I had barely finished reading the note, when Judge Gray turned to our side of the courtroom: “Mr Rampton.” Rampton remained seated and, without looking up, mumbled, “I do not think I have any further questions.” He omitted the traditional “your Lordship” and did not thank the witness. He could just as easily have been declining an offer of a cup of tea. In fact, Rampton, an unfailingly polite man, would have declined that offer far more graciously. Even Irving seemed surprised by this turn of events. He turned to Rampton as if to ascertain whether he had heard right and then asked Judge Gray, “Is the witness released, my Lord?” The judge said, “Yes.”20 MacDonald, looking a bit startled, turned to Judge Gray and then to Irving, as if to determine precisely what he should do. Irving had told him to expect to be on the stand for a few days. In less than thirty minutes it was over. Looking like a boxer who entered the ring for a much-hyped fight only to be knocked out in the first seconds of the first round, the professor rose, descended from the witness box, and, still shaking his head in surprise, took a seat near Irving.
A few minutes later Gray called a short break. Waves of anger still roiling in me, I turned to Anthony: “We must talk.” We huddled near the wall of red and blue loose-leaf notebooks. I consciously turned my back to the public gallery so that the press would not see my face. In a voice that was more demanding than inquisitive, I said, “How could Rampton let this guy go without asking any questions?” Anthony, after listening intently, said, “The judge was unimpressed. He thought him an academic schlemiel who didn’t understand what this trial was about. Had Rampton questioned him, MacDonald would have expounded on his wacky theories. Judge Gray might have thought they had some intellectual gravitas. This was the optimum forensic tactic.” For the past four years, every time Anthony, Rampton, or James told me that forensic considerations dictated a certain strategy, I conceded. I wanted to give testimony. They said I should not, so I did not. I wanted to talk to the press. They said not to, so I kept silent. This, however, felt like too much. “This trial,” I told Anthony, “is not just about forensics. The press is present. We should have exposed this guy’s ideas as antisemitic.” Anthony’s response was short. “We did not have to. MacDonald did that himself.” I was unconvinced but knew it was pointless to say anything else. The moment had passed and the opportunity was gone. I was about to return to my seat when Anthony touched me on the arm and, in a reassuring tone, said, “Trust me, it was the right thing to do.”
Just then, Professor Dan Jacobson of the University of London approached us and in a voice laced with sarcasm, laughingly said, “That witness has a small dull mind possessed by a large dud idea.”21 Anthony raised his eyebrows and looked at me over the rims of his glasses. His expression clearly said, “What did I tell you?” Not quite willing to let go of my anger, I said nothing and turned to my computer. I silently acknowledged that maybe—just maybe—Rampton and Anthony were right.
ELEVEN
EXONERATING HITLER, EXCORIATING THE ALLIES
After MacDonald stepped down, Irving reentered the witness box and Rampton resumed his cross-examination. I was surprised when Rampton began by referring to the permit to inspect “Feldöfen” (“field ovens”)—the incineration grids on which the Germans had burned victims’ bodies—which had come up when Van Pelt was on the stand. Irving, who had mistranslated the word as “field kitchens,” had then attributed his mistake to the stress of doing the translation at 2 A.M. His excuse was hardly convincing. Irving’s knowledge of German was too good to allow for such mistakes, even at 2 A.M. Moreover, his supposed mistake conveniently moved in the direction of the exoneration of the Germans. I had not, however, given it much thought because it seemed a small point. Now, Rampton handed Irving a document and asked him to identify it. Irving acknowledged that it was a translation of the “Feldöfen” document. It had been downloaded from his website on November 24, 1998. Here too the word had been translated as “field kitchens.” I realized that this was what Thomas had been looking for when the topic came up a week ago. He had realized that he had seen the same mistranslation on Irving’s website over a year earlier. Clearly, Irving’s use of “kitchens” bore no relationship to the stress of the trial. Irving insisted that he had simply made the same mistake twice. Rampton, skeptical that Irving would have inadvertently repeated such a basic error, disagreed. “No, Mr Irving. It was a repetition of a deliberate mistranslation.” Irving, ignoring or having forgotten that he had just acknowledged that his translation was a mistake, now protested that Germans worldwide had emailed him that it was an “entirely acceptable and intelligible . . . [and] plausible translation.”1
SWITCHING DATES AND INVENTING WITNESSES: INNOCENT MISTAKES?
