"Adopting the approach set out earlier, my conclusion is that the passages complained of in their context and read collectively bear the following meanings all of which are defamatory of him [the applicant]: i that Irving is an apologist for and partisan of Hitler, who has resorted to the distortion of evidence; the manipulation and skewing of documents; the misrepresentation of data and the application of double standards to the evidence, in order to serve his own purpose of exonerating Hitler and portraying him as sympathetic towards the Jews; ii that Irving is one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial, who has on numerous occasions denied that the Nazis embarked upon the deliberate planned extermination of Jews and has alleged that it is a Jewish deception that gas chambers were used by the Nazis at Auschwitz as a means of carrying out such extermination; iii that Irving, in denying that the Holocaust happened, has misstated evidence; misquoted sources; falsified statistics; misconstrued information and bent historical evidence so that it conforms to his neo-fascist political agenda and ideological beliefs; iv that Irving has allied himself with representatives of a variety of extremist and anti-semitic groups and individuals and on one occasion agreed to participate in a conference at which representatives of terrorist organisations were due to speak; v that Irving, in breach of an agreement which he had made and without permission, removed and transported abroad certain microfiches of Goebbels' diaries, thereby exposing them to a real risk of damage; vi that Irving is discredited as an historian. Subject to one point disputed by the applicant, those conclusions as to meaning are accepted by the parties. The point at issue is whether a statement at p 213 of Denying the Holocaust bears the meaning that the applicant approves of the internment and the killing of the Jews in concentration camps. It is stated that another author, "echoing David Irving, argues that the Nazi 'internment' of Jews was justified because of Chaim Weizmann's September 1939 declaration that the Jews of the world would fight Nazism"
"Now we feel … the great weight that is due to the decision of a judge of first instance whenever, in a conflict of testimony, the demeanour and manner of the witnesses who have been seen and heard by him are … material elements in the consideration of the truthfulness of their statements. But the parties to the cause are nevertheless entitled, as well on questions of fact as on questions of law, to demand the decision of the Court of Appeal, and that Court cannot excuse itself from the task of weighing conflicting evidence and drawing its own inferences and conclusions, though it should always bear in mind that it has neither seen nor heard the witnesses, and should make due allowance in this respect."
"My assessment is that as a military historian, Irving has much to commend him. For his works of military history Irving has undertaken thorough and painstaking research into the archives. He has discovered and disclosed to historians and others many documents which, but for his efforts, might have remained unnoticed for years"
"His words are directed against Jews, either individually or collectively, in the sense that they are by turns hostile, critical, offensive and derisory in their references to semitic people, their characteristics and appearances."
"Having considered the various arguments advanced by Irving to assail the effect of the convergent evidence relied on by the Defendants, it is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews."
"In these circumstances the central question which, as it appears to me, falls to be determined is whether or not the evidence supports the Defendants' contention that the number of deaths ran into hundreds of thousands or whether Irving is right when he claims that the killing by gas was on a modest scale."
"13.78 My conclusion is that the various categories of evidence do 'converge' in the manner suggested by the Defendants. I accept their contention which I have summarised in paragraph 7.75 above. My overall assessment of the totality of the evidence that Jews were killed in large numbers in the gas chambers at Auschwitz is that it would require exceedingly powerful reasons to reject it. Irving has argued that such reasons do exist."
"13.89 Reports were sent regularly from the camp to Berlin in cypher. They were intercepted and decoded at Bletchley Park. Although these reports often gave the cause of death, they did not mention gassing. In my judgment there are two reasons why little significance is to be attached to this: the first is that there was a strict rule of secrecy about the gassing and the second is that, like the death books, these reports related to registered inmates only"
"… the holocaust of Germans in Dresden really happened. That of the Jews in the gas chambers at Auschwitz is an invention. I am ashamed to be an Englishman."
"… more people died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy's motor car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz."
"… and so are the other eye-witnesses at Auschwitz [liars] who claim they saw gassings going on because there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz as the forensic tests show."
