the 1933 diary as a book
23 later on which was quite close but not the same as —-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what I was referring to, yes. He excised certain
25 parts of it, so one could not say that everything in his
26 earlier diaries were written with a view to publication.
. P-44
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: In your expert report you said that I was obliged to turn
2 over my diaries to the Defence. What did you mean by
3 that?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point to me the page where I say that?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Oh, dear!
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, do we really need to go to that?
7 I expect you probably did say that.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I really, my Lord, would ask I be pointed to where
9 I say that.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, if you really want it?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid I do, yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you help Mr Irving? It is difficult to
13 be asked to — it is a report running to about 750 pages.
14 MR RAMPTON: Can I tell your Lordship what actually happened?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know exactly what happened which is why I
16 wondered whether Professor Evans really needed to be
17 referred to the documents.
18 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship knows what happened? Oh, well, that
19 is fine. Then there cannot be any contest because
20 Mr Irving knows too.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know. I think this is perhaps not a useful
22 exercise.
23 MR IRVING: It is wording that he used there in the expert
24 report. It is adding a flavour here as though I was
25 dragged kicking and screaming into the courtroom and taken
26 under armed guard back to my house —-
. P-45
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, can we just short circuit this? Can I
2 just see whether we cannot short circuit? You were
3 compelled by the process of what is now called disclosure
4 to hand over a whole lot of what you very understandably
5 regard as private documents because they are your own
6 diaries.
7 MR IRVING: That is not quite so, my Lord.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have the passage here: “Irving has been obliged to
9 disclose an enormous mass of material in addition to the
10 list of documents he initially agreed to supply”.
11 I understood that you were indeed obliged to hand over
12 your private diaries to defence by court order.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you understand that I was —-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that not the case?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: — obliged to hand over my entire diaries?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is my understanding, yes, because they were deemed to
17 be relevant to the case.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Was it not the case, in fact, that originally the
19 Defence asked to see any diary references to, I believe,
20 half a dozen or a dozen people in my entire diaries?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot really answer that. I have not been privy to
22 every move that the defence has made, but I am aware of
23 the fact that the Master of the Queen’s Bench did order
24 you to hand over all the diaries because they were deemed
25 to be relevant to the case.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you attach any criticism to Mr Irving for
. P-46
1 his reluctance to hand over his entire diaries?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My Lord, I think it is quite understandable.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So do I. Are we gaining anything by this?
4 MR IRVING: My lord, there was no reluctance to hand over the
5 diaries at all; quite the contrary. Will you accept,
6 witness, that, in fact, when I was asked to provide the
7 diary references to these dozen people, which would have
8 involved me in an inordinate amount of labour, looking
9 through 49 volumes of diaries for 10 names, will you
10 accept that I volunteered to provide the entire diaries to
11 the defence whereupon Mr Anthony Julius said yes?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you can show me the documents in which you did so.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to stop this because I do not
14 think this is helping me at all. I do not think any
15 criticism attaches to you in relation to the diaries and,
16 even if it did, it really would not bear on the issues we
17 have to decide.
18 MR IRVING: I am sorry I am being so obtuse, my Lord, but I am
19 reaching a point which I will now bring forward by one or
20 two sentences, if I may?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do.
22 MR IRVING: (To the witness): You have had at your disposal,
23 have you not, witness, therefore, either jointly or
24 severally as a defence team, something like 20 or 30
25 million words of my private diaries which I made no
26 attempt to conceal, is that so?
. P-47
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which were disclosed by a court order, that is right, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that the court order concerned only the
3 limitations on whom these diaries could be shown to apart
4 from yourselves, and that they should be destroyed after
5 this case was over? In other words, a court order was
6 requested by myself to protect the privacy of those
7 documents?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I understood that the Defence went to court in order to
9 obtain access to the documents. There may have been an
10 additional — I think there was an additional court order
11 which restricted access yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have had 20 or 30 million words of my private diaries,
13 also complete transcripts of my telephone conversations
14 where they were recorded on tape and transcribed.
15 You have also had transcripts of enumerable speeches and
16 public lectures that I delivered. Out of this enormous
17 documentation, you and the entire defence team have picked
18 one or two sentences which you then displayed for the
19 delectation of the entire world, have you not?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I think it is more than one or two. I think I made
21 a distinction between the diaries which, as I said, were
22 not really very useful for my report because my report is
23 mainly concerned with your published work as an historian
24 and, clearly, your private diaries are concerned with many
25 other things. So you will have noticed as you look
26 through my report that I do not really say very much about
. P-48
1 them and I cite them in just a handful of cases and they
2 are really not very central. What you have on the
3 published record, in terms of speeches and writings, is a
4 very different matter. And in 740 —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that diaries go to the state of mind more
6 than speeches, private diaries?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In the 740 pages of my report, I do cite all of these
8 other things extremely extensively. I think it is more
9 one or two sentences. It is more like several hundred,
10 including some very lengthy extracts.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are at present dealing just with the diaries. We will
12 deal with the other matters bit by bit. But will you
13 accept that if you had 20 or 30 million words of diaries
14 in front of you — I have to confess, I have not counted
15 them; I have just done a back of an envelope calculation
16 as to how many words are involved — but you have had all
17 these diaries which go very clearly to my state of mind,
18 my private state of mind, and you have found at the end of
19 this enormous mountainous task, one ditty?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not my report.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: To prove that I am racist?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, that is not quoted in my report.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am afraid I have to put to you this question
24 because you have had access to these and, unfortunately,
25 the person who put that in his report is not presenting
26 himself for cross-examination.
. P-49
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But, Mr Irving, my Lord, I hope I can say that I really do
2 not feel I should answer or can answer questions on
3 other —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a question that you can be asked
5 which you would have to answer and I think — may I ask
6 it? No, you do not have to answer for other people’s
7 thoughts, but I think the question is this — Mr Irving,
8 tell me if I am wrong — the use that is made of the ditty
9 is unrepresentative of the diaries in their totality. Is
10 that really what you are asking?
11 MR IRVING: That is precisely the point I was going to make, my
12 Lord.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a question you may or may not be able
14 to answer, but ask the question.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. One thing I want to say is that your diaries,
16 Mr Irving, are not introspective diaries. There are many,
17 many different kinds of diaries but you do not fill them
18 with agonising over your own state of mind, so that it is
19 often rather difficult. They are not primarily sources
20 for your state of mind. Indeed, that is not what I in
21 particular used them for. I cannot answer for witnesses
22 and what they will have used your diaries for. I used
23 them principally for identifying, such as I could,
24 contacts that you had had with Holocaust deniers. That
25 was my main purpose of looking through them.
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: We are going to come to that later.
. P-50
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But for other things, for views that you express and so
2 on, I had all your published work, and that surely is
3 enough.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come to that in a minute.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is a mass of more work there.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you at this point, if, for example, you had come
7 across in the diaries sentences like “Zundel is a lunatic”
8 or “Faurisson is completely irresponsible or
9 incorrigible”, or something like that, would you have
10 quoted that in your report, or would you have left it out?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you point to me the places in the diaries where you
12 make those—-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a hypothetical question and we will come back to
14 chapter and verse next week.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Maybe the best way of dealing with it is to
16 ask the witness to answer the question that I put, namely
17 do you think that the ditty is selected and that it is an
18 unrepresentative entry in one of the diaries, if you look
19 at the totality of what is in the diaries?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends, my Lord, what you mean by “unrepresentative”.
21 There is not a ditty a day.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I think the word is fairly clear in the context of my
23 question.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is not a ditty a day, it is one ditty, but there are
25 many other remarks of that sort. That is only one ditty.
26 It is not full of these things.
. P-51
1 MR IRVING: You say there are many other remarks of that sort?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you quote any, or did any of the witnesses to your
4 knowledge quote any of these other remarks?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I only know what I have been reading in the court
6 transcripts.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: From the diary. We are just talking at this stage about
8 the diaries.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really cannot answer for other witnesses.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have had held up around the world as a racist who has
11 poisoned the mind of my infant.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not by me, Mr Irving. I have not quoted your offensive
13 racist comments in my report.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or the Defence team of which you are part. You have not
15 quoted my—-?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Offensive comments in my report.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which offensive racist comments have I made then?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You just referred to them.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Apart from the ditty?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You just referred to them yourself.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are referring here to the ditty from the diary.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have been held up by the defence in this case to obloquy
24 around the world. In yesterday’s Guardian there is this
25 photograph of me and the headline which his Lordship can
26 read, “The Bogey Man in the Nursery”, the Guardian
. P-52
1 newspaper again.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is legitimate. I think
3 I have asked the question that can be asked. I am sorry,
4 Mr Rampton, I did not see you were on your feet.
5 MR RAMPTON: I agree, and what is quite wrong is for Mr Irving,
6 once again if I may say so and I will say it bluntly, to
7 distort the record by referring to just one of the
8 goodness knows how many examples that I have
9 cross-examined him about and that have been noticed in the
10 newspapers.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a limit to what you can achieve by
12 this cross-examination. You can put it, and I hope I have
13 put it for you, that really they have picked out — it is
14 cherry picking. That is what you are really accusing the
15 Defence of.
16 MR IRVING: This is the one cherry that they have found in the
17 diaries, my Lord, and I insist on this. If Mr Rampton
18 wishes to produce others from the diaries?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In due course he will. He cannot do it now.
20 MR RAMPTON: I am just going to be going through it all again.
21 I suppose Mr Irving remembers how God was reaching the
22 Final Solution of the black problem with Aids in South
23 Africa.
24 MR IRVING: We will deal with that when the time comes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, please, we must focus on what this
26 witness is here for.
. P-53
1 MR IRVING: You said that it is unrepresentative?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not said it is unrepresentative.
3 MR IRVING: I am sorry, you have used the word
4 “unrepresentative”. I say it was unrepresentative? It
5 was 19 words out of 30 million.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not quoted in my report, Mr Irving. I am here to
7 answer questions on my report. You may ask other
8 witnesses on their reports.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know what percentage of me is therefore racist?
10 .00016 per cent of me is racist.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that a question?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which means that 99.9984 per cent of me is not, according
13 to the diaries.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I do not think this is really
15 helpful. Can we leave it this way? I have got a clip of
16 what the Defendants rely on for their allegation that you
17 are a racist. I will have to make what I can of that.
18 You have asked the question that this witness I think has
19 answered and I personally think that we would do well to
20 move on.
21 MR IRVING: That is right, my Lord. The reason for asking this
22 witness is that he said yes, he read the diaries, as much
23 he needed to. He says this because he has formed the
24 opinion that they are not very introspective.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has given his answer. You may not agree
26 with it but he has given his answer.
. P-54
Section 55.1 to 86.6
1 MR IRVING: Can I now put to the witness the photographs, or is
2 this not the appropriate moment?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know what you are going to put.
4 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is something the witness cannot
5 possibly answer questions upon.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It depends a bit what the question is. Tell
7 me what the question is going to be and then I will decide
8 whether you can ask it.
9 MR IRVING: The question will be: Witness, if you see
10 photographs of members of my staff whom I have
11 employed over the last 20 years, does it strike you that
12 I am a racist?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is your reaction to that?
14 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I say this? This witness is not here
15 to give evidence about whether or not Mr Irving is a
16 racist.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is perfectly open to cross-examination,
18 I think, on his view. He may say, “I cannot answer
19 because I have not seen the documents or seen the
20 evidence”.
21 MR RAMPTON: With respect, I do not think he can. He is here as
22 an expert in history. He is not here as an expert in
23 racism.
24 MR IRVING: He has accused me of anti-semitism and racism in
25 his report.
26 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, it is for your Lordship to decide in
. P-55
1 the end, and opinion evidence about whether or not Mr
2 Irving is a racist is not admissible, with respect.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not so sure about that. The trouble is
4 with this report I am not able to go to the passage that
5 I think may be there. Unless you seek to argue it very
6 strongly, Mr Rampton, I am inclined to accept that it can
7 be put to this witness, I do not know what his answer is
8 going to be, that Mr Irving has over the years employed a
9 number of coloured people, does that have any influence on
10 this witness’s views of his agenda, if there is one?
11 MR RAMPTON: That may be right but, if the witness is entitled
12 to express a view about that, which I doubt because he is
13 an historian, not a sociologist, even if he were a
14 sociologist, I doubt it would help your Lordship, but he
15 is not. But it would involve his being shown everything
16 that I relied on as showing that Mr Irving is a racist,
17 and only in the light of that information can this witness
18 fairly answer a question about the colour of the skin of
19 Mr Irving’s servants.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I suspect that the position actually is with
21 Professor Evans that he knows pretty much what the
22 Defendants’ case on this.
23 MR RAMPTON: I do not know whether he does or not. I certainly
24 have not discussed it with him.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we find out? Professor Evans, have you
26 been reading the transcripts of this case?
. P-56
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen the cross-examination that took place on the
3 issue of racism?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to permit the question, but I do
6 not think we want to spend terribly long on this.
7 MR IRVING: Very well. I am landing you a clip of five pages
8 of photographs. Can you see the date on the earliest
9 one? Is it 1980?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it appear to show a female of Barbadian or Caribbean
12 descent standing at the door of the car, a Rolls Royce,
13 with her mother?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you turn the page, please? Does this show another
16 woman of ethnic origin, of coloured origin?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is hard to tell.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Asian or black?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Possibly.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you just look briefly at all the others and confirm
21 that they are all ethnics working in an office?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are indeed.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Apparently quite content?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept from me that they were all my personal
26 assistants over the years concerned, and that they
. P-57
1 received a proper salary from me?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Have you got documentary proof of that?
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have a look at it, please?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, let us take it as read that these
6 ladies were all employed by Mr Irving. Does that, in your
7 view, Professor Evans, affect the question whether, in his
8 writings and in what he said, Mr Irving has displayed
9 evidence of a racist attitude? That is the question.
10 Then we are going to move on.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. In the end I do not think it does, my Lord.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Now lets move to something else,
13 Mr Irving.
14 MR IRVING: Yes. This is another contentious issue, but we
15 will deal with it very rapidly. Professor Evans, you have
16 heard Mr Rampton talk about the expense of this trial and
17 about how much it is costing per day no doubt?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that the trial is costing a
20 considerable amount each day that it runs?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I imagine it must be. I have no idea how much.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the little bundle of documents I gave you, headed “from
23 Monday” will you see one page from the transcript, about
24 page 8 or thereabouts, headed January 28th 2000?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this transcript appear to show that I have suggested
. P-58
1 to the court that, if they were to send members of the
2 Defence to Krakow to scrape the roof off the alleged gas
3 chamber at Auschwitz and find the holes, I would wind up
4 the case immediately because I could not possibly continue
5 with my complaint?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and the witness says he cannot comment on that.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: The witness says he cannot comment, that is quite right.
8 To your knowledge, has any attempt been made by the
9 Defence to end the case rapidly in this dramatic way?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot really comment on that, I am afraid, any more
11 than the witness you questioned could comment. I am not
12 an expert on Auschwitz, Mr Irving. I am not here to
13 answer questions about Auschwitz. I am here to answer
14 questions on my report. So far, you have hardly asked a
15 single one.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is for me, Professor Evans, thank you
17 very much.
18 MR IRVING: His Lord is aware of these problems that we have
19 with the presentation of the Defence witnesses in this
20 case. Are you familiar with the fact that a number of
21 Defence witnesses in this case are not going to be giving
22 evidence?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think one or two of them are not. I am not quite sure
24 actually.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that the Second Defendant is not
26 going to give evidence, Professor Lipstadt?
. P-59
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Professor Lipstadt, yes, I am aware of that.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that Professor Levin and Professor Eatwell will not be
3 giving evidence?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right. I understand, my Lord, that the
5 Defence are perfectly entitled to do that.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and I make no criticism of them for that. Am I
7 allowed to put to him a page of Professor Eatwell’s
8 report, my Lord?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In principle, yes.
10 MR IRVING: It would be page 74, paragraph 4.6. I can read out
11 the lines concerned?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have a copy, please?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It might be simpler, Professor Evans, if you
14 hear the line that is going to be read to you and see
15 whether you need the context.
16 MR IRVING: My Lord, I think this probably goes to a matter we
17 have dealt with, so I am not going to ask it.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.
19 MR IRVING: I am sorry, yes, he does need it. Page 76 now.
20 I think I ought just to refer in fact to page 74, to what
21 Professor Eatwell about the matter we disposed of.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 74, paragraph 4.6, at line 9 Professor Eatwell, who
24 was one of the experts who was working in tandem with you
25 writes: “Yet Irving is an open advocate of the
26 repatriation of immigrants. The fact that he has employed
. P-60
1 ‘coloured’ people does prove he is liberal”. This is
2 Professor Eatwell’s view.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The point here is not simply that he might perceive the
5 advantages of this practice in terms of defusing charges
6 of racism.” In other words, Professor Eatwell, can I take
7 it, is there suggesting that I deliberately employed this
8 coloured staff in order not to be accused of racism?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think he is suggesting it is a possibility, though
10 I cannot answer for him what he intends there.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: It makes it very difficult for people, does it not, that
12 we are hanged if we do and we are shot if we do not, so to
13 speak?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is really a question.
15 That is a comment that you can make at the end of the
16 case.
17 MR IRVING: It is. The question I would ask Professor Evans,
18 then, is what does it take to prove that one is not racist
19 if one employs coloured people in exactly the same way as
20 one employs whites, one does not prefer them or
21 disadvantage them in any way, one pays them exactly the
22 same amount.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That again, if I may say so, Mr Irving, is
24 really argument and I understand the argument. But I do
25 not think that Professor Evans can do much more on racism
26 than he has done by his previous answers.
. P-61
1 MR IRVING: Will you now go to page 76, Professor Eatwell?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My name is Evans, not Eatwell. I did not write this
3 report.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, will you take it that
5 between us we will try and keep the questioning
6 legitimate?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: OK. It is just that I do find it very difficult to answer
8 questions on other people’s reports which I have not
9 written, which I have not researched, and which were not
10 written in tandem with me but were written independently.