Rampton, proceeding with his review of how Irving distorted documents in order to “prove” his preexisting conclusions, turned to a two-day meeting Hitler and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop held with Admiral Horthy, the head of the Hungarian government in April 1943. They demanded that he act more forcefully against Hungarian Jews. Horthy had instituted draconian antisemitic legislation but had not gone as far as the Germans wanted.2
On April 16, the first day of the meeting, Horthy protested that he had “done everything which one could decently undertake against the Jews, but one could surely not murder them or kill them. . . .” Hitler assured Horthy that this was unnecessary; the Jews could be placed in concentration camps as had been done in Slovakia. (In fact, Slovakian Jews had not been placed in concentration camps. They had been murdered in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and Maidanek.) The next day, when the topic came up again, Horthy repeated his protests that “he surely couldn’t beat them to death.” At that point, Ribbentrop said, “The Jews must either be annihilated or taken to concentration camps. There was no other way.” Hitler followed Ribbentrop’s murderous proposition with a ruthless harangue. Jews should be “treated like tuberculosis bacilli.” He declared that “even innocent natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so that no harm was caused” and warned that “nations who did not rid themselves of Jews perished.”3
In Hitler’s War (1977), Irving presented a convoluted description of this meeting, one that—not surprisingly—painted Hitler and Ribbentrop in a far better light than did the transcript of the meeting. He buried Ribbentrop’s statement that Jews had to be either “annihilated or taken to concentration camps” in a footnote, thereby, as Evans observed, “Marginalizing it almost out of existence.”4 Then he justified Hitler’s concerns about Hungarian Jews by linking them to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. “In Warsaw, the fifty thousand Jews surviving in the ghetto were on the point of staging an armed uprising . . . Poland should have been an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler argued.” Irving’s suggestion that it was the Warsaw uprising that prompted Hitler’s concerns about Hungarian Jewry was a complete fabrication. The uprising began on April 19, 1943, two days after this meeting. It could not, therefore, have been a reference point for Hitler.5 (Furthermore, approximately 1,000 Jews fought the Germans in the Warsaw Ghetto, not 50,000, as Irving claimed.)
But this was not Irving’s most grievous misrepresentation of the meeting. According to Irving, on April 17, the second day of the meeting, “Horthy apologetically noted that he had done all he decently could against the Jews: ‘But they can hardly be murdered.’ . . . Hitler reassured him: ‘There is no need for that.’” Irving’s readers could have justifiably assumed that Hitler did not want them killed.6
Rampton asked where in the transcript of the second day of the meeting, April 17, one could find Horthy “apologetically” noting that the Jews could “hardly be murdered” or Hitler reassuring him that there was “no need for that”? Irving protested that he would need to review the transcript to find these quotes. As Irving began to flip through the transcript of the meeting, Judge Gray rather graciously counseled, “Take your time.” Rampton, however, suggested otherwise: “I would not trouble taking too much time, Mr Irving.” Time would not help Irving find the quotes on the transcript of the second
day because Hitler had said them on the first day. Rampton declared that Irving had moved them to day two in order to give the impression that the meeting had ended on a conciliatory note when, in fact, it had ended on a brutally murderous note with Hitler saying that the Jews must be put down as animals.7
Irving protested that Rampton was ascribing a devious motive to what was a “mix up of dates”—something that could happen to any author. Rampton rejected this explanation. “No, Mr Irving. . . . You were concerned that if left unvarnished . . . what Hitler said would appear to be fairly conclusive evidence that he intended the physical annihilation of the Jews.” Furthermore, the German historian Martin Broszat had alerted Irving to the “mix up” in 1977. Yet Irving did not fix it in the 1991 edition of Hitler’s War. Irving responded in the same way that he often did when he had been proven wrong. He dismissed the matter as irrelevant. “Whether it was said on one day or the next day, I do not think is of great moment.”8 Rampton did not respond and announced his intention to move on.