"Whilst I am sympathetic to Irving's handicap in being unable to obtain access to documents in the German archives, I am not persuaded that there exist documents which justify Irving in quoting without any reservation the claim made by Daluege [that in 1930 a strikingly large proportion of offences of fraud in Germany were committed by Jews]"
"13.14 It was, I believe, common ground between the parties that Kristallnacht marked a vital stage in the evolution of the Nazis' attitude towards and treatment of the Jews. It was the first occasion on which there was mass destruction of Jewish property and wholesale violence directed at Jews across the whole of Germany. As an historian of the Nazi regime, it was therefore important for Irving to analyse with care the evidence how that violence came about and what role was played by Hitler."
"What of Himmler and Hitler? Both were totally unaware of what Goebbels had done until the synagogue next to Munich's Four Season Hotel was set on fire around one A.M. Heydrich, Himmler's national chief of police, was relaxing down in the hotel bar; he hurried up to Himmler's room, then telexed instructions to all police authorities to restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish property, and halt any ongoing incidents. The hotel management telephoned Hitler's apartment at Prinz-Regenten Platz, and thus he too learned that something was going on. He sent for the local police chief, Friedrich von Eberstein. Eberstein found him livid with rage. According to Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below, Hitler phoned Goebbels, 'What's going on?' he snapped, and: 'Find out!' According to Julius Schaub, the most intimate of his aides, Hitler 'made a terrible scene with Goebbels' and left no doubt about the damage done abroad to Germany's name. He sent Schaub and his colleagues out into the streets to stop the looting (thus Schaub's postwar version). Philipp Bouhler, head of the Fuhrer's private chancellery, told one of Goebbels' senior officials that Hitler utterly condemned the progrom and intended to dismiss Goebbels. Fritz Wiedemann, another of Hitler's adjutants, saw Goebbels spending much of the night of November 9-10 'telephoning … to halt the most violent excesses.' At 2.56 A.M. Rudolf Hess's staff also began cabling, telephoning, and radioing instructions to gauleiters and police authorities around the nation to halt the madness. But twenty thousand Jews were already being loaded onto trucks and transported to the concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Oranienburg. Hitler made no attempt to halt this inhumanity. He stood by, and thus deserved the odium that now fell on all Germany. Goebbels had anticipated neither Hitler's fury nor, probably such an uncontrollable, chaotic orgy of destruction. Not surprisingly he made no reference to this unwelcome turn of events in his diary. But perhaps this, rather than Lida Baarova, was the reason why he would write this mea culpa to Hitler six years later: 'In the twenty years that I have been with you, particularly in 1938 and 1939, I have occasioned you much private grief.' Ribbentrop relates that when he tackled Hitler about the damage Goebbels had done, Hitler rejoined that this was true, but he could not let the propaganda minister go – not when he was just about to need him again."
"Those cases show that, in order to prove that the words are true, particulars can be given of subsequent facts which go to support the charge. Thus, if a libel accuses a man of being a 'scoundrel,' the particulars of justification can include facts which show him to be a scoundrel, whether they occurred before or after the publication."
"13.15 Readers of the account in Goebbels of the events of 9 and10 November 1938 were given by Irving to understand that Hitler bore no responsibility for the starting of the pogrom and that, once he learned of it, he reacted angrily and thereafter intervened to call a halt to the violence."
"The claim that during that night Hitler did everything he could to prevent violence against the Jews and their property is in my judgment based upon misrepresentation, misconstruction and omission of the documentary evidence."
"On express orders from the very highest level, acts of arson against Jewish shops and the like are under no circumstances and under no conditions whatsoever to take place."
"5.151 One central document cited by Irving in support of his case that Hitler consistently intervened to mitigate the harm sought to be done to the Jews is a note said to have been dictated by an official in the Reich Ministry of Justice, namely, Schlegelberger, which is undated but which is claimed to have come into existence in the spring of 1942, which records what he has been told by Lammers, a senior civil servant at the Reichskanzlerei : ' Reichsminister informed me that the Fuhrer has repeatedly declared to him that he wants to hear that the solution to the Jewish question has been postponed until after the war is over'. That note, says Irving, is incompatible with the notion that Hitler authorised or condoned the wholesale extermination of Jewry during the war."