11 MR IRVING: We are appealing here to your common sense as a
12 learned person really, asking for your opinion.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But I am here as an expert, Mr Irving.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us get on.
15 MR IRVING: I am sure that his Lordship would have no objection
16 if you wish to sit actually, Professor.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am happier standing actually. It makes moving around
18 with the documents easier.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 76 at paragraph 4.11 the same kind of argument.
20 Again, it is by Professor Eatwell and not yourself but
21 I am entitled, I think, to put the question to you. “The
22 fact that Irving has on occasion made some criticisms of
23 Hitler does not prove that he is an anti-fascist. There
24 are clear tactical reasons to adopt such a position.” Is
25 this your argument also, Professor Evans?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think he is concerned here with your current political
. P-62
1 position, whereas I am concerned with your historical
2 writings.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So would you argue the fact that, and I shall show
4 you this next week, I have made large numbers of
5 statements in my biographies of various top Nazis, which
6 can in no way be described as proHitler or proNazi, would
7 you agree with Professor Eatwell’s inference or imputation
8 that I have done this in order to defuse criticism and for
9 no other reason?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to show me the statements first before
11 I could comment on them.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is, I suppose, in a way a legitimate
13 answer, but can I just persuade you that it can be
14 answered generally in this way? It is right, if you read
15 Hitler’s War, that there are critical statements made
16 about Hitler, quite a number of them, and the question is
17 simply this, and perhaps you would be good enough to try
18 and answer it. Have you seen evidence that those are
19 inserted into Hitler’s War for what you might call
20 tactical reasons, in other words for Mr Irving to be able
21 to draw attention to them and use them in disproof of any
22 allegation that he is a Hitler partisan?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is very speculative, I think. What I do do in my
24 report is to go through some of the critical points that
25 Mr Irving makes, and they do not, in my view, detract from
26 the fact that he is in general someone who admires Hitler,
. P-63
1 put it like that. I would not really want to speculate on
2 why they are being put in for political, what political
3 reasons they might be put in for, which is really what
4 Professor Eatwell is talking about. I think he is talking
5 about something slightly different. My concern is with
6 Mr Irving’s attitude toward Hitler in his historical
7 writings. Of course, there are criticisms of Hitler
8 there, I perfectly accept that.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is, if I may say so, a perfectly
10 complete and fair answer.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not really a concern of mine to show why they have
12 been put there.
13 MR IRVING: You would have preferred the criticisms to be
14 stated more loudly perhaps, or more criticisms and fewer
15 bits of admiration, as you call it?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not presume to dictate to you what you write in
17 your books, Mr Irving.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Oh? But this is precisely what you have done in your
19 expert report, is it not? You have said “I disagree
20 entirely with his standpoint”. You do not like where
21 I put my pointer on the scale, so to speak, is that
22 correct?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My criticisms are concerned with your historical method.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware that the Second Defendant said that my
25 admiration of Hitler went so far, by imputation, by
26 inference, that I had a portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging
. P-64
1 on my wall in my study?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do in fact cite I think in my report a book by Robert
3 Harris called “Serving Hitler” where I think he mentions
4 something like that, if I can find the place where it is.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I can save you time perhaps by showing you the only
6 portrait of Hitler which is in my possession. Can I show
7 you this and you can see it from there?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 212, I think.
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, can your Lordship also see it? It is a
10 post card on which Adolf Hitler sketched his own likeness
11 and which was given to me by his private secretary and so
12 it has a certain intrinsic value. Would you accept that
13 this is what Robert Harris is probably referring to?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It may well be, I do not know. Let me quote from Robert
15 Harris: “Looking down upon him (that is you) as he worked
16 from the wall above his desk was a self-portrait of
17 Hitler”.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is being put is that the self-portrait
19 that he was writing about was the post card.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That may well be. I do not know. You would have to ask
21 Mr Harris about that, but his work seems to be an accurate
22 work, as far as I am concerned. I do not recall Mr Irving
23 raising objections to that sentence in it.
24 MR IRVING: But you accept that to describe that as being a
25 portrait of Adolf Hitler hanging on my wall gives the
26 wrong impression, does it not? Would that be right?
. P-65
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If it was hanging on your wall, it gives the right
2 impression.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: If it was not hanging on the wall, if it was occasionally
4 shown to visitors as something of a trophy, like Robert
5 Harris, who is a good friend, would that be right?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, if you are saying that it was not looking down upon
7 him as he worked from the wall above his desk, then
8 I suppose you would be right.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Given your expert evidence, as you have, in your report,
10 and having read the expert evidence of Professor Eatwell
11 and Professor Levin, you are quite content to level at me
12 also the charge of anti-Semitism, is that right?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not right. I do not describe you as an
14 anti-Semitic, unless you can show me a passage in my
15 report where I do.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you consider me to be an anti-semite from all that you
17 know, from the books that I have written and that you have
18 read, or statements that I have made?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not want to speculate about your state of mind.
20 However, I do cite numerous statements of yours which
21 I regard as anti-semitic.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you categorize these statements in some way, or would
23 you prefer, without being specific — I mean, are these
24 just statements critical of the Jewish people, or specific
25 Jews like Simon Wiesenthal or particular Jews, or is there
26 a general animosity that you detect in me towards the
. P-66
1 Jewish? How would you define “anti-Semitism”? I think
2 that is the question I am going to ask first. How would
3 you define “anti-Semitism” for the purposes of this trial?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I am not an expert in that area, but anti-Semitism
5 can be defined very simply. There are numerous different
6 ways you can define anti-Semitism. There are different
7 levels and degrees of anti-semitism.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: You just called me anti-semitic, so you must know what you
9 meant.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are different levels and degrees of anti-Semitism
11 and so on. It does seem to me that in your writings, and
12 I quote numbers of them in my report, you do blame the
13 Jews for the Holocaust, you try to pin responsibility for
14 their misfortunes in the Third Reich on themselves. You
15 use language in describing Jews in the present day that
16 I regard as anti-Semitic.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All of those things. Anti-Semitism obviously at its most
19 basic is hostility to hatred of and contempt for Jews, but
20 it is also a political ideology, which involves a belief
21 in a conspiracy, that Jews are conspiratorial in some way,
22 that they are conspiring to undermine whatever it might
23 be.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: A kind of common endeavour? How do you define conspiracy
25 in that respect?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: A secret combination or behind the scenes.
. P-67
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And none of these allegations should ever be levelled at
2 any people, right? True or false? One should never say
3 these things? Is that what are you saying?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not saying that should never be said, true or
5 false, but it should not be said if it is false.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: If it is true, then it cannot be called anti-Semitism, it
7 would just be called foolishness, perhaps, to make the
8 allegations?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well I have to say that I believe that belief in the world
10 of Jewish conspiracy to do whatever it might be, whether
11 it is to suppress the works of David Irving or undermine
12 Germany in the 1930s, is a fantastic belief that has no
13 grounds of reality.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are we talking here in the hypothetical or have you some
15 reason for suggesting that I believe there is a world
16 Jewish conspiracy to undermine my writings, Professor?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It seems to me from what you have said in your opening
18 statement that you do believe there is some kind of
19 conspiracy, but leaving that aside, I come back to the
20 fact in my report I do quote a number of instances of
21 views, interpretations and language which I regard as
22 anti-Semitic in your writings and particularly your
23 speeches.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are the Jews, either as a people or their elected or
25 unelected leaders, in some way immune from criticism? Is
26 there to be no criticism for whatever reason?
. P-68
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Certainly not. That is not the case at all.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: If one criticises either the Jewish people or the leaders
3 for specific matters, is that ipso facto anti-Semitism?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, certainly not.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So there are circumstances in which, wisely or otherwise,
6 one would be entitled to criticise a body of Jews for a
7 particular action without it necessarily being
8 anti-Semitism.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, individual Jews certainly, or groups. I think it
10 becomes more problematical when you start defining Jews as
11 a race or a world community.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: I can never understand the difference between calling them
13 a religion or a race and I do not want to get into that
14 region. I have never made any distinction. If, for
15 example, one was to point to the fact that most of the
16 leadership of the Hungarian government at the time of the
17 anti-government uprising in 1956 was Jewish, would that be
18 an anti-Semitic remark?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not an expert on the Hungarian uprising.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: But, if it was so, if they were perceived to be Jewish,
21 put it that way, by the public, would it be anti-Jewish to
22 point to this element?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have a number of hypotheticals there. You would have
24 to show first of all that they were perceived to be that
25 way by the public, which is rather difficult.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us move on to the NKVD if it was stated that a large
. P-69
1 proportion, a disproportionate number of the leading
2 officers of the NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police, were
3 Jewish would that be an anti-semitic remark to point that
4 out?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Again, I am not an expert on the NKVD.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if? We are looking at the word “if”.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is very hypothetical. You would have to show concrete
8 sound evidence that (a) they were Jewish and (b) that they
9 were acting in some kind of conspiracy or action because
10 they were Jewish.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think I am going to intervene
12 because I think we are making very, very slow progress.
13 Professor Evans certainly deals with anti-Semitism and you
14 can direct questions to him as to whether there is any
15 justification for a charge against you of anti-Semitism.
16 But I think discussing whether it is anti-semitic to say
17 that officers in the NKVD are Jewish is really not helping
18 me at all.
19 MR IRVING: If he is going to describe somebody as being
20 anti-semitic, I wanted to know what criteria he set.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We know what criteria the Defendants set and
22 I think one can assume that that is the target at which
23 they are aiming, if I can put it that way.
24 MR IRVING: To my mind, to be an anti-Semitic, you have to be
25 mindlessly anti-Jewish.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is something we will probably have to
. P-70
1 debate at the end of the case, but I do not think now is
2 the time to debate it with Professor Evans.
3 MR IRVING: Having read all the documents that have been placed
4 at your disposal, this I am sure I can ask you —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes you can.
6 MR IRVING: My Lord, with respect, you do not know what I am
7 about to ask him.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do. Go on, ask him.
9 MR IRVING: Are you aware of the fact that a number of Jewish
10 bodies and organizations over the last 20 years have
11 attempted prevent me from publishing books, delivering
12 speeches, attending lectures and functions at universities
13 and the like?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am aware that you allege this, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Having read the documents, having read the letters that
16 are in discovery, having read the papers that I have
17 obtained by various legal proceedings belonging to a
18 certain British body and their equivalent bodies in the
19 United States and Canada?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My report is concerned with your work as an historian.
21 What I should say is that there is an enormous amount of
22 material that is at the disposable of the Defence in this
23 case. I have not read it all. I have read the material
24 which is relevant to my particular report which is
25 concerned with your work as an historian. I have not read
26 systematically through the mass of material which is
. P-71
1 relevant to the political aspects of the case, and other
2 matters such as that.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, this question now goes to the first Defendant and
4 I am going to ask the witness, do you teach about fascism
5 to your students?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with this kind of book, Fascism For
8 Beginners?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know that series, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it a commendable series?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not very, I have to say, no.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I put to you, if I may, you have it already in the
13 little bundle, if you turn to the 9th page of the little
14 bundle will you find the front page of that book in
15 there.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Fascism for Beginners written by Stuart Hood and Litzer
18 Janz, who is the artist I believe. Would you turn to the
19 next page and tell me who distributes this book in the
20 United Kingdom, Canada, Europe and Asia?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Penguin group.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Penguin Group does. Is that the first Defendant in
23 this case Penguin Books Limited?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I believe so, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you turn to page 11, The Spread of Neo Fascism? Is
26 this a chapter on the spread of fascism through Britain?
. P-72
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am prepared to accept your statement that it is, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: It talks about how the these various parties, including a
3 party called the Austrian Freedom Party, which obviously
4 has no hope of ever coming to power —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, what possible relevance has this
6 got to this case?
7 MR IRVING: If you will turn to page 12, my Lord, the relevance
8 becomes plain. Did Hitler really exist, and there is a
9 certain gentleman putting on Swastika eye glasses there.
10 Do you have that?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you see anybody in the courtroom who is like or
13 resembles the person who is putting on the Swastika eye
14 glasses?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not a very good likeness, I have to say.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he labelled as David Irving?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, he is labelled as David Irving.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he saying, “This myth of the mass murder of Jews in the
19 death factories of Auschwitz which in fact never took
20 place”?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, he is.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: And does it half way down the page say: “British historian
23 David Irving who describes himself as a mild fascist”?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am still puzzled as to what the
26 relevance of this is. I can see that you object to it.
. P-73
1 What do you say it goes to?
2 MR IRVING: The first Defendants in this case have a record of
3 publishing books attacking me, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may put it this way, so what? The way
5 in which you can rely on it, can I try to help you, is
6 that you can say that you are particularly distressed at
7 the libel of which you are complaining in this action by
8 the fact that Penguin Books keep having a go at you, and
9 ridiculing you by that sort of portrayal, but that is a
10 matter for your evidence. That is not a matter for
11 cross-examination of Professor Evans.
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, how else can I put this kind of document
13 before the court?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You could have done it, I am not being
15 critical of you, and you can certainly do it as far as
16 I am concerned later on if you want to, you can simply
17 say, “And here is a book which I read and it caused me
18 additional distress because this is a publishing house
19 that seems to have it in for me”.
20 MR RAMPTON: I also think, if I may say so, that we need to be
21 notified. I am not saying there is any objection to this
22 now but, normally speaking, if one tenders evidence to the
23 court in modern times in support of one’s case, one is
24 obliged to tell the other side first.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point as well. Shall we leave
26 it then so far as Professor Evans is concerned and, if you
. P-74
1 want to give evidence about it later on then you can and
2 Mr Rampton has now been forewarned, and he can
3 cross-examine.
4 MR IRVING: This precise book is referred to in my claim and
5 also in my reply to their defence, and it has been in my
6 discovery.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not know that.
8 MR RAMPTON: I did not either.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I really do not think Professor
10 Evans — I am sympathetic, Mr Irving, and I am perhaps
11 bending the rules in your favour a little bit, to letting
12 you put some of the points made against you in some of the
13 experts’ reports when those experts are not going to be
14 called to give evidence, but there is not unlimited
15 latitude and I think this goes over the boundary, if I may
16 say so.
17 MR IRVING: But, with respect, my Lord, I fail to see how I
18 could put it in otherwise because I cannot do it in my
19 closing speech, obviously.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you can, I have just told you, you can
21 give evidence about it. This is not something that is
22 relevant in cross-examination at all. I am trying to
23 explain to you. It is something that you can adduce in
24 your own evidence as being evidence going to the issue of
25 damage. That is the way to deal with it, not in
26 cross-examining any witness, and certainly not Professor
. P-75
1 Evans.
2 MR IRVING: When you were engaged to write this expert report,
3 were you shown at any time any law report that had been
4 produced by Penguin books in this country, any libel
5 reading report on the book, on the book that is complained
6 of?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: When your books are published in the United Kingdom, your
9 own books, are they subjected to a legal reading to see if
10 they libel anyone?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not that I have ever been aware of.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, to your knowledge, therefore, as far as you know,
13 there was no report prepared by any firm of lawyers,
14 reputable lawyers, on the book before it was published?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All I can say is that I did not see any such report.
16 I cannot answer as to whether there was one or not.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not going to be allowed to ask him questions about
18 intermarriage then, am I?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, I am not quite sure I understand what
20 the intended question is.
21 MR IRVING: Well, following through the question of whether
22 Jews would be expected to live by a different set of rules
23 than those that they criticise? If I am criticised here
24 for the racist ditty once again, as I have been, am
25 I entitled in some way to introduce evidence about what
26 the Second Defendant has written herself on precisely this
. P-76
1 matter?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: About intermarriage?
3 MR IRVING: About intermarriage, and if so, can I do it now?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is quite difficult to answer that question
5 without knowing what it is you are going to produce. Have
6 you got a copy of it because, perhaps if you would be good
7 enough to hand it in and then I can perhaps look at it
8 over the adjournment and you can come back to it?
9 MR IRVING: There were several articles which the Second
10 Defendant has written in this respect. I will yellow
11 highlight the only part that your Lordship should read.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but do you mind coming back to it later
13 when I have had a chance to look at it?
14 MR IRVING: Yes. I would like to put to you Professor Levin’s
15 report now which is at page 125.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry. Mine only has 123 pages.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Levin or Eatwell?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Levin.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So does mine.
20 MR IRVING: Oh, dear! This is covering the diary entries for
21 1995. It is paragraph 11.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: OK. I think I can find it.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am just going to take one sample paragraph?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is around 108, I think.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes paragraph 11.
26 MR IRVING: Beginning with “Irving was also”.
. P-77
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, no.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Covering the diary entries for 1995.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am afraid I cannot find it.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I cannot.
5 MR RAMPTON: We are looking for it in our bundle.
6 MR IRVING: This question goes purely to the accuracy of
7 Professor Levin’s style of extracting the diaries.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, right.
9 MR RAMPTON: There is a paragraph 11 on page 107, my Lord.
10 MR IRVING: Beginning “Irving was also”?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think it does.
12 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not that.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have it here. It is at page 102, paragraph 11:
14 “Irving was also forced to confront various incidents”,
15 is that it?
16 MR IRVING: Yes.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Key West landlady evicted him from her hotel, etc.,
18 etc.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Would you carry on down to the next item, please?
20 “Irving’s April 13th diary entry recounts his displeasure
21 at having his name mentioned ‘in the most disparaging
22 terms in half a dozen places’ along with supposed errors
23 in an official Canadian government report.”
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with that so-called official Canadian
26 government report?
. P-78
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am going to ask that bundle E should be put to you.
3 There is a bundle called “Global”. Do we have a copy?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I know the one.
5 MR IRVING: Let us see if we can find. It is page 116 of that
6 bundle.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In E, has the witness got E?