Rampton next charged that Irving had also engaged in a whitewashing of Hitler’s record in his presentation of the 1923 Nazi failed attempt to overthrow the Weimar government. Hitler, as party leader, was arrested and put on trial. According to Irving, a police sergeant had testified that Hitler, incensed by the ransacking and looting of a Jewish delicatessen, sent for the ex–army lieutenant who had led the raid and dismissed him from the party on the spot. “I shall see that no other nationalist unit allows you to join either!” Irving wrote that Göring—apparently amazed at Hitler’s admonishments to the looters—“goggled at this exchange.”9
When Evans and his researchers tried to check Irving’s rendition of the event, they discovered significant discrepancies between Irving’s version and the testimony given at the trial by a former police officer, Oberwachmeister Matthäus Hofmann. Hitler had sacked the lieutenant, but not for raiding the deli. He sacked him because he removed his party insignia during a raid on a Jewish store. Moreover, this raid had taken place well before the Putsch. Hitler did not send for the lieutenant; he simply happened to be in the room. Irving had made these “adjustments,” Evans contended, to make it look as if Hitler had aggressively punished those who engaged in antisemitic activities. Moreover, Irving failed to tell his readers that Hofmann was a long-term member of the Nazi Party, a loyal follower of Hitler, and someone who was, therefore, inclined to be quite biased in Hitler’s favor.10 Finally, Hofmann never mentioned that Göring was present, much less that he “goggled at this exchange.”
How, Rampton asked, did Irving know Göring was present or that he goggled? Irving declared, “That was author’s license.” Rampton responded, “You mean it was an invention . . . a piece of fiction.” Irving, sounding like he was lecturing Rampton, said, “When you write a book that is going to be read . . . you occasionally help the reader along. . . . Here is Adolf Hitler ticking off an Army lieutenant, one of his Nazis, for raiding a Jewish shop and throwing him out of the party for doing it. You would imagine that any other Nazi, like Göring standing nearby, is going to be . . . doing a double take . . . or am I wrong?” Rampton didn’t waste a minute: “You are completely wrong.” Irving, Rampton charged, had invented Göring’s presence to make it appear that Hitler had forcefully reprimanded the lieutenant. Irving insisted that he had drawn a “reasonable inference” when he placed an amazed Göring at the meeting.
Then, repeating the same explanation he had used to justify his addition of “All” to Judge Biddle’s comment “This I don’t believe,” Irving dismissed the matter as “only two words” which did not “make a big difference.” Rampton differed: “All your little fictions, your little tweaks of the evidence all tend in the same direction, exculpation of Adolf Hitler.”
In his rendition of the Putsch, Irving wrote that Hitler had sent “armed men . . . to requisition funds” from a Jewish firm that printed banknotes. Rampton asked what he meant by that. Smiling, Irving replied, “Oh, that was obviously some prank that they carried out.” Rampton’s voice rose a notch: “A prank?” Irving explained, “He sent them out to go and steal the entire contents of a bank to pay people back.” Heather was having difficulty suppressing a smile. Even Judge Gray did not mask his surprise: “He sent them out to rob the bank?” Irving responded, deadpan: “It is rather the same way as the great train robbers went to requisition funds.” The courtroom erupted in laughter at Irving’s Willie Sutton–like perspective on robbing banks. Irving, possibly feeling empowered by the laughter, told Rampton, “I do not know if you have read Noel Coward’s poems? This is the way the English write. . . . with a delicate touch.”11 Rampton, employing his own delicate touch, moved on.
HITLER AND KRISTALLNACHT: LIVID WITH RAGE?
Nowhere was Irving’s exculpation of Hitler more evident than in his depiction of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass (November 9–10, 1938). During this nationwide pogrom hundreds of synagogues were set aflame. Jewish businesses, shops, buildings, and homes were ransacked. Thousands of Jews were beaten and placed in concentration camps. According to Nazi figures, 91 people were murdered. However, when one takes into account the suicides and subsequent deaths from beatings and mistreatment sustained during the pogrom as well as the death of people arrested during Kristallnacht and incarcerated in concentration camps, as many as 1,000 people may have died. Irving argued that Goebbels orchestrated this event and did so without informing Hitler and those closest to him.