"13.36 I do not regard the arguments advanced by Irving, which I have set out at paragraphs 5.165-7, as being without merit: they are worthy of consideration. But I do consider the Defendants' criticism to be well-founded that Irving presents the Schlegelberger note as decisive and incontrovertible evidence (see Hitler's War at p 464) when, as he should have appreciated, there are powerful reasons for doubting that it has the significance which he attaches to it. Irving's perception of the importance of the note appears to take no account of the mass murder of the Jews which took place soon afterwards."
"Whatever way one looks at this document it is incompatible with the notion that Hitler had ordered an urgent liquidation program"
"Dr Goebbels, agitating from Berlin, clearly hoped for a more speedy and ruthless solution, although he held his tongue when meeting his Fuhrer. On March 19 he quoted in his diary only this remark by Hitler: 'The Jews must get out of Europe. If needs by, we must resort to the most brutal methods.' That Goebbels privately knew more is plain from his diary entry of the twenty-seventh. 'Beginning with Lublin,' he recorded, 'the Jews are being pushed out eastward from the Generalgouvernement. A barbaric and indescribable method is being employed here and there's not much left of the Jews themselves. By and large you can probably conclude that sixty percent of them have to be liquidated, while only forty percent can be put to work.' Dr Goebbels recorded further that the Trieste-born SS Brigadier Odilo Globocnik, the former Gauleiter of Vienna, was performing this task carefully and unobtrusively. As fast as the ghettos of the Generalgouvernement were being emptied, they were being refilled with the Jews, deported from the Reich, and the cycle started over again. 'The Jews have nothing to laugh about now,' commented Goebbels. But he evidently never discussed these realities with Hitler. Thus this two-faced minister dictated, after a further visit to Hitler on April 26, 'I have once again talked over the Jewish question with the Fuhrer. His position on this problem is merciless. He wants to force the Jews right out of Europe … At this moment Himmler is handling the major transfer of Jews from the German cities into the eastern ghettos'."
"But they can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated". [Horthy] protested. Hitler reassured him: "
"Writing on Hitler in his Nuremberg prison cell, Ribbentrop also exonerated him wholly. 'How things came to the destruction of the Jews, I just don't know as to whether Hitler began it, or Hitler put up with it, I don't know. But that he ordered it I refuse to believe, because such an act would be wholly incompatible with the picture I always had of him'."
"When I first began studying holocaust denial …"
"1. I much regret the length of time that it has taken me to come to this decision, not least in view of the pressure that I put on the parties to submit their representations expeditiously. Reaching a conclusion on the application has been the work of days, not of hours. 2. I am prepared to enlarge time on the basis of Mr Adams' affidavit of16 May 2000 , and to permit amendment of the notice of appeal as asked. 3. What follow are my essential reasons for refusing permission to appeal. They do not cover every element advanced and contested, although I have read and re-read both the submissions and the judgment. They address what I consider to be the key issues. 4. I bear in mind, as Gray J very clearly did, that when a professional historian claims, correctly, that he has been defamed as a falsifier and a bigot, a defence of justification places a heavy burden on the defendant who advances it. There is much about which two people can legitimately differ, and differ angrily, without either of them meriting such a description. But by bringing this action on the pleaded meanings the applicant offered a challenge, and in Gray J's judgment the defendants met it. 5. I accept that this court is probably as well placed as Gray J to evaluate the documents and the expert evidence. What it cannot do, and is not asked to do, is to ignore or modify the judge's appraisal of the applicant himself. This is not, as the grounds suggest, peripheral. As Gray J in Chapter XIII shows with clarity, the applicant's disposition is the cement between the bricks. What might in another historian have been casual misreadings of evidence emerge in the applicant's case as sedulous misinterpretations all going in the direction of his racial and ideological leanings. Hence the verdict for the defendants. 6. "
"My overall finding in relation to the plea of justification is that the Defendants have proved the substantial truth of the imputations, most of which relate to Irving's conduct as an historian, with which I have dealt in paragraphs 13.7 to 13.127 above. My finding is that the defamatory meanings set out in paragraph 2.15 above at (i), (ii), (iii) and the first part of (iv) are substantially justified."
"The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associated with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism. In my judgment the charges against Irving which have been proved to be true are of sufficient gravity for it to be clear that the failure to prove the truth of the matters set out in paragraph 13.165 above does not have any material effect on Irving's reputation."