8 MR IRVING: It is a very long document beginning at page 116,
9 headed with the words: “Confidential. David Irving,
10 biographical information”. You see at page 116? I am
11 just taking this paragraph as one sample in advance, a
12 foretaste, of the problems with the Levin report. So that
13 is a document, a pretty lengthy document, headed with the
14 words “Confidential. David Irving, biographical
15 information”?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that document, as we know from an affidavit by
18 Mr Michael Wein of the Board of Deputies in this country,
19 which his Lordship probably finds quicker than I do, was
20 put, in fact, it was furnished to the Canadian government
21 by this British body, would you accept that? It was
22 furnished to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Canada when
23 they requested dirt on me to prevent me entering Canada?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Assume it.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will assume it. I mean, I do find it very difficult to
26 answer questions on other people’s reports. The reason
. P-79
1 why there is a number of different expert witnesses for
2 the Defence in this case is to assist the court in a
3 number of different areas because no one person is
4 competent to deal with them all.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Did you recommend Professor Levin?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say, I am not an expert on the Canadian
7 government and —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, can I explain to you
9 (because you may not know this) the difficulty? Mr Irving
10 is representing himself. I am, therefore, giving him what
11 I hope is appropriate but quite a good degree of
12 latitude. He is accused of various things, like racism
13 and anti-Semitism. He has been cross-examined vigorously
14 on that topic. The Defendants had experts who produced
15 great long reports, as you know, dealing with those topics
16 and the Defendants have decided not to call them.
17 Mr Irving is, therefore, in the position of
18 being the subject of the criticisms that they make of him,
19 albeit no longer part of the Defendants’ formal case, and
20 he wishes to put one or two points to you as being
21 somebody who is there to be shot at, as it were. I have
22 decided that it is proper that he should do so.
23 I think he may be spending rather long on it
24 than I had hoped, but I am going to let him do that. So,
25 for the purposes of this part of the cross-examination,
26 will you assume that the Canadians got hold of this
. P-80
1 document in the way he suggests?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes, my Lord.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I am sympathetic with your concern.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I hope you will accept that I do find it very difficult.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I understand it, but you understand, I hope, why —-
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sure, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — I am not going to stop these questions?
8 MR RAMPTON: I should add perhaps, my Lord, it is not quite
9 true that we are not calling any such people. We are
10 calling Professor Funke from Berlin.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot remember now what he deals with.
12 MR RAMPTON: He deals with exactly for Germany with what
13 Eatwell deals with for this country and Levin for the
14 United States.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But is he going to say when he comes, “Oh,
16 well, I cannot deal with this sort of Canadian stuff
17 because I am dealing with Germany”.
18 MR RAMPTON: That, I do not know — very likely.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the problem.
20 MR RAMPTON: I am not in any sense trying to argue with what
21 your Lordship just said. I just thought it necessary to
22 add the gloss that, so far as anything to do with Germany
23 is concerned, there will be a witness.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I had actually forgotten that, but
25 thank you very much. But let us take this relatively
26 briefly, but I am not stopping you.
. P-81
1 MR IRVING: Professor, is it correct that you recommended
2 Professor Levin for this particular task?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You did not?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with Professor Levin at all?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you read this paragraph, you will see that it says, he
9 has extracted from my diaries which had been in front of
10 him exactly as they had been in front of you, and in
11 paragraph he says: “Irving’s April 13th 1995 diary entry
12 recounts his displeasure of having his name mentioned ‘in
13 the most disparaging terms in half a dozen places’ along
14 with supposed errors in an official Canadian government
15 report”?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It says that, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: He says that?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He does.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it not have been correct for him to point out that,
20 in fact, what I am objecting to is the fact that this is a
21 British document that has been planted in Canadian
22 government files by this body in England for whatever
23 purpose?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really cannot answer that, Mr Irving.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: He then continues to say: “On June 11th while in Key
26 West, Irving states in his diaries that a fine for
. P-82
1 thousands of francs by a French court for his public
2 statements was going to ‘various greedy Jewish bodies'”?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He says that.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: He says that. In other words, I did write those words in
5 my diaries?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He says that you did, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: And if I were to tell that you the fine of 1,000 French
8 francs, or whatever it was, thousands of French francs,
9 was imposed on me for having an interview in my home in
10 London with a French journalist in which I made a true
11 statement, would that justify some kind of outburst in my
12 diaries, do you think?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, there again you would have to show me the documents,
14 you would have to show me the diary. I find it very
15 difficult to comment on this single sentence in the report
16 that I did not write and that I am not very familiar with.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: But he appears to have accurately quoted that I wrote in
18 the diaries a reference to various greedy Jewish bodies,
19 and he is obviously pointing to that as possibly an
20 example of Anti-Semitism?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a bit difficult, I think, for Professor
22 Evans to deal with that unless he has a word perfect
23 memory of what you wrote in your diaries.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which I do not. I do not have all your 30 million words in
25 my head.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think your best way of dealing with this,
. P-83
1 Mr Irving, is (if you want to) to deal with it as a matter
2 of submission. You have all the documents.
3 MR IRVING: Can I deal with one more point, and then I will
4 move away?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.
6 MR IRVING: The final passage concerns the July 31 1995 diary
7 recounting a letter that I sent to the Sunday Times — I
8 am sorry, to a major Sunday newspaper, is that correct?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the newspaper concerned had stated that “Irving quoted
11 by Griffin'”, do you know a book by Griffin on faschism?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: “‘… Irving writes in the Mein Kampf idiom: “I combat
14 Jewry not as a religion but as a race … a solution to
15 the Jewish problem must come”.'”?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It looks here as if it is Griffin who writes in the Mein
17 Kampf idiom. I presume that is a grammatical mistake.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but, in fact, the actual article said that?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not the other, the other Griffin.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that this is an extremely loaded thing for
21 me allegedly to have said, “I combat Jewry not as a
22 religion but as a race … a solution to the Jewish
23 problem must come”, but if I had written that, it would be
24 perverse and unforgivable and I would deserve whatever
25 came to me?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can I just read you the next two sentences? “In his
. P-84
1 letter Irving denied ever making that statement”.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “The Hitler chronicler remarkably stated, ‘I have never
4 read Mein Kampf”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: But, of course, I am called a denier, am I not, and my
6 denials are not worth very much? That is what the whole
7 of this case is about.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where in this paragraph does he say that?
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: The word “denial” figures very strongly in this case.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I get out of this is that on this
11 particular point Professor Levin really does not make much
12 of a case.
13 MR IRVING: I am taking one paragraph here, my Lord —-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is quoting a statement that he attributes
15 to you —-
16 MR IRVING: — in which I am showing that sentence after
17 sentence after sentence —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow the point.
19 MR IRVING: And the particular point I want to make on that, my
20 Lord, as your Lordship is probably familiar, the major
21 Sunday newspaper had to pay me a six figure sum in damages
22 because of that particular allegation. There is no
23 reference whatsoever to that in the —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I do not think much of that — I mean,
25 the point that Professor Levin makes there, I do not think
26 much of it.
. P-85
1 MR IRVING: But the reason I am saying that, of course, is to
2 give your Lordship a foretaste of what I would have said,
3 had I been able to sink my teeth into Professor Levin when
4 the time came.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that, but I think perhaps the best
6 time to do that is later on, not now.
Section 86.7 to 110.4
7 MR IRVING: You worked for many years in Germany, is that
8 correct, Professor? Five years in Germany?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On and off, yes, over the years. I have been going to
10 Germany for shorter and extended periods since 1970.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you have worked a great deal in the German archives?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: For your book on capital punishment?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And other books, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you have worked a great deal in the Nazi archives, I
16 mean the records of the Nazi period, the Third Reich?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Less so, but I have done work mainly in the Ministry of
18 Justice files.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Ministry of Justice files?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And in regional archives.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who was the Minister of Justice — Guttner?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Guttner until 1941, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Until he died and then Schlegelberger took over?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Acting Minister, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Took over as acting Minister. Are you familiar at all,
26 have you researched at all, on the files of the SS? The
. P-86
1 Himmler files, Schiffbootverlastung of Himmler, and so on?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I am familiar with the Dienst Tagebuch, I have to say
3 mainly for the purposes of this case.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You had to read it, in other words, had to look into it?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I had to look at it, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would recognize the Himmler documents if you saw them
7 either in photocopy or in the original, would you? You
8 would know what their layout was? This is what I am
9 getting at. We have heard a certain amount of discussion
10 in court about what — do they all have a kind of standard
11 layout and kind of address on the right and —-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That I could not say.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Could not say. So your expertise then does not
14 really extend into document analysis, shall I say, looking
15 at the document and saying to yourself, how high up is
16 this document, or who is it written by, or is it authentic
17 even?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think I have a general expertise in reading documents,
19 yes, but I am not a specialist in the SS or its archive.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would I be right in saying that very rarely would one
21 expect to come across a forged document either in the
22 Bundesarchiv or in the British archives? Have you ever
23 come across an instance where a document has had
24 questionable integrity?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Those are two rather different things. I think that with
26 a forged document you need to be very clear about why it
. P-87
1 is forged, who has forged it, and why, what the motives
2 might have been and what kind of opportunity they had.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: My question was, have you ever come across a forged
4 document in one of the western archives, in the United
5 States or in Britain or in Germany?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Would you like to tell me what you mean by a “forged
7 document”.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, a document that was clearly not written during the
9 war years and has been inserted there for some ulterior
10 purpose?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not what it purports to be?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not what it purports to be.
13 MR IRVING: Yes.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not to my recollection, no.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have to say I have not either. Would you have the same
16 expectations of Eastern European archives?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a very difficult question to answer. I have
18 worked in East German archives, but one has to — I mean,
19 both in the Communist Socialist Unity Party archives and
20 in the archives of East German Communist Ministries, but
21 also, of course, as you know, the major German State
22 archive, the Reich archive, was in East Germany for many
23 years, and my impression of that and other State archives
24 is that they were somewhat neglected. So I do not — and
25 that they were run by professional archivists. It is a
26 rather different matter working in Party archives or as I
. P-88
1 did on one occasion in the East —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you ever work in the Moscow archives?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not worked in the Moscow archives.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever worked in any other Eastern European
5 archives?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, just in East German archives.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: From your knowledge as an historian, do you know of
8 instances where documents have been forged by Eastern
9 European archives for Cold War purposes in order to sink a
10 West German Minister or something like that?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not from my direct knowledge of archival material, no.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar at all, have you read the newspapers
13 about the Demjanjuk case, Ivan Demjanjuk?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I followed it as any other citizen, newspaper reader, did,
15 yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it be correct to say that at one stage he was
17 incriminated on the basis of an identity card which later
18 turned out to have been forged?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not an expert in this area, Mr Irving. I mean,
20 I will accept for the purposes of argument that that was
21 so.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you suggested anywhere in your report that I have
23 gained improper advantages because of my Nazi or neo-Nazi
24 views from members of Hitler staff in obtaining records or
25 papers that they would not have made available to other…
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I — I certainly did not use the word
. P-89
1 “improper”.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, that I had an edge on the others?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I may well have done so, yes, because that seems to me
4 that in some way that you were more acceptable to the
5 former members’ widows and so on of Hitler’s entourage
6 than other historians were.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have any basis for that, apart from just envy?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I am envious of you, Mr Irving.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: But, I mean, the fact that I got hold of records that the
10 historical establishment did not get must have aroused a
11 certain amount of envy and acrimony?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in me.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not in you. You referred to it in this oblique way in
14 your expert report — I cannot put my finger on the actual
15 passage — you admitted or you stated that, yes, you had
16 implied that I had benefited from my aura?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am just trying to find the passages where I deal with
18 this.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps I can continue just by asking in general terms.
20 You have read a lot transcripts of my interviews with
21 Hitler’s staff, the Adjutants, we call them, is that
22 right?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you may have heard tape recordings of some of them,
25 because the tape recordings have all survived, 30 years
26 ago?
. P-90
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have read the transcripts. I have not heard the tape
2 recordings.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you see any material in those transcripts to support
4 the belief that I had benefited in some way from my aura
5 as a neo-Nazi or as a fascist or whatever I am called?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I actually say is —-
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On page 604, paragraph 8, as you explain, “‘I have
9 interviewed scores of the principal German officers and
10 personnel involved, including many of Hitler’s close staff
11 who have hitherto refused to talk to anybody, but who felt
12 able to talk at length to me because of the nature of my
13 previous books “The Destruction of Dresden” etc.’.”
14 MR IRVING: Yes.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And I quote the Journal of Historical Review again, saying
16 that “‘numerous survivors of the Second World War era who
17 are often mistrustful (often with good reason) of
18 establishment historians’ are willing to talk to you”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And another quote here from you: “‘Once they’d won your
21 confidence and they knew you weren’t going to report them
22 to the state prosecutor, they trusted you. And they
23 thought, well, now at last they were doing their
24 chief’s'”, that is Hitler, “‘a service’.”
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is you, is it not?
. P-91
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this in any sense improper, do you think?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not use the word “improper”.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not a fact that by using this non-confrontational
4 method of interviewing people you sometimes wheedle more
5 out of them over the years than if one was to go there
6 with all the methods of a Fleet Street journalist,
7 cheating them the moment they had given the information
8 and ridiculing them? That my method in the long term
9 resulted in a much greater benefit for the historical
10 community because I extracted the information, the data
11 from them, is that not a fact, by using my methods?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do not know accept your rather harsh verdict on
13 Fleet Street journalists and you would have to show me
14 some examples of what they had done but —-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us worry about that.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But, that aside —-
17 MR IRVING: The Swabians say zote und zote(?).
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — do not dispute, Mr Irving, that you have obtained a
19 lot of information which other people have not obtained.
20 MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the collections of documents
21 that I donated to the West German government and also to
22 the Institute of History in Munich?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know that you have donated collections of documents,
24 yes, and I am familiar with some parts of them.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that historian around the world have frequently made
26 use of these collections of documents?
. P-92
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They have been used by other historians, indeed, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that many of these documents are of high
3 value?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are of a variable value, but some are valuable, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: The curate’s egg, we used to say?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is a mixed bag — as any collection of documents.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. There are some very high grade private diaries of
8 Hitler’s private staff which nobody else has ever seen
9 before?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and which you have published. I am not disputing any
11 of this.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, people take with the one hand what they
13 like about me, but with the other hand they are quite
14 happy to ridicule me and smear me in public as a racist
15 and Anti-Semite because they do not like the way I write
16 my books?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not really a question.
18 MR IRVING: Have you read the review that Professor Martin
19 Broszat wrote of my book “Hitler’s War” in the quarterly
20 Journal of the Institute of Contemporary History?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I am familiar with it.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a pretty corrosive review in parts, is it not?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar that there were personal reasons why
25 Professor Martin Broszat would want to write corrosively
26 about something I had written?
. P-93
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that, well, not personally, but you claim that
2 there are. I am familiar with your allegation that there
3 are.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: If he married a lady —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, before we go on, I do not know
6 what you are getting at.
7 MR IRVING: I am going to keep it very low profile, my Lord.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What possible relevance has the malice of
9 somebody who has reviewed one of your books got to the
10 present case?
11 MR IRVING: Because the review written by Professor Martin
12 Broszat is very heavily relied on by all the expert
13 witnesses as evidence of my perversity and, for example,
14 that is the origin of the Hitler’s Table Talk distortion.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see the experts might share Professor
16 Broszat’s view of your historiography, but it is the
17 expert’s own opinion that accounts.
18 MR IRVING: You know how one little shout brings down the
19 avalanche?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I make two points there? One is that I have
21 reinvestigated, as it were, reresearched, all the points
22 made by Professor Broszat so that I am not reliant on what
23 he says. The second point is I can direct you to my
24 answer to your 11th question in the first set that you
25 sent on 30th December.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have not read it.
. P-94
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “If Broszat had personal motives for criticising Irving’s
2 work, these may help explain why he did so, but they do
3 not of themselves invalidate the criticisms which have to
4 be dealt with on their own terms”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that Professor Broszat refused
6 to allow me any space to reply in that learned journal?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will take your word for it that that was the case,
8 though is it normal in that particular journal that —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whether it is or it is not, I do not think we
10 are going to stay long with Professor Broszat.
11 MR IRVING: Very well. Are you familiar with a document known
12 as the Leuchter report, or have you heard of it?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read it in any detail or are you familiar
15 with —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have looked through it, yes. I am not an expert on
17 Auschwitz, Mr Irving, but I have looked through it, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that other documents
19 superceded the Leuchter report, both written by
20 revisionists and by anti-revisionists, if I can put it
21 like that? There were subsequent investigations.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you heard of the Rudolf report?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: The report by Germar Rudolf.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have heard of that, yes.
. P-95
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you refer to the Germar Rudolf report in any of your
2 expert paragraphs?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: To be honest, I am not quite sure. Certainly not in any
4 detail. My report is not about Auschwitz.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I could be fairly criticised for having relied entirely
6 on the Leuchter report, does it not take the sting out of
7 a lot of that criticism, in your view, that subsequent
8 reports which were also available to me did the Leuchter
9 job but better, if I can put it like that?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really cannot comment on that, Mr Irving. I thought
11 this had been gone through in Professor van Pelt’s report
12 and in your cross-examination of him. My concern is not
13 with Auschwitz. I am not an expert on these matters.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: The tactical reason I have for putting this to you is that
15 my friends tell me that I have not hammered this into his
16 Lordship’s consciousness enough?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, to leave me out of it in that case if you are — if
18 you are doing the hammering, I will get out of the way in
19 that particular one.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Forgive me. What has not penetrated my —-
21 MR IRVING: I am sure it has now, my Lord, because it is now in
22 the transcript, purely that the Leuchter report was
23 superseded by other reports on which I also relied in
24 continuing to make the statements that I did.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I knew you relied on later reports, yes.
26 That I had understood.
. P-96
1 MR IRVING: There is no harm in repetition, is there?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Within reason, no. Anyway, I just wanted to
3 make sure I knew what you thought I had not understood.