The pogrom took place on the fifteenth anniversary of the failed Putsch. Nazi Party leaders had gathered to mark the occasion in Munich. A German diplomat in Paris had died from gunshot wounds inflicted by a young Jew. Goebbels and Hitler met earlier in the evening for dinner. According to Irving, Goebbels did not tell Hitler that riots against Jews were already occurring in a number of cities. Hitler returned to his hotel, while Goebbels, addressing the veteran Nazi leaders at the Old Town Hall, told them to take revenge on the Jews for allegedly sponsoring the murder. Violent attacks against Jews spread throughout Germany. Irving claimed that Hitler and Himmler were totally unaware that anything untoward was happening until 1 A.M., when the synagogue next to their hotel began to burn. Heydrich, who had been in the hotel bar, learned of the conflagration and raced to inform them. According to Irving, Hitler was “livid with rage” and Himmler began “telex[ing] instructions to all the police authorities to restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish property, and halt any ongoing incidents.” Hitler was intent on “halt[ing] the madness.”12
Irving’s rendition of events was, we claimed, completely at odds with the documentary evidence. Early in the evening, when addressing the veteran party members at the Town Hall, Goebbels had spoken about the attacks that were already under way: “The Führer had decided . . . [that] such demonstrations were not to be prepared . . . [nor] organized by the party. In so far as they occurred spontaneously, they were, however, not to be opposed or stopped.” Rampton asked Irving to reconcile his claim that Hitler and Himmler were totally unaware of these outbreaks until the synagogue next to Munich’s Four Seasons Hotel began to burn, with Goebbels’s public statement earlier that evening that “the Führer had decided.” Goebbels would not, Rampton argued, “lie to a . . . gathering of old party comrades” about Hitler’s orders. Irving argued that Hitler assumed that Jews were simply “going to get ruffed [sic] up” but “it got out of hand.”13
How, Rampton continued, could he argue that Hitler and Himmler were ignorant when Himmler’s subordinate, Heinrich Müller, sent a telex at 11:55 P.M. to German police officials informing them that “actions against Jews, in particular against their synagogues, will very shortly take place across the whole of Germany. They are not to be interrupted.”14 Irving dismissed this as of no significance. About an hour and a half after this telex, Himmler and Heydrich sent another communiqué. Irving had described this telex as calling on Germans to “restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish property, and halt any ongoing incidents.” In fact, Rampton ob
served, it ordered that demonstrations against the Jews were “not to be hindered by the police.”15
Irving had not only distorted what happened during the pogrom; he also distorted what happened afterward. In Goebbels, Irving had written that Hess “ordered the Gestapo and the [Nazi] party’s courts to delve into the origins of the night’s violence and turn the culprits over to the public prosecutors.” Irving had given his readers the impression, Rampton argued, “that anybody found guilty of arson, looting, damage, assault, rape, murder or whatever, was going to prosecuted by the State judicial machinery.” In fact, Rampton continued, immediately after Kristallnacht the Ministry of Justice announced that those who damaged Jewish property were not to be prosecuted. Irving now protested to Rampton that he could not recall twelve years after writing the book what he intended to convey to his readers. Judge Gray was not so easily swayed. Referring to Irving’s description of post-Kristallnacht events, he said, “If I read that, I think I would be inclined to think that these people were going to be prosecuted by the criminal system of the country.”
Irving, no longer claiming he could not remember what he meant, now insisted that many violators had indeed been prosecuted by authorities for their behavior during the pogrom. Rampton disagreed, noting that in February 1939 the party court heard sixteen cases and in only two of them, both involving rapes, were the perpetrators turned over to the criminal courts. As for the other fourteen cases, the party court asked Hitler to quash the charges, even though they included shooting, beating, stabbing, and drowning of Jews. How, Rampton wondered, could Irving reconcile the quashing of these proceedings with his claim that the Gestapo would turn the culprits over to the prosecutors? When Irving insisted that his description of the treatment of the culprits was accurate, Judge Gray disagreed: “On the contrary, Mr Irving . . . . 14 of them never went to the criminal courts. . . . They just got a ticking off for raping and killing.”
Denial [Movie Tie-in] Page 21