4 MR IRVING: What do you think of Mr Kershaw as an historian on
5 Adolf Hitler, Ian Kershaw, Professor Kershaw?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think he is a good historian.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: A good historian? If I tell you that he declined to
8 testify for us in my case here because his knowledge of
9 German was totally insufficient, would that change your
10 opinion of the books he writes about the leader of the
11 Germans?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to provide me with a copy of the document
13 in which he says that before I could accept that that is
14 what he said.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You quote Robert Harris in the book “Selling Hitler” on
16 paragraph 2.4.8 of your report?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Give me the page number, please.
18 MR IRVING: I do not have the page number in front of me.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We had it just a moment ago, did we not? Was
20 it 700 or 600 and something?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Much earlier, I think, my Lord.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can find it on the transcript.
23 MR IRVING: We have time, my Lord, because I have come to the
24 end of my prepared questions on this topic and it may be
25 your Lordship will not want me to ask questions about
26 bundle E which is what I was proposing to do afterwards.
. P-97
1 MS ROGERS: 212.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 212. Yes. I remember 212. Ask this and
3 then we will consider bundle E.
4 MR IRVING: Paragraph 248. You quote Robert Harris in “Selling
5 Hitler”, “when the forensic tests shortly afterwards
6 revealed the Hitler diaries definitively as fakes, Irving
7 issued a statement accepting the finding but drawing
8 attention to the fact that he had been the first person to
9 unmask them as forged”. Do you remember that passage?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It is not the one we have here.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: 2.4.8?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is much earlier on, I think.
13 MS ROGERS: 39.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 MR IRVING: “Irving issued a statement accepting the forgery
16 finding but drawing attention to the fact that he had been
17 the first person to unmask them as forged. ‘Yes’, said a
18 reporter from The Times” I am quoting from your report,
19 “when this was read out to him, ‘and the last person to
20 declare them authentic’.” Do you remember that passage?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have got that, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it not have been more accurate to write that this
23 was Robert Harris quoting me as saying that rather than me
24 saying that?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is footnoted, Mr Irving. Footnote 26 refers to
26 “Harris, Selling Hitler, page 359”. So it is perfectly
. P-98
1 clear that it is Harris.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it is reported speech?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, it is in Harris’s book. It is quite clear in my
4 book that it is in Harris’s book.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Reverting to standards on anti-Semitism, what do you
6 know about the statements made by leading politicians on
7 the Jews during the war? Were they anti-Semitic in any
8 degree, people like Winston Churchill or Anthony Eadon or
9 Lord Halifax? Are you familiar with any of the things
10 that they said?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not, no.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. I just want to put to you a little clip of extracts
13 that I made from some of their private diaries, and I do
14 not propose to read these out.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you just help me —-
16 MR IRVING: It is headed: “Anti-Semitism in the diaries”.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — as to their relevance?
18 MR IRVING: The relevance? It is arguable, my Lord. I was
19 going to say on a scale of 1 to 10 is Lord Halifax mildly
20 anti-Semitic if these —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but what if he is? I mean, help me about
22 that.
23 MR IRVING: Then the question I was going to say is on the
24 scale of what you know from my private diaries, what
25 number do I reach? 1, 0.5?
26 MR RAMPTON: I mean, the fact that these well-known people are,
. P-99
1 as I can plainly see, having looked at some of this stuff,
2 guilty of the same kind of blatant anti-Semitism as
3 Mr Irving takes us nowhere.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a “so what?” point really?
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is a “so what?” point with a big question
6 mark.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That must be right, must it not, Mr Irving?
8 I mean, the charge is made against you of anti-Semitism.
9 That may or may not be justified. It may be partly
10 justified, I do not know. That is something I have got to
11 decide.
12 MR IRVING: But if I was told that I was only one-tenth as
13 anti-Semetic as somebody as respectable as Anthony Eadon,
14 for example, or as Lord Halifax, then I would be able to
15 sleep more peacefully at night, than when I read in the
16 newspapers that I am the bogey man in the nursery.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am afraid I take the view that we
18 have to decide what anti-Semitism consists of, first of
19 all, and then I have got to look and see what you have
20 said and written and decide whether that constitutes
21 anti-Semitism or is evidence of anti-Semitism.
22 MR IRVING: I tried to get an explanation from the witness
23 as —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not helped by knowing what — I mean,
25 times have changed, apart from anything else.
26 MR IRVING: I wholeheartedly agree, my Lord. Times have
. P-100
1 definitely changed in this respect and they have changed
2 for the better.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must judge you by the standards of perhaps
4 not 2000, but the standards at the times when you made the
5 remarks you did make which is usually in the 80s and 90s.
6 MR IRVING: But we have a problem here. I have tried to
7 extract from the witness a definition of his criteria for
8 the anti-Semitism that he accuses me of.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Perfectly proper.
10 MR IRVING: And we have received only waffle, if I may put it
11 like that.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you can say that later, but do not say
13 it now. It is unhelpful.
14 MR IRVING: And I have tried to ask for what specific instances
15 of anti-Semitism he has found in my private diaries which,
16 surely, are the closest to my state of mind, and we have
17 found five words, I think.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He said it has not really been his pigeon.
19 He is here for other matters. You do not have to accept
20 that answer, but it is his evidence.
21 MR IRVING: But the charge is levelled, my Lord, at me by this
22 witness and by the others and it is a charge that people
23 very happily make. I say that the charge of anti-Semitism
24 is the last resort of the scoundrel, very frequently, and
25 it is one that sticks, rather like being called a
26 Holocaust denier.
. P-101
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I do not seek to dispute that at this
2 stage, but what we are on at the moment, Mr Irving, is
3 whether you are entitled to adduce effectively in
4 evidence, through the cross-examination of Professor
5 Evans, alleged anti-Semitism on the part of Lord Halifax
6 and Winston Churchill, and I think that is wholly
7 impermissible.
8 MR IRVING: Impermissible, very well. Can I at least then
9 adduce evidence that the First Defendant has published
10 books which contain grossly anti-Semitic passages?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not admit — why do you say that is
12 relevant?
13 MR IRVING: Biblical passage.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a sort of pot calling the kettle black.
15 MR IRVING: Casting the mote out of their own eye first and
16 referring it to John Buchan’s ’39 Steps’, for example.
17 I am sure your Lordship is familiar with them. They are
18 the most appalling passages.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are clutching at a bit of a straw there,
20 are you not? When was that published?
21 MR IRVING: Not recently, but John Buchan became Governor
22 General of Canada.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to give you a lot of latitude,
24 Mr Irving. I think I am perhaps beginning to give you too
25 much. I really just do not think you can just start going
26 into alleged anti-Semitism on the part of other people, or
. P-102
1 other companies.
2 MR IRVING: The Defendants in this case have published books
3 which are anti-Semitic in my submission and yet — I will
4 merely —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let me hear Mr Rampton on that because —-
6 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is a kind of insanity. I feel as
7 though I was in one of Lewis Caroll’s book. Mr Irving
8 brought this action in respect of words published by my
9 clients. The only defence is that what is said is true,
10 amongst them that Mr Irving is an anti-Semitic. What can
11 it matter that there may have been some author from the
12 distant past, the 39 Steps, who also, on some occasion,
13 might have made a remark as an anti-Semite?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I wholly agree about John Buchan in the
15 1930s, or whenever it was.
16 MR RAMPTON: Suppose my client has published the works of an
17 anti-Semite yesterday. How could it bear upon the
18 question of whether or not Mr Irving is an anti-Semite,
19 save to the extent that I then stood up and said: “Well
20 that Penguin book is not anti-Semitic”?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right. I am trying to give
22 Mr Irving the benefit of the doubt, but Mr Irving, I
23 cannot let this thing —-
24 MR IRVING: My Lord, we bought a copy of this book published by
25 Penguin Books two days ago at Books Et Cetera.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If your odds are still on John Buchan, then
. P-103
1 that is really absolutely, if I may say so, hopeless as a
2 point, hopeless.
3 MR IRVING: Should political correctness not have required them
4 to at least excise these horrendous passages from that
5 book?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Mr Irving, I am afraid we are going to
7 have to move on. I am against you on this.
8 MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the Holocaust, Professor
9 Evans? Are you familiar with the bibliography on
10 Holocaust Denial which has been prepared by a specialist
11 in this matter, New York City University John Drobniski,
12 I think?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to say not very, no.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware that there is such a bibliography?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a bibliography that is available on the Internet,
17 would you accept that?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: It has gone through several editions?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: And this bibliography — is it called Holocaust Denial
22 Literature — is a bibliography?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is true, yes, to my recollection.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it compiled by John A Drobniski, D-R-O-B-N-I-S-K-I, in
25 conjunction with Carol Goldman and two or three others?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is right, but I have to say I am not very
. P-104
1 familiar with this bibliography.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I tell you, therefore, that my name does not figure in
3 this entire bibliography as having published a Holocaust
4 Denial work, would this surprise you in the view of the
5 expert report that you have written? Is that a proper
6 question, my Lord?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I did not compile the bibliography. I am not
9 answerable for what they think or they do not think.
10 I reached my own conclusions about this in my report.
11 MR IRVING: You accept that he is Professor John Drobniski,
12 Assistant Professor and Reference Librarian at York
13 College in the City University of New York?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you say he is, yes, I accept that.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that his bibliography contains many thousands of
16 entries of books, journals, learned papers and articles?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do not really want to speculate about it, but you
18 have yourself said that the Holocaust has always been a
19 rather peripheral element in what you have written
20 yourself, so in a way, it would not be surprising if
21 somebody wanted to draw up a bibliography of works to
22 which Holocaust Denial was central.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yet I am the one who is pilloried in the book by the
24 Second Defendant and published by the first Defendants in
25 this case, and Yehuda Bauer, as we know from the document
26 which is before the court, specifically requested the
. P-105
1 second Defendant to ensure that I was included because
2 I was particularly dangerous?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is my impression, having read the second
4 Defendant’s book very carefully, that you figure only
5 relatively peripherally in that, too, and it does not
6 devote a great deal of space to you in your work.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think, my Lord, that if we may take the lunch
8 adjournment very shortly, then I will come back this
9 afternoon and we will go as far as your Lordship permits
10 through the bundle of documents which is known to your
11 Lordship as Global.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to consider how much you can go
13 into, because I have not looked through bundle E yet, but
14 I am conscious we have not really made a huge amount of
15 progress this morning so far.
16 MR IRVING: Well, I have been stopped in my tracks dead by the
17 delivery last night of these 200 pages of answers.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If that is so, I am not sure that is a
19 complete explanation, but if that is so, well so be it.
20 What are you proposing to do with the rest of bundle E,
21 that is really the point?
22 MR IRVING: To step through it, picking out key documents to
23 indicate and to ask his opinion as to whether this does
24 not indicate that there has been a concerted endeavour to
25 suppress my rights to publish and to write, to research
26 and to lecture.
. P-106
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: By the one or other of the Defendants?
2 MR IRVING: By one or other of the Defendant and in the light
3 of his own expert knowledge.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry about the latter bit.
5 MR RAMPTON: I really do have a reservation about this. It is
6 not my place to make comments about the latitude that your
7 Lordship has so far given, Mr Irving. I have a place,
8 however, to say something if I see the afternoon wasted
9 away with this witness, who is a professional historian,
10 being asked questions about what hand the Defendant might
11 or might not have had in the international Jewish
12 conspiracy to shut Mr Irving up. That is not something
13 that Professor Evans has written about. So, for all
14 I know, he knows nothing about it. If there is one
15 question: “Do you know anything about it”?, and he is
16 allowed to answer it now and he says, “No”, then that is
17 the end of the matter.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Leave aside whether it is right for Professor
19 Evans to be asked questions about this because that,
20 I agree, is something that we have to tackle, but just
21 supposing for the sake of argument that it is right, that
22 one of the Defendants has been trying, in some way, to
23 sabotage Mr Irving, it does not matter in what way, can
24 you say that is wholly irrelevant?
25 MR RAMPTON: No, I did not say that. I said that it is not a
26 proper matter for the cross-examination of this witness.
. P-107
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You see, I am anxious, and Mr Irving is
2 anxious obviously, that he should not be, as it were, shut
3 out from making this point. I think the best way of
4 dealing with it is to let him make it as a matter of
5 submission by reference to the documents in bundle E.
6 MR RAMPTON: Of course I agree with that. It is only relevant,
7 of course, if we should lose the action.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course, but it is relevant.
9 MR RAMPTON: Just as a matter of hypothesis we did, then it
10 would be relevant quite likely, some way of wounding or
11 something, I do not know. I have not really thought about
12 it. The right thing for him to have done, but he did not
13 do it, was to give evidence about it in-chief and then
14 make submissions about at the end of the case by reference
15 to the document.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would be inclined to let him give further
17 evidence.
18 MR RAMPTON: I am not going to insist on it.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If that is the right way. It can be done as
20 a matter of submission, as far as I am concerned.
21 MR RAMPTON: Equally, as far as I am concerned.
22 MR IRVING: My Lord, the argument against that —-
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What do you say about that?
24 MR IRVING: Although I hear what Mr Rampton says about I should
25 have done it as evidence-in-chief, but your Lordship will
26 remember clearly that we were only informed two days ago
. P-108
1 that they were not going to call Professor Levin or
2 Professor Eatwell.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not, if I may say so, an answer to
4 the point that has just been made. You do not know your
5 way around the law, perhaps, as well as some, but the
6 answer is that this evidence all goes to damage and the
7 only person, or broadly speaking the only person who can
8 give evidence about damage, is the Claimant, yourself.
9 MR IRVING: Yes.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is really a matter for your own
11 evidence. I do not think it is a helpful use of the
12 court’s time, or indeed Professor Evans’s time, to take
13 him through a whole lot of documents which he would
14 probably not really be able to make much of anyway, when
15 really it is for you to make the points you want to make
16 in your evidence, and Mr Rampton is not contesting your
17 entitlement to add to the evidence you have already given,
18 so I think that is a better way of dealing with it.
19 MR IRVING: Very well. Shall I do that this afternoon then.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You would rather break off now? I am easy
21 about that.
22 MR IRVING: I think it would make it an appropriate place to
23 break off now.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is a natural break, let us do that, but
25 I think this afternoon let us move on beyond bundle E and
26 you can come back to that, whatever turns out to be a
. P-109
1 convenient moment. Shall we adjourn now and return at a
2 quarter to two.
3 (1.45 p.m.)
4 (Luncheon Adjournment)
Part III: David Irving’s Cross-Examination of Professor Richard John Evans, continued, Afternoon Session (110.5 to 181.26)
Section 110.5 to 144.5
5 Professor Evans, recalled.
6 Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.
7 MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord. There is one minor point
8 I wanted to pick up from remarks that Mr Rampton made
9 shortly towards the end where he referred to black
10 servants. My Lord, you may remember the phrase.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not remember.
12 MR IRVING: The phrase he used is black servants and this may
13 be indicative of the mind cast on that side of the
14 courtroom. I certainly do not regard blacks as servants.
15 They were my equals. I employed these Pakistanis, Indians
16 Sri Lankans and so on as research assistants and personal
17 assistants. They were not servants in any kind of menial
18 way.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
20 MR IRVING: Witness, you may have heard me described by
21 Professor Donald Watt and others as Britain’s most
22 disliked historian. Does that surprise you?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you direct me to where he actually said that?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. We can move straight on to the next question.
25 You do not like me, do you?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have no personal feelings about you at all, Mr Irving.
. P-110
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think we have seen this morning and from a number of
2 your remarks that you dislike what I write, you dislike
3 what I stand for, you dislike what you perceive my views
4 to be. Is this correct?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not have any person feelings at all. I was simply
6 asked to write a report, which I have done, about your
7 writings and speeches.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well —-
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have tried to be as objective as possible.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes of course.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And to leave any personal feelings I might possibly have
12 out of it.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: There are a number of remarks which are now a matter of
14 record on this morning’s transcript, which indicate that
15 you hold strong personal views which are antipathetic
16 towards me.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Such as?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, they are a matter of record and I am sure that the
19 court is familiar with them and this is why there was a
20 rather astonished chuckle when you said that you held no
21 views about me from those who had been listening to you
22 this morning. You are aware of the fact of course, having
23 written an expert report, that you have a duty to
24 impartiality?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Absolutely. That is described in the last paragraph of my
26 report.
. P-111
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Precisely. I was beginning to express astonishment of
2 that fact and that is why I asked the question because
3 I had the impression from this morning’s answers to the
4 questions that you were averse to answering questions and
5 that you held something bordering between distaste and
6 loathing towards me and the books I write or the views
7 that you perceive me to hold?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not at all. But it is the fact that I do find it very
9 difficult to answer questions about reports written by
10 other people. I am here to answer questions about my own
11 report.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that, when you went to the British Museum Reading
13 Room, you asked for a copy of my book Hitler’s War, and it
14 was not in the public shelves. Is that correct?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It was on the public shelves.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was on the public shelves?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I mean as I say, it was available to everybody who
18 had access to the British library.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: I remind you of your words?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is the new British Library.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: I remind you of your words in your report where you say
22 that the 1991 edition of Hitler’s War can only be read at
23 the desk in the Rare Books Room. What justification did
24 they offer for that?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, none at all. I am not responsible for their
26 classification. I have to say that, when I asked to read
. P-112
1 it, the library assistant in a somewhat astonished manner
2 said to me that it had to be read on the desk reserved for
3 pornography.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the relevance of that to your report?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I say it in my report.
6 MR IRVING: Page 15 of his report, my Lord, paragraph 154.
7 I am not relying on the pornography aspect, my Lord, as
8 your Lordship will appreciate.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an extremely minor and peripheral point. I am not
10 suggesting for a moment that it was pornographic, but it
11 is a matter of fact that, when I consulted it, that is
12 where I had to read it.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you infer from that rather curious episode that what
14 has been a very widely reviewed and widely praised work of
15 history should have been placed by the museum in a
16 reserved section where it can only be read with special
17 application. Could that possibly be the result of some
18 kind of campaign or endeavour by third parties, do you
19 think?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me say first of all that I do not think that your
21 1991 — correct me if I am wrong — edition of Hitler’s
22 War has been widely reviewed and widely praised.
23 Secondly, I have no idea why I had to read it on that
24 particular desk. Let me say if it helps you —-
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not bothered about that at all,
26 Professor. I am just puzzled why you included it in your
. P-113
1 report.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Little bit of light relief, my Lord, to be honest.
3 I thought it was a minor detail that struck me as being
4 rather odd, that I just put in to make the report a little
5 bit more readable. I do not attach any weight or
6 importance to it. If it helps you at all, I really do not
7 understand why they have done it. I cannot speculate on
8 why they have done it. It did not seem to me worth
9 pursuing the matter. I could read it. Anybody can read
10 it. It is not restricted.
11 MR IRVING: You appreciate that it must have taken an objective
12 action by someone, a positive step by someone, to
13 recommend that the book should be taken from the normal
14 shelves and placed into a reserved limited access section?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not really limited access, to be honest. It is just
16 that you have to read it in a certain place. My
17 experience of the British Library’s policy on these
18 matters is somewhat haphazard. It is not terribly
19 consistent.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have page 15?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read it.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I suggest that, if you wish to pursue this, you should do
23 so with the British Library.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have pursued it as far as it is
25 worth pursuing.
26 MR IRVING: I am going to pursue it to the next sentence, my
. P-114
1 Lord, which is: “Secondly, Irving has published a number
2 of articles mainly in the Journal of Historical Review”.
3 Do you still stand by that statement?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That follows on from the material on which this
5 report is based, consisting in the first place of Irving’s
6 published books.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware that I have not published one article in the
8 Journal of Historical Review?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, Mr Irving. Your journals are widely available
10 in the Journal of Historical Review. I have read the
11 Journal of Historical Review and there are many articles
12 of yours there.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you referring to transcripts of talks that I have
14 delivered which have then been transcribed by
15 the Institute and then published?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are there as articles, indeed, yes.
17 MR RAMPTON: I was just saying to my junior that, if this line
18 of cross-examination continues without Mr Irving’s
19 revealing to the witness the full extent of the way in
20 which those articles are published in the Journal of
21 Historical Review, I am going to intervene.
22 MR IRVING: I think that my question, as it was put, was quite
23 proper, my Lord.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So do I, and re-examination is always an
25 opportunity to follow up these things.
26 MR IRVING: In other words, you do accept that I have never
. P-115
1 written an article for the Journal of Historical Review,
2 it is however correct that they have published transcripts
3 in the way that learned journals also do of people’s talks
4 and lectures?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept that the Journal of Historical Review is a
6 learned journal.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I did not say so, of course.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But I would have thought that they would have obtained
9 your permission to put the transcripts there and that you
10 would have had the opportunity to revise them before they
11 went in there, and that therefore you were agreeable to
12 their appearing there as articles.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. On page 17 you refer to various bones of contention
14 that you are going to pick in the first paragraph, the
15 fourth line, to Irving’s use of the evidence of Hitler’s
16 Adjutants. Undoubtedly I am going to be cross-examined on
17 this matter, I believe so. I do not really want to go
18 into very much detail about that until we come to it in
19 the appropriate part of your report, but you do attach
20 great importance to the fact, do you not, that you think
21 I made a wrong use of what these members of Hitler’s
22 private staff told me?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that you are going to be
24 cross-examined because my understanding is that—-
25 MR RAMPTON: I said that on the whole I did not think it
26 terribly likely, but I did say, if I was going to, I would
. P-116
1 mention it. There may be just a couple of points.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought I could short circuit this.
3 MR RAMPTON: I am certainly not going to do it at any length
4 because I do not believe I need to.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are right, Mr Irving, it is part of the
6 case. I thought it was not but it is.
7 MR IRVING: It appears to be in a kind of limbo where it might
8 be sprung on me at a later date. When we come to that
9 point in Professor Evans’ expert report, than in that case
10 I shall have to deal with it seriatim. Can I address your
11 attention to page 19 of your report, Professor Evans?
12 Half way down the page, at the end of that paragraph,
13 paragraph 161, you conclude by saying: “We have not
14 suppressed any occasion on which Irving has used accepted
15 and legitimate methods of historical research, exposition
16 and interpretation. There were none.” That is a very
17 sweeping statement it make, is it not?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I should qualify that by saying there wee none in
19 the material we examined.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: None at all? I have never used historical material in the
21 proper manner?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in the material we examined, no.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I can see his Lordship frowning.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just puzzled by that. What material did
25 you examine? It seems to me you cannot have known what to
26 go to unless you have looked at the whole lot.
. P-117
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In the cases that we examined. I explain in the
2 introduction to this report. Clearly we had 18 months to
3 go through 30 years’ of Mr Irving’s work and so it was not
4 possible to go through the whole lot in its entirety. So
5 we had to be selective. I explain in the report the
6 principles on which we selected the material, which was
7 not going for the weak points but trying to go for his
8 strongest arguments, and in those areas we did not find
9 occasions where he used accepted and legitimate methods of
10 historical research, exposition and interpretation, taking
11 the three things together as a whole.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It is a bit tortuous because really what you are saying is
13 that the areas you have selected for criticism are not
14 areas where you would praise Mr Irving?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, that is right, though I did not know that in advance.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Who told you which passages to go for, as it were?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Well, that is to say, as I explain here, I decided
18 obviously to look at the question of Holocaust denial and
19 whether it was legitimate to —-
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I see, topics as broad as that?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — accuse Mr Irving of Holocaust denial. Then I decided
22 to look at what he himself describes as the chain of
23 documents which show that, in his view, Hitler was, as he
24 says somewhere, the best friend the Jews ever had in the
25 Third Reich. So we looked at as many of those as we
26 could, all of the ones we could find, and in all of those
. P-118
1 we found the same thing, that is to say, where there were
2 distortions, suppressions and manipulations. That is what
3 I am saying there.
4 MR IRVING: We are going to come to the next paragraph, but in
5 retrospect would you wish that you had phrased that final
6 sentence less globally and less grandly, saying there were
7 none, which implies that nowhere in my entire writings
8 have I have used historical documents properly?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I did not find that in what I looked at.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Never once I did use a historical document correctly?
11 Never once did I use material that had been before me? In
12 all the records and books that you examined and we are
13 going to see in a few pages time which books you did
14 examine.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. By occasion, I mean of course the topics that we
16 examined. No doubt, if you say that Hitler was born on
17 such and such a date in such and such a year, that is a
18 correct statement.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is not what you are saying. I will repeat it again,
20 “We have not suppressed any occasion on which Irving has
21 used accepted and legitimate methods of historical
22 research, exposition, interpretation. There were none.”
23 You are referring to my entire corpus of writing.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes, and I am following on the statements in the
25 previous paragraphs and pages where I describe the methods
26 used to draw up the report, and the word “occasion” there
. P-119
1 refers to the various topics that we looked at, which are
2 outlined in the previous paragraphs.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I would not want to rewrite your report. What you should
4 therefore written surely was—-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sure you would.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: — not “there were none” but “there were none in the few
7 instances that we examined”. Is that you are trying to
8 say?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept that there were few instances.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Three instances, Reichskristallnacht, Dresden and the
11 Adjutants. Is that correct?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not correct at all, Mr Irving. We examined a
13 great many other instances.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: But then you continue in the next paragraph of course,
15 then comes the purple prose as to what you alleged to have
16 found swimming around in this cesspit of David Irving’s
17 writings. “I was not prepared”, you write, “for the sheer
18 depth of duplicity, his numerous mistakes, that is the
19 bottom line but one, and the egregrious errors”. On the
20 contrary, “they were not accidental”, you say, on the
21 contrary, it is obvious that they were calculated and
22 deliberate. Now, do you still stand by this assessment?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Most certainly, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: In all my writings? Or are you just referring to these
25 few passages that you are being specific about?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am referring to the passages, the instances which we
. P-120
1 examined.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think it would probably be helpful to his Lordship if
3 you just listed on the fingers and thumbs of one or two
4 hands which specific instances this sweeping and rather
5 brutal judgment applies to?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are listed on the contents page of my report, my
7 Lord.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: These are the only instances you are referring to with the
10 sweeping judgment, in other words you are not going to
11 pass judgment on the rest of my writings?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I am satisfied, as I say in the report, that we
13 examined a sufficient number of instances to assure
14 ourselves that they were representative of your writings.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: All the rest. I am afraid I was not properly listening to
16 your answer in response to his Lordship’s question. Who
17 picked these instances? Was it picked in committee with
18 the Defendants? Did they say, why not go for
19 Reichskristallnacht, pick on Dresden too, he is weak on
20 that? Did you have a free hand?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I had a free hand and I picked them myself.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: No suggestions were made from the Defence upon instructing
23 solicitors?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not to my recollection, no.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Happened to pick on Reichskristallnacht and happened to go
26 to Dresden, although not very familiar with my work
. P-121
1 previously?
2 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, in fairness to the witness, Mr Irving
3 probably was not listening, often one does not listen very
4 carefully when cross-examining, there was an earlier
5 answer to the effect that what started the topics listed
6 at paragraph 4 of the contents page on the second page was
7 the very first item in that entry, “Irving’s chain of
8 documents” and thing leads to another, therefore.
9 MR IRVING: Well, the chain of documents, of course, refers
10 specifically to Hitler’s responsibility for the Final
11 Solution.
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but it includes, for example, eight or nine
13 examples, just as an example, Reichskristallnacht, which
14 in itself is an enormous subject.
15 MR IRVING: It does not include Dresden and it does not
16 include —-
17 THE WITNESS: &nsbsp;No. As I explained in the report, I thought that
18 it was not really sufficient just to look at the chain of
19 documents. The reason for that was that it might be
20 arguable, as a number of your reviewers have indeed
21 argued, that you were, as it were, unsound on that one
22 issue, but sound on everything else. So I decided to look
23 at Dresden because that is the book which established your
24 reputation and has probably sold more than — correct me
25 if I am wrong — any other of your books.
26 So that seemed to be one of your strongest
. P-122
1 books, if not your strongest book, so I decided to look at
2 that as well. I did not want to confine myself, in other
3 words, simply to the chain of documents relating to
4 Hitler’s responsibility or, you would argue,
5 non-responsibility for the Final Solution.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Could it be that you set out with the belief that I had
7 used these methods that you describe as sheer depth of
8 duplicity and of distortion and the rest, and that you had
9 preconceived that notion, then you picked on three or four
10 roads by which to arrive at that particular Rome, so to
11 speak?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, that is not the case at all; as I describe in the
13 report, I had very little knowledge of your work and I was
14 aware of your reputation as having been somebody who was
15 in many cases, in many areas, a sound historian, and I was
16 rather surprised at the results that I found. I described
17 that all in my report and that was an honest description
18 of my reaction.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you going to be prepared to eat your words if we take
20 each one piece by piece and find out that you were
21 misjudging me?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us see.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then we shall come to that —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you this, Professor Evans? Did you
25 consider Mr Irving the military historian, if you follow
26 what I mean by that? It is not really your subject, as
. P-123
1 I understand your evidence this morning?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it seems to me that he is a military and political
3 historian.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not doubt that, but I just wondered whether you have
5 considered as a separate aspect of his historical writings
6 his writings on military as opposed to political history?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, because they do not really relate to this case.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I thought that might be your answer, yes.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Obviously, though, it is enormously — as you can see,
10 this is a 740 page report.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am well aware of that.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It took an enormous amount of time and effort to do and
13 there is simply a limited amount of time available.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. No, it is not a criticism at all.
15 I just wanted for myself to know. Thank you.
16 MR IRVING: So if somebody had mentioned the name “David
17 Irving”, would you have said to yourself, “Oh, yes, that
18 is the Holocaust historian”?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would have said, “That is the specialist in Third
21 Reich personalities” or “The specialist in Naval war” or
22 what? Would anything have occurred to you?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you have written on a variety of subjects, of
24 course, but they have mostly been, with the exception,
25 I think, of the book on Hungary in 1956, books about
26 Germany and the Second World War and aspects of German
. P-124
1 politics, German personalities, biographies of leading
2 German figures and aspects of the war.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say on page 20 — my Lord, now at the top of page 20
4 of his report — “That is precisely why they are so
5 shocking. Irving has relied in the past, and continues to
6 rely in the present, on the fact that his readers and
7 listeners, reviewers and interviewers lack”, well,
8 “expertise” you say there. You are saying that everyone
9 who reads my books, effectively, are ignorant and so they
10 cannot spot how duplicitous I am. Is that what you are
11 saying?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me read the sentence: “Irving has relied in the past,
13 and continues to rely in the present, on the fact that his
14 readers and listeners, reviewers and interviewers lack
15 either the time, or the expertise, to probe deeply enough
16 into the sources he uses for his work to uncover the
17 distortions, suppressions and manipulations to which he
18 has subjected them”.
19 Let me carry on just in the next sentence, if
20 I may: “The late Martin Broszat and the American
21 historian Charles W Sydnor, Jr., whose work is referred to
22 below, are virtually the only previous historians to have
23 gone some way down this road”.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I said in about six lines what you have said in 12, that
25 roughly what I said was right, that they were so
26 ignorant —-
. P-125
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, that is not true at all. That is why I read the
2 sentence out. I said “either the time or the expertise”.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: To see through me, is that what —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: To uncover — I do not want to read it all over again,
5 Mr Irving.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: This list of ignorant reviewers and listeners and readers
7 of my books, does it include people Captain Stephen
8 Roskill, the official Naval historian?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not describe him as ignorant, Mr Irving.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you said they did not have the time or the
11 expertise.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I said they lacked either the time or the expertise. And
13 anyone who has been involved in reviewing books knows
14 that, particularly if you are reviewing for a daily or
15 Sunday newspaper, you have a very tight deadline to meet
16 and you do not have the time to go back to the archives
17 and check everything out.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have reviewed books for the Jewish Chronicle, have you
19 not?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have reviewed books for the Sunday Telegraph, I have
21 reviewed books —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Answer my question. You have reviewed books for the
23 Jewish Chronicle?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have indeed reviewed books for the Jewish Chronicle.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are familiar with the fact that they do not have
26 enough time, when you are reviewing books, this is where
. P-126
1 your expertise there comes from?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I said you do not have enough time to go back to the
3 archives and the original sources to check the statements,
4 and also, as I go on in the report to say, that, normally
5 speaking, reviewers of academic, scholarly and non-fiction
6 works generally, unless they have reasons to suppose
7 otherwise, make the basic assumption that the author is
8 honest and reporting honestly what he or she finds.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Knows what he is talking about. Well, that is the
10 assumption that we are making in this court about you too,
11 is it not, really, that you are not prejudiced or biased
12 or that you have no private animosities towards anyone?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am glad you think so.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it is an assumption we all make. But now can I come
15 back to my question, which is that these ignorant
16 reviewers and listeners, for whatever reason, do they
17 include people like Captain Stephen Roskill, the official
18 Naval historian?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not describe them as “ignorant”, Mr Irving. I say
20 they lack either the time or the expertise — one or the
21 other.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor AJP Taylor, would that include him?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was not a Professor, but, aside from that, I think he
24 is one of the historians who —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Hugh Trevor Roper, would you include him in that
26 kind of wayward, negligent category, a reviewer?
. P-127
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I go on to say, the —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: But we are going to go on to the next two names you have
3 mention in a minute, but let us deal with —
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have mentioned.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: — this little catalogue of experts who have, apparently,
6 totally negligently spoken and written highly of my works.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me go on to say that in dealing with the
8 reviewers of your work, I try to make a distinction
9 between journalists, on the one hand, who maybe accept it
10 but clearly do not know an awful lot about the subject
11 —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I mention some more names? And
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and historians with a general kind of expertise, but
14 not specific knowledge of the sources —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would Hans Monson have had —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and then historians with a specific expertise in the
17 source materials on which you base your work —-
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would Hans Monson —-
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and it is the last —-
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think, if I may say so, can I
21 try to help you in this way so that we can move on? I am
22 well aware that there have been quite a large number of
23 distinguished academics who have paid tribute to your work
24 as a military historian.
25 MR IRVING: Until comparatively recently, my Lord.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, leave that on one side.
. P-128
1 MR IRVING: Well, after the 1988 watershed.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it really help to fire these names at
3 Professor Evans? I do not think it does. It does not
4 help me.
5 MR IRVING: Do I not have a right to destroy his expert
6 report?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you do, but I would rather you did it by
8 taking the particular criticisms that he makes of you and
9 try to destroy them, rather than deal with it in a rather
10 indirect fashion.
11 MR IRVING: Well, can we move on to the two names you
12 mentioned, Professor Broszat, we have mentioned him
13 briefly. I am not going to go further into him. You
14 mentioned a second name there, Charles Sydnor?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you referring to the review he wrote in a journal
17 called, I think, European —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Central European History”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Central European History”.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you compared that with the original article by Martin
22 Broszat and have you seen that one is purely derivative
23 from the other?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it is purely little derivative. I think
25 Sydnor had his own — well, let me say two things. First
26 of all, I think it is true that Broszat provided, not only
. P-129
1 Sydnor but also Trevor-Roper with a number of the
2 criticisms that they made of your work, but I do think
3 Sydnor does go beyond that. He is a man who has a
4 particular expertise on the SS and, indeed, he did have
5 research assistants and research grants to write his
6 review.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: To write his review?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very nice.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He acknowledges that in his footnote.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it is very largely derivative from Professor Broszat
12 in the way that I have suggested?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, Mr Irving, come on. Let us move on to
14 the criticisms that are made by Professor Evans against
15 you, rather than discussing whether one other author’s
16 work is derivative from another.
17 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, two or three pages later we find
18 Professor Evans saying, “Mr Irving gives no example of
19 where writers copy what each other write”, and that
20 pre-empts that particular question, so I will not ask it.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
22 MR IRVING: Will you go now to the bottom of page 21?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me just make a point there, that I am not aware
24 of anything you have written that says that Sydnor copied
25 what he wrote from Broszat.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: I wrote a reader’s letter to the magazine concerned which
. P-130
1 they published.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have read it.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Would you now go to the bottom of page —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But you do not make that accusation there, to my
5 recollection.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, we are trying to move on.
7 Do not put the brakes on.
8 MR IRVING: Page 21.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 21.
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, I find it very helpful when you do tell me
11 to move on because I have no way of knowing whether I am
12 barking up the wrong tree or not.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to give you the odd hint —
14 I meant that in a sort of — I mean that to be helpful.
15 MR IRVING: “The position can be summed up”, you say, in these
16 last two lines on page 21, “The position can broadly be
17 summed up by saying that there is a general consensus that
18 a decision was taken at the highest level”. We are
19 talking about the decision to kill Jews, right?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes — to kill all the Jews in Europe in a systematic way,
21 yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: “… that there is a general consensus that a decision was
23 taken at the highest level some time between the beginning
24 of 1941 and the spring of 1942″. Are you a believer in
25 the writing of history by general consensus then?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, now, well, what I am saying is that I am trying to sum
. P-131
1 up the accepted state of historical knowledge, and —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Accepted state of historical knowledge?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, the general state of historical knowledge in
4 which —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I remind you of one or two other previous general
6 consensus — I believe it is fourth declension — in
7 history previously? There was at one time a general
8 consensus that the world was flat, was there not, and
9 there was also a general consensus that the sun moved
10 around the earth. Was that another general consensus that
11 was generally accepted?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I think scholarship has moved on a little since
13 those days.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: But is it not dangerous to write history or to do
15 astronomy or anything else by general consensus, would you
16 agree? There is a case for the outsider to come along and
17 say, “I may be right, I may be wrong, but let us rethink
18 this”? Do you agree?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me go on to say what I say in the next sentence
20 which is: “The limits set by the available evidence do no
21 allow of a date, say, in January 1993, or January 1943.
22 The view that, for example, no decision was ever taken, or
23 that the Nazis did not undertake the systematic
24 extermination of the Jews at all, or that very few Jews
25 were in fact killed, lies wholly outside the limits of
26 what is reasonable for a professional historian to argue
. P-132
1 in the light of the available evidence.” That is not to
2 say that nobody should or people should not be allowed to
3 challenge these things, but simply to say that this is
4 what you face and, of course, it is based on an enormous
5 amount of research by a very large number of people in the
6 archives, in the original documents, and that you have to
7 deal with all that research and all the documents which
8 have been thrown up.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you say that people should not be necessarily
10 prevented, they should be allowed to say these things
11 without being harassed, arrested or imprisoned or stripped
12 of their Professorship, but that these are generally not
13 acceptable opinions?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are several questions there, I think.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us deal with just one.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: First of all, I believe in free speech, so you can say
17 whatever you like so long as it does not offend the laws
18 of the land. What one does, as a university Professor, is
19 slightly more circumscribed, that is to say, I think, as
20 an academic historian, you have the duty to confirm to
21 academic standards in the evaluation of evidence and in
22 the views that you put forward, leaving entirely aside
23 whatever people who have been dismissed from their
24 university posts might have done by way of running against
25 the laws of the land in terms of racist statements or
26 whatever.
. P-133
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us just look at the first thing you say here: “The
2 view that, for example, no decision was ever taken”, and
3 you consider this is one of the views that is totally
4 beyond the limits. Are you not familiar with the fact
5 that this is precisely the view espoused by Professor
6 Martin Broszat in his famous 1977 paper? He said he came
7 to agree with David Irving that probably there was no
8 decision, and this is also the view taken by Raul Hilberg,
9 is that not right?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you present to me the passages in their work where they
11 say that, it is not quite my understanding of what they
12 say.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I believed that you were an expert and this is why
14 you were being paid a very substantial sum by the Defence
15 to stand in the position you are in now, that you knew
16 these things?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and I am already, leaving aside your cheap jibe about
18 money which I treat with the contempt it deserves —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was not cheap, from what I hear.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and I hope the court will as well —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is degenerating and please don’t let us
22 let it.
23 MR IRVING: My Lord, was this not a justified question?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not really think that — the problem
25 I have with this is that Professor Evans has introduced a
26 number of other authors in support of his criticisms. To
. P-134
1 that extent, I suppose it is legitimate for you to
2 introduce, as it were, the other side of the coin. But
3 I will say again, what is going to help me is to look at
4 the individual criticisms and see whether Professor Evans
5 is right when he says you have manipulated the data. I am
6 not stopping you going through these earlier sections,
7 but, without disrespect to Professor Evans, I can tell you
8 I have not marked many of these early pages because they
9 seem to me so broad and general that —-
10 MR IRVING: They are very broad and general but —-
11 THE WITNESS: &nsbsp;They are intended, my Lord, if it helps, just to
12 set the background.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I realize that, but, in the end, it is
14 the guts of it that we have to tackle.
15 MR IRVING: Yes, but if he is —-
16 TTHE WITNESS: &nsbsp;I mean, if it helps, Mr Irving, of course
17 I accept that your work has had many very favourable
18 reviews from many distinguished people.
19 MR IRVING: That is not what we are talking about. That is now
20 beyond dispute. What we are saying here is that it is
21 wrong for you to say in your report, in the opening,
22 scene-setting passage, that the view that no decision was
23 ever taken is beyond the pail and no reasonable person
24 would now say this, when, in fact, I have mentioned to you
25 two names of very famous, notable, academic historians,
26 Monson (sic) and Hilberg, who have adopted precisely this
. P-135
1 view and have not been disproved.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is my assessment of —-
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I mean Broszat and Hilberg, I am sorry.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is my assessment of the situation of research in this
5 field.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the end —-
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you wish to produce documents which go against that,
8 you are quite welcome to do so.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I did take it, Professor, that you had studied the
10 documents in this case which include on several places in
11 the expert reports the precise statements by Martin
12 Broszat and Hilberg to this effect.
13 Would you go to the end of this particular
14 paragraph —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do, Mr Irving, outline Broszat’s —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: — On page 25?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — views on the decision-making process in my report, and
18 I do note that because he thought of the decision-making
19 process as coming from, as it were, the bottom up, that
20 that inclined him to be sympathetic to your particular
21 line on Hitler. So if that helps at all, I do not dispute
22 that.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the end of the last line and a half on page 25, you
24 say: “Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of
25 scholarship customary among historians that he does not
26 deserve to be called a historian at all”. Is this still
. P-136
1 your view, having heard all the evidence over the last
2 four or five weeks, that I show no scholarship —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it has been —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: — I do not deserve to be called an historian?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — reinforced by what I have read in the transcripts over
6 the last weeks. I thought it would be helpful to the
7 court to outline my conclusions in advance, as it were,
8 instead of keeping the court guessing and waiting as it
9 ploughed through my report. But, of course, it is
10 somewhat kind of upside-down, if you see what I mean? I
11 mean, this is, in a sense taking the conclusion in
12 advance.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us go now to page 26 where you talk about my
14 publishing career, you say most of my books about the Nazi
15 leaders and Nazi Germany. Are you familiar with the book
16 I wrote on the German atomic bomb project, which was the
17 first book ever written on that subject and which was very
18 highly praised by Nobel prize winner like Otto Haan, Verna
19 Eisenberg?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not. I have not read that one.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: This book was not provided to you by the Defence
22 instructing solicitors to form your judgment on?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me come back to the point, Mr Irving, that you have
24 written about 30 books, some of which are more relevant to
25 the issues which are at the centre of this case, and
26 others and in the time available I am sure you would agree
. P-137
1 I could not possibly read through them all, even with a
2 team with two research assistants working for me.
3 Therefore, I selected the ones which I thought were most
4 relevant to the issues which are at the centre of this
5 case.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have allowed yourself, notwithstanding that, some
7 pretty sweeping judgments on my credentials, have you not?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the basis of what I read which I think is a fair
9 selection.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: But at the end of that paragraph —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me remind you, this a 740-page report. There is an
12 enormous amount of detail in it, and it simply was not
13 possible to go any further in the time available.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if you make seeping judgments about author’s entire
15 corpus as a historian over a 39-year writing career, and
16 you say that he has not deserved the title of historian or
17 he is not a scholarship and all the rest of it, one
18 assumes that you are familiar with all his works,
19 including these ones which have not been the least bit
20 controversial and attracted the highest praise from people
21 in positions to know?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I make it quite clear in the report that I am not
23 familiar with all of your works, that I have done a
24 selection for the reasons that I have said, but —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are familiar with my book on the Hungarian uprising?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. That seemed so far away from the issues at the centre
. P-138
1 of this case that it really was not one that I should have
2 read.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you do pass comment on it on page 27?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, in this section, Mr Irving, I am simply trying to
5 give a brief run down of what you have written. That is
6 all I am trying to do.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: But in the process of running me down you might also have
8 paid attention to the book I wrote on the German
9 Intelligence Service, the Forschungsamt, and on the German
10 Eastern Frontiers, the history of the German Eastern
11 Frontiers, but they appear to have escaped your attention
12 also?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: For the reasons I have said, I did not have time to read
14 all of your books. However, as I say in the report, I am
15 quite satisfied on the basis of what I have read that
16 reading more would only lead to the same kind of
17 conclusions that I have drawn from what I have read.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: You comment on page 28 at the end of the first paragraph
19 on my website?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that it contains materials by myself or by people
22 who are congenial to me and views that are congenial to
23 me. Is that a fair description?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where do I say this?
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the end of the first paragraph on page 28: “This is
26 constantly changing”, you say, “but it includes lengthy
. P-139
1 documents and analyses produced or reproduced by Irving
2 himself as well as by others whose views are congenial.”
3 In other words, what are you implying is I just have a
4 gallery of claqueur?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not at all, Mr Irving. This is a section in which
6 I am trying to outline the availability of documentation
7 on which it is possible to base an assessment of your
8 work.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you not familiar with —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am saying that simply because, therefore, it is possible
11 to take this into account. That is all I am saying there.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you not familiar with the fact that if you go to my
13 website you will find not only documents to support my
14 cases, such as they are, but also opposing documents
15 fairly and prominently displayed, and that I have included
16 links to all the hostile websites in the manner which is
17 now part of the courtesy and etiquette of the internet?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and you include daily transcripts of this entire
19 proceedings and indeed a copy of my own report.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have made it available.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But that is not the point I am trying to make here. I am
22 simply trying to outline the fact that there is an
23 enormous amount of material which was available to me in
24 writing this report.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you are not trying to make the point —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not intended as criticism. I am not night trying to
. P-140
1 make the point that you do not produce any others. That
2 is not what I am arguing about.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But the way you have written it implies that I only print
4 or reproduce or publish materials that are congenial to
5 me?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it does not. I am sorry. Let me read the sentence:
7 “The is”, it is the website I am referring to, “This is
8 constantly changing, but it includes lengthy documents and
9 analyses produced or reproduced by Irving himself, as well
10 as by others whose views are congenial to him.” That
11 follows a sentence saying he has also made his views in a
12 variety of, and so on, a frequent writer of letters to
13 newspapers, all these books, that is all I am trying to
14 say.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where do you say in that paragraph that I also include the
16 views of those which are diametrically opposed to me?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not relevant to what I am saying there. What I am
18 saying there is that there is a lot of material on which
19 to base an assessment of your work. All I am saying there
20 is that your website is part of the basis on which it is
21 possible to assess your work.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: You appreciate that running a website costs a lot of
23 money. Is there any reason why I should put material
24 which is opposed to my viewpoint unless I was scrupulously
25 fair in everything I do in public life? In other words,
26 the exact opposite of what you described earlier in your
. P-141
1 report as being unscrupulous and manipulative and
2 deceptive?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I put it this way, so we can perhaps move
4 on. Would you agree that it is credible that Mr Irving
5 puts on his Internet website material which is opposed to
6 him, such as your report?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course. Obviously it is in the interests of
8 getting more users for the website to give to do that kind
9 of thing. I do not dispute that at all. I am not
10 criticising you at all.
11 MR IRVING: Moving on now to qualifications which is 2.2.1.
12 You quite rightly say that in all the examinations I took
13 at school history was the only subject I flunked?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do say that.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that one of your lighter remarks rather in the vein of
16 the thing in the pornographic section?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I just thought it was a nice quote.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: In fact you have four ‘A’ levels and I have nine. So how
19 does this shape itself?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know how many years. Did you do them all at
21 once?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I kept on plugging away. If we now continue to where,
23 looking at whether you have to be an historian to be an
24 historian, so to speak?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In your view, do you have to be an academic historian? Do
. P-142
1 you have to have degrees to be able to write history?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I say so here that this is not, I think, a
3 particularly strong powerful criticism. The work has to
4 be assessed on its merits. There are, as I say, any
5 number of —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very reputable historians?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — Reputable historians who do not have formal academic
8 qualifications.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: People like Walter Laqueur?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Or Tony Fraser, many people. We are all agreed on that.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are all agreed about this, so we can pass
12 on.
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, the point I am making is that paragraph
14 2.2.2 in the second line, having made that point and very
15 generously saying there is a good deal to say for this
16 argument, he then goes on to say: “As he suggests in the
17 above passage, he has no academic as an historian”.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Then I go on to say in the next sentence: “Although these
19 are serious initial disadvantages for becoming a
20 professional historian, there are plenty of examples of
21 reputable and successful historians whose lack of formal
22 academic qualifications is as striking as Irving’s.” So I
23 am agreeing with you.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Sometimes your bias does come through, does it not? If
25 you go to the first line of the next paragraph, 2.3.2:
26 “Irving tells anyone willing to listen that he is an
. P-143
1 expert historian”. That is a bit of a sneer there, is it
2 not?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would be happy to withdraw that if you think it is a
4 sneer. It is nothing to do with your academic
5 qualifications.
Section 144.6 to 181.26
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: When we are talking of withdrawing things, later on, on
7 line 4 of that paragraph, you have withdrawn quite a lot,
8 have not, where you put the three dots?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me have a look.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you have a look, please, at the 1977 edition of my
11 book Hitler’s War? Do you have it, my Lord?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it.
13 MR IRVING: Line 4. We will see exactly what you have left
14 out.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I have it here.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It can be provided. It is the introduction.
17 MR IRVING: Page xii.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not have xii here.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a bundle which does not have the
20 introduction. Can you find one which does.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It has the introduction.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is where it is, xii.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. There are different editions of this book, my Lord.
24 I think that is the problem.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you have the 1977 edition?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have it.
. P-144
1 MR IRVING: I am terribly sorry, we are looking at the wrong
2 thing. It is footnote five we should be looking at and it
3 is the speech in Victoria.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am terribly sorry.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Start again.
7 MR IRVING: I have written in the margin “Pure Gold” so I think
8 it is going to be worth looking at. I have said: “What
9 is omitted? Pure gold, read it out”. This is a speech,
10 is it not, that I made in Victoria on October 28th 1992 on
11 the subject of freedom of speech, having been just awarded
12 the George Orwell Freedom of Speech prize and shortly
13 before I was taken off by eight Mounted Policemen in
14 handcuffs.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can the Defendants side produce a reference
16 for this?
17 MR RAMPTON: I am just trying.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very kind.
19 MR RAMPTON: H1 (i), tab blank, page 29.
20 MR IRVING: You have made two omissions, have you not?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you point me to the page?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 29, yellow tab.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which is the page on which this statement occurs? .
24 MR IRVING: I am sorry, my Lord. I should have come better
25 prepared with the actual missing passages available.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is unusual that you are not.
. P-145
1 MR IRVING: Would it be helpful if I passed on to the next
2 one?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going to suggest that. They have found
4 it.
5 MR RAMPTON: Page 31, my Lord, third paragraph at the bottom of
6 the page.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. Page 31 in the stamp at
8 the bottom of the page.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 MR IRVING: It begins, does it not, “I have spent 30 years now
11 working in the archives in London, in Washington and
12 Moscow, in short around the world. If I express an
13 opinion, it is properly a reasonably accurate opinion
14 which I have arrived at over a period of years”, and then
15 you have left something out. Can you tell us what has
16 been left out?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Without fear or favour to either side and certainly
18 not as a result of being bribed or corrupted or
19 intimidated.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: “In researching Hitler” does it then continue?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.
23 MR RAMPTON: That is a confusion. The “researching Hitler” bit
24 is a different footnote. It is footnote 6.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I realise that, because it comes after the
26 little (v). That is obviously right, Mr Irving.
. P-146
1 MR IRVING: Now we are back to Hitler’s War again.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I omitted that because I do not think you have been bribed
3 or corrupted or intimidated.
4 MR RAMPTON: I am waiting for my bag of pure gold. I do not
5 understand.
6 MR IRVING: Gold with a capital G I think is going to come now
7 beyond (ii) of the 1977 Hitler’s war. In fact, you are
8 going to dislike me over this because, although the
9 footnote says it is the 1977 edition, my Lord —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It might be 1991.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is the 1991 edition and it is pages 6 to 7.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is in fact I think 7 to 8, not 6 to 7, so you are wrong
13 there too.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Come on.
15 MR IRVING: Can we begin with the middle? “For the few
16 autobiographical works I have used, I prefer to rely on
17 the original manuscripts rather than the printed texts as
18 in the early postwar years apprehensive publishers,
19 especially the licensed ones in Germany, made drastic
20 changes in them”, and then you have left out a bit?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. For example, there is a lot of detail there which is
22 not really of any concern to me.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then you continue “But historians”.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: What you are saying is that everything you left out is a
26 lot of detail which is not of concern to you?
. P-147
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, to borrow your own phrase, I did not want to
2 fill my report with acres of sludge.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Although it provides verisimilitude to the allegation?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not disputing it here. I am trying to present your
5 own point of view here as succinctly as I can.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did your Lordship identify the passage left out?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes I did. It is the sort of point you need
8 not labour. I understand what the point is.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If it helps, I quite accept that you have identified the
10 forgeries and falsifications. I am not disputing that at
11 all.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not so that on these two pages, pages 30 to 31 of
13 your expert report, you rather pour cold water, cold
14 douche, on the idea that I have succeeded in spotting
15 source document after source document, particularly in the
16 form of diaries or alleged diaries which turn out to have
17 been phoney or prettified up?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where do I do that?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: In paragraph 233, and I will read it out while you are
20 going back to it. “(Irving) listed a whole variety of
21 diaries and other sources on which he claimed — without
22 any references to back his assertion up, however —
23 previous historians had relied ….” Now of course you
24 see the point why I am irritated that you left out the
25 detail I had put in which you chopped out, because you
26 said it did not concern you.
. P-148
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not disputing this at all. What I am really writing
2 about here is your claim that other historians, reading on
3 in the paragraph, your “idle predecessors” had failed to
4 detect them each successive biographer has repeated or
5 engrossed the legends, historians have never troubled to
6 consult basic documentation, and so on. That is what the
7 issue is here. I am not disputing at all that you have
8 identified —-
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: There are numbers of diaries floating around which are
10 still broadly quoted by the great historians, even
11 somebody as reputable as Andreas Hilgruber has relied on
12 the Engel diary for example?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought you did not read the work of other historians,
14 Mr Irving.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am very familiar with what Andreas Hilgruber has written
16 in the criticisms of his work in this respect.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So you do read other historians.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, may I make a suggestion
19 because we are going to be here a very, very long time.
20 It is really is best not to argue, as it were. It is
21 tempting, I know.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My Lord, the point I am trying to make in this passage is
23 not that Mr Irving has not discovered falsifications and
24 forgeries. I accept that absolutely. The point I am
25 trying to make here is that, without any references or
26 support, in any references to documents or other
. P-149
1 historians’ work, he is levelling unjust accusations at
2 other historians. That is the nub of this paragraph.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You go on to then criticise him for not bothering to visit
4 so and so.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, my Lord, no, I do not. I am saying that he
6 has accused other historians of not bothering to visit.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are right to correct me.
8 MR IRVING: Was that criticism by me justified that other
9 historians failed to visit these people?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have not provided any documentation of this
11 allegation.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, do I not in the introduction to my book Hitler’s War
13 draw specific reference to the widow of Walter Havel, the
14 widow of Anst von Bisecker, who was the mother of the
15 later president of Germany, who all provided their private
16 papers and diaries to me of their late husbands?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not dispute that they have provided you with
18 material, Mr Irving. I am not disputing that at all.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: These are specific examples of widows who had not been
20 visited by these lazy German historians. I am not
21 inventing this, am I?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But you have not provided any support of the accusation
23 that later historians have repeated or engrossed the
24 legends created by their predecessors and so on and so
25 forth.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let me put it in question form. If German historians have
. P-150
1 existed from 1945 to approximately 1970, 25 years without
2 visiting the widows of these well-known Germans, who might
3 very well have the private diaries of their late departed
4 husbands, is this not laziness on the part of the entire
5 body of German historians, academics or otherwise, not to
6 have made such visits to these people?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not accept that. Historians are constantly
8 discovering new sources. There are many historians who
9 have discovered sources that you have not discovered, but
10 I would never accuse you of being lazy.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not remarkable that not one single German historian
12 had visited the widow of Ribbentrop’s state secretary to
13 ask, do you have your husband’s diaries in 25 years?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The normal procedure with papers and files is that
15 archivists approach people whom they think might have them
16 and that is what is normally done. That has of course
17 taken place.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: In this case clearly they had not. The Institut fur
19 Zeitgeschichte had not bothered to visit them. The
20 Bundesarchives had not bothered to visit them?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: However the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte had a great number
22 of former leading Nazis in to give interviews, collected a
23 great deal of material, so it is very difficult to
24 criticise them, particularly since you have described them
25 in your own work as being an admirable institution.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Commendable, yes. Would you go to the next paragraph,
. P-151
1 please, which is paragraph 2.3.4? I am trying to make
2 forward progress. On line 3 you criticise the fact that
3 I constantly say the German historians have just quoted
4 each other and it is the biggest active incest since 1945,
5 I have occasionally said, they just run around quoting
6 each other.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Each one assuming that the other one had the source.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have said, give me one example or justify this have
11 you not, in that paragraph?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: You were not here two or three days ago when we read one
14 page from the history published by Michael Berenbaum. Do
15 you know who Michael Berenbaum is?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: The ex director of the US Holocaust memorial museum. Do
18 you know who Professor Aberhard Jackeln is?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, indeed I do.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware that Aberhard Jackeln wrote a paper in a
21 book recently published by Berenbaum in which he looks at
22 the historiography of the Holocaust?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not familiar with that one, no.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I tell you that that paper contains — I know what
25 your answer is going to be — a statement by Aberhard
26 Jackeln that, until my book Hitler’s War was published,
. P-152
1 historians had just quoted each other, or they had not
2 bothered to do the research, they had only started
3 researching once my book was published with my outrageous
4 opinions, as he calls them, does that not justify my
5 statement that until that time, 1977, there had been no
6 independent research?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, first of all, I would have to see that statement by
8 Jackeln to make sure that it says what you say it says
9 and, secondly, then I would have to check it to see if he
10 justifies it by reference to the work of other historians.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: If, since 1955, approximately, the American National
12 Archives in Washington had on microfilm available freely
13 in the public domain microfilm copies of all Heinrich
14 Himmler’s papers, and all his handwritten telephone notes
15 and all his handwritten diaries so far as they were in
16 United States hands, is it not to be criticised that not
17 one single German historian or scholar or any other
18 historian or scholar had made any use of them until I came
19 along and used them?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are two points there. First of all, it depends on
21 what historians actually are researching as to what
22 sources they consult. Secondly, of course, it depends on
23 the use they make of them. Trying to cut this discussion
24 short, I do not dispute that you have been the first
25 person to read and discover many documents. I am not
26 disputing that at all. What I am disputing is the fact
. P-153
1 that you criticise other historians for relying on weak
2 and unprofessional evidence, and quoting each other for
3 the last 45 years, without providing any substantiation of
4 those statements whatsoever.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, I agree with you, but is it not true that at
6 the time I wrote Hitler’s War in 1977, this was a
7 perfectly justified criticism to make, and that nobody had
8 done the research until I came along?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Research on what, Mr Irving?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Heinrich Himmler’s handwritten telephone notes, for
11 example. We have 300 pages of Heinrich Himmler’s
12 handwritten telephone notes; you would imagine that one
13 historian would have bothered to transcribe them.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but you state in 1991 that conventional historians of
15 the Jewish Holocaust have not consulted the Himmler
16 telephone notes and pocket diaries, and historians have
17 certainly used them between 1977 and 1991.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: By that time they had come along and started using them,
19 that is correct, but I published the original introduction
20 with an addendum. But, in the light of what we have been
21 saying in the last 20 minutes, is not your judgment that
22 I do not deserve the title of historian and do not deserve
23 the title of scholar rather harsh and unjustified? Would
24 you be prepared to reconsider that opinion now?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is harsh, but I do not think it is
26 unjustified. It is not a question of what you discover or
. P-154
1 what you bring to light, it is a question of what you do
2 with the material that you have got.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: If what I did with it was make available my transcripts of
4 the Himmler telephone notes immediately to all other
5 historians by placing them in the archives in Munich, is
6 that reprehensible?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is thoroughly commendable but that is not what I
8 mean. What I mean is what you do with it in the way that
9 you interpret it, which we still have not got on to.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: But, if I deliberately and duplicitously misinterpret or
11 distort a document and simultaneously place the document
12 in the public domain in easily legible form, it is rather
13 self-defeating because then all the good historians and
14 all the scholars, as they call themselves, will come along
15 and point out the fact that I have been duplicitous. Is
16 that not so?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ultimately yes, but, as I have said, it does require a
18 considerable research effort to do this.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: That presupposes that I have done it deliberately, that
20 duplicity is deliberate, does it not?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes indeed.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: If the duplicity is there but has been inadvertent, then
23 that is precisely what an inadvertent duplicitous deceiver
24 would do. He would put stuff in the public domain without
25 realising that he had inadvertently mistranslated
26 something or distorted something. That would be the
. P-155
1 innocent interpretation to be placed on that kind of
2 activity, would it not?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is so convoluted that I find it very difficult to
4 follow.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is really quite straightforward.
6 MR IRVING: The genuine deceiver would not simultaneously place
7 the clue to his deceit in the public domain, would he?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah well, let me make two points there. One is that in the
9 end you are not going to be able to keep them out of the
10 public domain. That is going to be very difficult and, of
11 course, a number of the documents which you misinterpret
12 and manipulate are in the public domain anyway.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you say that I misinterpreted and distorted them
14 deliberately? Is this your contention?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that my contention. You know there is a difference
16 between, as it were, negligence, which is random in its
17 effect, i.e. if you are simply a sloppy or bad historian,
18 the mistakes you make will be all over the place. They
19 will not actually support any particular point of view.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Like the example I gave of the waiter who always gives
21 wrong change but only in his favour. That is not random?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. The waiter sometimes gives too much change. That is
23 random.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have never yet met a waiter who has given me too much
25 change.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the other hand, if all the mistakes are in the same
. P-156
1 direction in the support of a particular thesis, then I do
2 not think that is mere negligence. I think that is a
3 deliberate manipulation and deception. Let me give a
4 parallel.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: A short parallel, please.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All right, a short parallel.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, as long as you like. We are now on
8 something which is central and important.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Thank you. I refer to this in my report. There was a
10 very bitter controversy nearly 20 years ago now over a
11 young Marxist historian in America called David Abraham,
12 who wrote a book about the support of industrialists and
13 agricultural pressure groups for the Nazis in the late
14 Weimar Republic and he was accused of massive
15 falsification and manipulation of the source material.
16 And in his reply he admitted that his German had been bad,
17 he had researched very quickly and he had made a lot of
18 mistakes but he claimed that it had been simple
19 incompetence and mere negligence and that his mistakes
20 counted in many cases against him. Then indeed he was
21 able to show one or two instances of this, but his critics
22 I think succeeded in showing that the general tendency of
23 his mistakes was to exaggerate the support that
24 industrialists gave to the coming of a Nazi government.
25 Therefore, I think quite rightly, they were able to, as it
26 were, convict him of manipulating the evidence. So I
. P-157
1 think there is a distinction to be made there that is
2 really quite a clear one.
3 MR IRVING: That is a fair example to give and I am sure his
4 Lordship was quite right to allow you to develop it at
5 length. Did this Abraham simultaneously donate his entire
6 research materials to a public domain archive where all
7 his critics could immediately catch him out?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They were already in archives, most of which had wide
9 access.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is how he was caught out?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it make sense for somebody who had limited and
13 privileged access to papers by virtue of having read
14 Heinrich Himmler’s very difficult handwriting, for
15 example, simultaneously to make records available to his
16 potential critics if he was going to act in a deliberately
17 deceitful way?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me say there is a number of instances where I think
19 that you have made it very difficult, deliberately
20 difficult, for other researchers to track down the sources
21 of what you say.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I would like one example, please?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: One example is the testimony of Police Officer Hoffmann in
24 the 1924 Hitler trial, where you simply refer to microfilm
25 transcripts. Another one would be in your references to
26 Ingrid Wecker to source some of your views on the
. P-158
1 Reichskristallnacht. There are others which I detail in
2 the report which do make it very time consuming and very
3 difficult to track down.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Obviously I cannot answer your points here because
5 I cannot lead evidence, but will you take it, Professor,
6 that we have dealt with, not the Wecker matter, but we
7 have dealt with the microfilm matter quite extensively
8 under cross-examination. I am sure his Lordship will look
9 that up in due course. On the microfilm of the Hitler
10 treason trial in 1924, my Lord, we dealt with that. I can
11 remind your Lordship that Professor Evans was using the
12 printed edition of the trial and I was using the original
13 three microfilms of the 8,000 pages or so of the
14 transcripts.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid I do not have that, to be honest,
16 in my mind at the moment.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The printed edition is a complete edition of the
18 microfilm.
19 MR IRVING: The printed edition appeared, did it not, several
20 years after the microfilms did?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Relatively recently.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You could have been more precise in your references.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Am I not right in saying the printed edition appeared
25 several years after my Hermann Goring biography was
26 published and so I could not possibly have referenced it
. P-159
1 from the printed edition?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying you should have referenced the printed
3 edition. I am simply saying first of all the printed
4 edition is the same as the microfilm edition because you
5 disputed that in cross-examination, and secondly I am
6 saying that you made it difficult to consult your source,
7 which is the microfilm edition, because you did not give
8 any precise reference.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you looked at the microfilms of that treason trial?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No I have not. I have seen the printed edition.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with whether they have frame numbers or
12 not?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You do not give the frame numbers.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, but would you accept that, if they do not have frame
15 numbers then you cannot give frame number references?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If that is the case, yes, but you can of course be helpful
17 to the reader by pointing to roughly where it comes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you putting, Mr Irving, that these
19 microfiche did not have frame reference numbers?
20 MR IRVING: I had to leave it exactly the way I said it my
21 Lord.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the answer to my question?
23 MR IRVING: I put to the witness the possibility that it had no
24 frame numbers in which case I would not have been able to
25 quote them.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am asking you a question though and I think
. P-160
1 I am entitled to because I want to know how you are
2 putting your case. Are you making it an allegation which
3 is part of your case that these particular microfiche did
4 not have frame numbers, so that that was the reason why
5 you could not accurately refer?
6 MR IRVING: To be perfectly frank, my Lord, it is 12 years
7 since I wrote the book and I cannot remember. But that
8 would be one logical reason why I did not give frame
9 numbers where normally I do give frame numbers, as your
10 Lordship is aware.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But you did not provide the dates, did you, for when the
12 testimony was given, for example, which would be helpful
13 to the reader?
14 MR IRVING: That again I cannot tell you without looking at the
15 book. Would you go to page 32, please, paragraph 2.3.6?
16 You have been very harsh about just about every other
17 Hitler historian have you not? Every Hitler biography,
18 you do not find words of praise for any of them?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not a lot, no.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Joachim Fest is overblown and over-praised?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is not “every other” of course. There have been
22 scores, hundreds, of Hitler biographies.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: These are the major ones.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: These are the leading ones, that is right, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: These are the main ones. You describe Joachim Fest, his
26 book as being overblown and overpraised?
. P-161
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You describe John Toland’s work as hopelessly inaccurate.
3 You are relatively kind about Alan Bullock, which is,
4 I suppose, you call his book “for the time very credible”
5 which is a kind of back handed complement, is it not?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was written about five years after the war, I think,
7 immediately after the war.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not have nice words to say about anybody really,
9 apart from Ian Kershaw on the next page.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is true.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now that you know that he wrote to us, apologising that
12 his knowledge of German was very limited —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know that, Mr Irving, because I have not seen the
14 document that you are referring to.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I tell you that he wrote us a letter apologising that
16 he could not give evidence for this case because his
17 knowledge of German was too limited, would you accept —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I will not. I will have to see the letter before
19 I accept it.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: If anybody wrote a letter saying that his knowledge of
21 German was very limited, would you say that he could not
22 have a thorough knowledge of the archival material which
23 is what you say in lines 2 and 3?
24 MR RAMPTON: I do think in this particular instance, most of
25 time I have not intervened because I know that Mr Irving
26 is not a professional advocate and he gives evidence all
. P-162
1 the time while he is cross-examining, which I would never
2 be allowed to do, without producing material. In this
3 case I would like to see the letter if it is to be relied
4 upon.
5 MR IRVING: We will produce the letter. There is no problem
6 about that, my Lord.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is a fair request so perhaps
8 tomorrow morning you can do that.
9 MR IRVING: Certainly. If Mr Rampton has any criticisms to
10 make of the way that I am cross-examining, I am sure that
11 your Lordship would not object to him raising his
12 objections at the time.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If and when he does, then I will deal with it
14 and in the meantime I am trying, as I have said many
15 times, to make allowance for the fact that you are not as
16 familiar as some of us are with the rules.
17 MR IRVING: I am also trying not to lead evidence. I have
18 tried to restrict it to asking questions in difficult
19 circumstances.
20 When you say in the fifth line of that page 33
21 that there are hundreds of historians, so that you rather
22 imply that my criticism is a bit overreaching, that
23 I imply that I am the only one with a thorough knowledge,
24 and of course there are hundreds of historians, would you
25 accept that that applies to the situation now at the end
26 of the 20th century, the beginning of the 21st century,
. P-163
1 rather than back in the 1970s when there were relatively
2 few who had this knowledge of the archives. Is that
3 correct?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the point I am making there is that, to quote the
5 previous sentence, that simply to concentrate on
6 biographies of Hitler is to deliver a completely
7 misleading account of the state of research in the field
8 in which you work. As I say, somewhere in the report,
9 I think research in the archival material really began in
10 a serious way in the 1960s and the 1970s, but of course we
11 are concerned here not just with the 1977 edition of your
12 book but also with the 1991 edition of your book, in which
13 you make the same sweeping condemnations of professional
14 historians as you did in 1977. If you think that the
15 situation has change in the intervening period, then
16 I think you should have said so.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I draw attention, witness, purely to the fact that you are
18 talking about there are hundreds, and that this report is
19 written now of course and not in the 1970s, and would you
20 in the 1970s or 1960s have said there are hundreds of
21 historians who were equally capable? Would you have
22 written that sentence back at the time that I wrote these
23 books?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In the 60s I would probably have said scores, by the 70s
25 probably hundreds. If you take the Institut fur
26 Zeitgeschichte in Munich alone, they have a very
. P-164
1 substantial staff, and there are many other institutes,
2 the Institute of Contemporary History in London, Yad
3 Vashim and many other institutes which were around in the
4 1970s which did employ professional historians who did
5 archival work on Germany in the second world war.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Witness, what is your opinion of the Nuremberg records,
7 the printed Nuremberg volumes, the blue series and the
8 American dream series, the Nazi conspiracy and aggression,
9 would you consider them to be a source that you would
10 recommend to students to use as source books?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. You use them yourself.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: In what respect do you suggest that I use them myself? Do
13 I use them as a reference to go to, to check up on
14 something, or do I use them as the basic quarry in which
15 I mine for the original sources on which to write books?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You use them in your work. You use them in this
17 proceedings.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you not familiar with these strictures that I place on
19 the use of the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials? Are
20 you not familiar with the fact that I allege that there
21 are discrepancies?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Would you give me an example?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I can only ask you questions.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Do not feel inhibited to that sort of
25 question.
26 MR IRVING: I will give an example in this direction, but first
. P-165
1 of all I will ask a question, if I may. Witness, have you
2 ever listened to the wire or tape recordings of the
3 proceedings at Nuremberg and compared them with the blue
4 volumes, the printed text?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I have not.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now I will answer your question. I have done precisely
7 that for one entire day and compared the blue volumes with
8 the testimony given by a man whose biography I wrote,
9 Field Marshal Milsch, and that was sufficient to put me
10 off those transcripts for life.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, first of all, I think I would like to see an
12 accurate transcript and the inaccurate transcript, and
13 secondly, Mr Irving, you have just criticised me for
14 making sweeping statements about your work on the basis of
15 reading a selection of it, and here you are, having read
16 one day’s transcript of the Nuremberg trials, and
17 condemning the lot.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, if you find one source is polluted, would you not
19 tend to go to a different well spring and drink from
20 somewhere else, put it like that? You would not just say,
21 well, just this one cupful of water had the strichnine in
22 it but the rest is probably OK? Would you put it like
23 that?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that is a very happy comparison.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the bound volumes, the American
26 printed volumes, of the documents that were used at
. P-166
1 Nuremberg?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you noticed one distinguishing feature about the
4 selection of documents that is made? Would I be right in
5 saying that the documents that are printed are purely the
6 documents used for the prosecution and that not one single
7 Defence document has been printed in those 46 volumes?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is right, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think that is right?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this suggest to you that this might possibly lead to
12 a skewed or distorted version of history if one was to
13 write history relying extensively or partly or to any
14 significant extent on a corpus of evidence where only the
15 prosecution case was in print and the Defence case was not
16 represented at all?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: As far as exhibits are concerned?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you are quite right in saying, if you relied on
20 the Nuremberg documents exclusively, and you did read
21 anything else, then of course that would be very
22 unsatisfactory.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I refer you back to your paragraph 2.3.7 where you refer
24 admonishingly (if the word exists) to the major
25 documentary collections that have been generally available
26 to historians for decades, tons of captured German
. P-167
1 documents to prepare their indictments in the Nuremberg
2 trials and many of these were printed in the published
3 record of the trials. You do not mention the fact that
4 the only ones printed are the prosecution documents, do
5 you?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The point I am trying to make, Mr Irving, in this
7 paragraph, is simply that there was an enormous amount of
8 material available for studying the Third Reich and its
9 policies in the Second World War. That is all I am trying
10 to make. I am not making any statements about how
11 reliable any of these documentary recollections might be.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but just on the basis of the last two or three
13 minutes of cross-examination, it does appear that I have
14 applied a more critical mind to these document collections
15 than you have, and you are the scholar and I am the
16 amateur. You are the gentleman and I am the player.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That may appear to you. It certainly does not appear to
18 me. It is very, very general. It is a very general
19 paragraph, vast new masses of documents, both official and
20 private in provenance have become available, widely
21 available to scholars. This is not an area of history
22 like the 5th century when historians had to make do with
23 sparse and obscure source material. I am simply trying to
24 make the point to help the court reach an assessment of
25 this case, that this is an area where there is an enormous
26 mass of material available. That is all I am trying to
. P-168
1 say. You know, I am trying to say it as briefly as I can,
2 to keep the report short. I do not then want to go into a
3 great long disposition about how much is reliable and how
4 much is not.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are saying that this paragraph is waffle, really, is
6 it not?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have spent enough time on this
8 paragraph, Mr Irving, I am going to say just this as
9 well. I have some sympathy with you because, after all,
10 these first 70 to 100 pages are there, and they contain
11 material which I fully understand you regard as
12 offensive. I am not saying you are right to regard them
13 as being offensive, and that is why you are going through
14 them, but in the end the bit that matters starts about
15 page 106.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The detailed criticisms?
17 MR IRVING: You are absolutely right, my Lord, but I would
18 regard this part of the cross-examination as going to the
19 credibility of the witness.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Well, in parts I think it has, and
21 again I cannot absolutely stop you.
22 MR IRVING: My Lord, you can stop me at any time.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can. What I mean is that I am not going to
24 stop you because I think some at any rate of these
25 questions based on these passages are probably
26 legitimate. If I give you another hint, and it is only a
. P-169
1 hint at this stage, that I am not really finding this of
2 any particular value to the task I have to perform, then
3 perhaps you would pass on through it a bit more rapidly.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Perhaps I can help too?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well —-
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At least one of the questions which Mr Irving has asked is
7 already dealt with in my responses to his written
8 questions, so we are going —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has not had a chance to look at those.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know. I think that is the problem.
11 MR IRVING: At the risk of testing your Lordship’s patience,
12 still on page 33, three lines from the bottom: “This is
13 not an area of history like the 5th Century when
14 historians have to make do with sparse and obscure
15 resource material to reconstruct what happened.”
16 Is this not precisely what we have been
17 struggling to do for the last five weeks in this
18 courtroom?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not think so.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: We have been struggling to reconstruct what happened not
21 on the Eastern Front where we agree the documentation is
22 there, but what happened, for example, to the Jews from
23 Europe?
24 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I must intervene again. I think
25 Mr Irving really has a misconception about what this case
26 is about. We have not been struggling to reconstruct that
. P-170
1 at all. What we have been struggling to reconstruct is
2 Mr Irving’s state of mind.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That true is, but is he not entitled to make
4 the point to Professor Evans that one of the problems all
5 historians have dealing, for example, with the issue of
6 Hitler’s knowledge of a genocidal gas extermination
7 programme, that actually the documentary, leave aside the
8 other material, is very sparse?
9 MR RAMPTON: That is a perfectly fair point, but I do believe
10 Mr Irving is — that is a completely fair point and that
11 is what the question I think started out as being —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it did, yes.
13 MR RAMPTON: But it turned into what I have repeatedly
14 perceived to be a misconception of what this case is
15 about. This is not some historical tribunal of enquiry.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think that does need to be said quite
17 often, I agree.
18 MR RAMPTON: It does.
19 MR IRVING: It should not be a tribunal of historical enquiry,
20 my Lord. On November 4th I did plead with your Lordship
21 not to allow it to become an enquiry into what happened,
22 because my submission was that this was not what that case
23 was about.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think everybody is agreed about that.
25 MR IRVING: I think that now Mr Rampton realizes that
26 particular bear skin has floated away down the river, he
. P-171
1 is now trying to get back on to the other track again.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure I follow what is meant by that.
3 MR IRVING: I translated the German.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, bear skins in German?
5 MR IRVING: Yes.
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but I still do not understand it.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will not struggle to. We will get on.
8 Next question.
9 MR IRVING: I only have two more points to make, my Lord, in
10 that case. This is at the foot of page 35, near the foot
11 of it, paragraph 2.4.1. You are talking about evidence
12 given after the event in the form of testimony in a public
13 trial is relatively sound. Unless Mr Rampton has an
14 objection, this is again quite a key issue.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a perfectly fair point.
16 MR IRVING: Do you maintain, therefore, that what is stated in
17 any tribunal, regardless of how long after the war, is
18 sound?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I have put the word “relatively” in there, and then
20 of course I add, well, two sentences either side of that.
21 The first is, the greater in distance the time of events
22 to which they relate the more critically they must be
23 examined, I think that is true.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a secondary source, is it not?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I mean sources after the event, sources which are produced
26 afterwards and rely on memory or the work of other
. P-172
1 historians, and secondly that this court testimony must of
2 course be assessed by an historian as to the purpose or
3 purposes with which it was given. I am saying you have to
4 regard it with caution.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As you do all material. It is, of course, the greater in
7 distance in time the events the more critically one has to
8 look.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am only going to deal with this very briefly, my Lord,
10 and this is the question: Do you ever apply your mind,
11 witness, to the question of what pressures of a
12 psychological nature or other nature may have been applied
13 to a witness to make statements on which you have relied?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you try to put your mind inside the mind of the
15 person giving the evidence, and you ask yourself what
16 interest they would have in saying one thing or another.
17 So, prima facie, it would seem obvious that a former Nazi
18 who was deeply implicated in the crimes of Nazism would
19 have an interest in trying to exculpate himself in giving
20 evidence. In terms of what pressures were put on
21 somebody, then I think you have to look for evidence of
22 pressures.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I stop you there. You say a former Nazi might try to
24 exculpate himself. Would there be a temptation in a
25 Fuhrer state to exculpate himself by saying that he was
26 acting on higher orders, regardless of whether or not it
. P-173
1 was true?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We are talking about a different period now. We are
3 talking about during the Third Reich?
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, that is what we are interested in here.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think trials after the war of Nazi
6 Generals.
7 MR IRVING: Trials after the war, but suppose a General or an
8 SS Obergruppenfuhrer like Karl Wolf or someone like that
9 put on trial, would there be a temptation, hypothetically,
10 for him to say: “Well, I did not do this on my own
11 initiative. I was told it was the Fuhrer’s orders”, just
12 for an example? Would there be a temptation do you think?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think that would be difficult, because the classic
14 defence “I was only obeying orders” has not been one that
15 has been widely accepted by courts.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it was specifically excluded at Nuremberg, was it
17 not? It was in the permitted at Nuremberg, the high
18 orders defence?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about in the German courts, was it permitted?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us take the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials of 1963 to 4,
22 and there was a very extensive affidavit there by
23 historians which tried to sketch out the possibilities
24 there were for evading orders, and indeed historians and
25 law courts have always been exercised by the problems
26 posed by that particular defence. On the whole I do not
. P-174
1 think it is one that would recommend itself to people. It
2 is far better to say that you did not know about it than
3 simply, yes, you did know but you were only obeying
4 orders.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: How reliable would human memory be after 20 years, do you
6 think?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not a psychologist. I think that one has to be one
8 has to be sceptical and critical about what people say,
9 but you cannot dismiss it out of hand. Many of the
10 interviews which you conducted 20 or 30 years after the
11 events involved, I think that one has to be very critical
12 and very sceptical about what these people are saying and
13 ask why they were saying it and what interest they had in
14 taking the line they were taking. But that does not mean
15 one dismisses it out of hand. You go through the normal
16 historical procedures of comparing what they say with the
17 documentation that is available, preferable contemporary
18 documentation.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I have now reached the end of my prepared
20 questions. I had prepared to ask further questions today
21 but that was on the area you were not going to allow.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that was on bundle E?
23 MR IRVING: On bundle E, yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR IRVING: You have promised me additional time for dealing
26 with Professor Evans.
. P-175
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am not going to compel you to carry
2 on if you have run out of questions.
3 MR IRVING: I have questions prepared here but not in a form
4 that would be useful to the court.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think I have probably removed a
6 couple of hours by saying that you should deal with bundle
7 E later.
8 MR IRVING: By way of submission.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would not say I have removed. I have
10 postponed the two hours it will probably take. So I am
11 not critical by of you for having run out, but you have
12 run out. There is nothing you want to deal with now?
13 I cannot immediately think of anything. Mr Rampton, can
14 you?
15 MR RAMPTON: I cannot. I think it would be unsatisfactory for
16 a number of reasons for Mr Irving to go back into the
17 witness box —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it would.
19 MR RAMPTON: — for further cross-examination.
20 MR IRVING: I would be quite happy to go back into the witness
21 box.
22 MR RAMPTON: No. I was going to offer to cross-examine him
23 tomorrow, but your Lordship said, no, that is not a good
24 idea.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is even less a good idea now.
26 MR RAMPTON: So do I. All I can suggest is that we go away and
. P-176
1 prepare, is it Dr Fox tomorrow?
2 MR IRVING: He is coming tomorrow morning.
3 MR RAMPTON: He will not be very long.
4 MR IRVING: Because he will not be allowed to adumbrate on the
5 matters that he was going to I think.
6 MR RAMPTON: That is a matter for his Lordship, but if he
7 strays much beyond what is in his written statement then
8 I shall have something to say.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not yet re-read his statement.
10 MR RAMPTON: It is quite a long statement. It is somewhat
11 representative, but it is quite long. Normally speaking
12 nowadays, judge alone particularly, the witness statement
13 stands as the evidence and if I do not cross-examine the
14 witness goes away again.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I have not played it quite in that way.
16 MR RAMPTON: There is flexibility.
17 MR IRVING: As he is an expert on the police decodes, he is one
18 of the world’s leading experts on that, I had intended
19 asking him questions about those, but if Mr Rampton
20 objects —-
21 MR RAMPTON: I would need to know what he was going to say.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you want to thrash this out? If he maybe
23 not going to be able to give any admissible evidence, it
24 is better that he does not have to come all the way here.
25 Do you want to have an argument about it now?
26 MR RAMPTON: No. I have nothing to say about what evidence he
. P-177
1 might give about decodes because it is not in his witness
2 statement. If he is going to give evidence about the
3 decrypts, I must have a witness statement in advance and
4 he had better not come tomorrow at all.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Technically that is right. What is he going
6 to say, do you hope?
7 MR IRVING: I was going to question him as an expert on the
8 Bletchley Park operations and the extent of the decodes,
9 and what one could have expected, what he has seen in the
10 decodes, the work he has done on them. He has spent six
11 months of his life reading right through them.
12 MR RAMPTON: I think in all the circumstances I do need to have
13 prior notice of that.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just focus to see quite what the issue
15 is going to be? The evidence so far is, and correct me if
16 I am wrong about this, is, yes, they would have been able
17 to intercept and decode what you might call middle level
18 kind of communications.
19 MR IRVING: Also from Himmler downwards, from Himmler to the
20 Eastern Front.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really the issue. I suppose you want
22 to see how far you can take it up the —-
23 MR IRVING: We could usefully ask him, has he seen any Hitler
24 orders of any nature whatsoever, and also what he has and
25 what he has not seen in these archives.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is certainly relevant, but I think
. P-178
1 Mr Rampton does need to have advance notice so that he can
2 consult his own experts and put his case in
3 cross-examination.
4 MR RAMPTON: I would need, if this is to be taken seriously in
5 the context of this case, which I can see it might be —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is certainly relevant.
7 MR RAMPTON: I quite accept it is relevant. I need to have
8 chapter and verse from Dr Fox on paper. I then need to
9 have time to have the accuracy of what he says checked by
10 others.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fair.
12 MR RAMPTON: I really cannot just accept it like that.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If they were intercepted, I am surprised they
14 have not surfaced.
15 MR IRVING: If what has surfaced.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If high level messages from Himmler and so
17 were intercepted at Bletchley on matters relevant to this
18 case —-
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, with respect, I have brought to the
20 attention of your Lordship already the ones of December
21 1st and December 4th 1941 where Himmler orders, says to
22 Jackelm, “You have exceeded your authority and the
23 guidelines. Any further arbitrary actions will be
24 punished”, you will remember.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was a Bletchley intercept, was it?
26 MR IRVING: That was from Himmler to Jackelm intercepted by the
. P-179
1 British, yes. It is a very important message on which
2 I rely very strongly. It indicates that one would have
3 expected messages to be there.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: As I say, it is plainly relevant. But I do
5 not suggest you need to do it in huge detail given the
6 pressures you are under.
7 MR IRVING: I did not want to go beyond the actual messages I
8 have already produced, my Lord. I wanted to ask him then
9 on the basis of his expertise what else, what the scope of
10 the documentation is and has he seen anything, and does
11 the documentation cover the entire spectrum from the most
12 trivial matters like parking tickets, all the way up to
13 these mass shootings on the Eastern Front, and so on.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I think Mr Rampton is entitled to
15 is —-
16 MR IRVING: A little notice.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — probably on one page, like one of the
18 things you do for me, just really giving the gist of what
19 he is going to say. That is enough.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I do, but I also will likely need to time to
21 get some help with it because I cannot ask questions about
22 something about which I know nothing. If I am told that
23 I should not take Dr Fox’s word for what he says, then
24 I have to go and do some — somebody has got to go and do
25 some work.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see that. We may have to lose Dr Fox from
. P-180
1 his Friday slot.
2 MR IRVING: We cannot do this by Friday quite clearly. In that
3 case I will have to introduce him sometime next week, but
4 I will fax to the Defence solicitors a one page proof of
5 what he intends to say.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Dr Fox is relatively available, is he?
7 MR IRVING: Except on Mondays. He cannot come on Monday. He
8 is a lecturer I think at the University College or Jews
9 College or University of Canterbury somewhere.
10 MR RAMPTON: Can I suggest that he be deferred until after
11 Professor Evans has finished?
12 MR IRVING: Yes.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is a good thing anyway.
14 MR RAMPTON: It is much better from your Lordship’s point of
15 view and from the Professor’s point of view.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not sitting on Friday that is now
17 obvious.
18 MR RAMPTON: No.
19 MR IRVING: I hope your Lordship does not begrudge me the fact
20 that I have not got another 45 minutes?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. We will adjourn now.
22 (The witness stood down)
23 (The court adjourned until Monday, 14th February 2000)
24
25
26
. P-181