A Question on Hossbach's Memorandum

[Panzermahn]

Hi, i found an interesting footnote on the Hossbach Memorandum during my study of David Irving's Nuremberg The Last Battle

As one critic has pointed out, ‘This document turned out to be a certified photocopy of a microfilm copy of a retyped "certified true copy," prepared by an American, of a retyped "certified true copy," prepared by a German, of unauthenticated hand-written notes by Hossbach, written from memory five days after a discussion led by Hitler on . November .....’ Spectator, London, December ..–.., ...., page
...

Page 128 An architect of a new international law, David Irving's Nuremberg the Last Battle

what do you all think?

[Rauli]

The same story is told by von Below in his memoirs. Hossbach showed his notes first to the adjutant(s?) of Hitler. What I´m trying to say is that memo existed before the war and von Below would probably said something if the copy that Allied presented had been (much) different than original.

[alf]

Your point is exactly what? They are fake? a Conspiracy? I see no proof offered, merely inneundo as always.

Go to http://www.mazal.org/ and see a lot of those documents for yourself,

This is the same David Irving who THREE seperate Courts found to be Holocaust Denier. Why should we believe him? He has been tried and found to deiberately mislead?

Lets have a look at his first Court Trial, the one he started, that he picked the country (one where the book was not published) and the court to sue, yet with all these things, he lost.

13.151 The double standards which Irving adopts to some of the documents and to some of the witnesses appears to me to be further evidence that Irving is seeking to manipulate the evidence rather than approaching it as a dispassionate, if sometimes mistaken, historian.


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 associates 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 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.

13.168 In the result therefore the defence of justification succeeds

http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/ieindex.html Try reading the entire Court Summary and the transcripts. You will actually learn alot about the Holocaust in there.

Lets have a look at second Trial (his Appeal) http://www.holocaust-history.org/irving ... edley.html

. The claimant had played for high stakes on the central issue of his entitlement to be regarded as a genuine historian and had lost on grounds so damaging that they left no real room for discrete damage by the unfounded allegations

There is the Third Trial ( his second Appeal to a panel of three Judges) that he hurriedly withdrew from http://www.holocaust-history.org/irving ... ntro.shtml
,

The hearing on Irving's petition for permission to appeal lasted for four days. During his oral argument David Irving - without notice to either the court or the opposing parties and without any explanation whatsoever - withdrew both of the documents he had previously filed with the Court and abandoned his attempt to introduce more evidence about the Holocaust.

The final judgment of the Court was announced on July 20, 2001. Lord Justice Pill, in rejecting Irving permission to appeal enthusiastically adopted the written opinion of the trial court stating: " The judgment of Gray J can only be admired for its comprehensiveness and style." Lord Justice Pill did not ignore the two documents that Irving withdrew so suddenly or the response we are publishing here:

We also mention at this point that there were before the Court two applications to call fresh evidence in support of the application. The first, made well before the hearing, was to call evidence from Mr. Germar Scheerer (born Rudolf), who holds a diploma in chemistry, and Mrs. Zoe Polanska-Palmer, who was detained in Birkenau Camp. The respondents had prepared voluminous evidence in reply. In the event, that application to call fresh evidence was not pursued. We express our dismay at this combination of events; the preparation of very detailed evidence (exposing the respondents to great expense in preparing a reply and the members of the Court to considerable pre-hearing reading) and the withdrawal of the application."

So someone who has long record of mainuulapting information to his own ideological agenda casts doubts on a document?

Be still my beating heart.

[Panzermahn]

Excuse me alf,

i was asking what do you all think about the footnote in regards to the Hossbach memorandum, not discussing the trial of David Irving...

i just came across it and i did not said it is a fake

[David Thompson]

Joachim -- You quoted David Irving as saying this about the Hossbach memorandum:

As one critic has pointed out, ‘This document turned out to be a certified photocopy of a microfilm copy of a retyped "certified true copy," prepared by an American, of a retyped "certified true copy," prepared by a German, of unauthenticated hand-written notes by Hossbach, written from memory five days after a discussion led by Hitler on . November .....’ Spectator, London, December ..–.., ...., page ...

and then you asked:

what do you all think?

Here's what I think: So what?

Here's why:

(1) Hossbach attended a conference on 5 Nov 1937, along with Hermann Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Erich Raeder, Konstantin von Neurath. It was an important conference, in which Hitler is said to have laid out his proposals for aggressive war.

(2) Five days later, Hossbach wrote down what he remembered about the conference. He showed his notes to other people at the time.

(3) After the war ended, the allies took Hossbach's notes to use as evidence for the charge of crimes against peace (waging aggressive war). They had a German type up a copy, because the notes were hand-written and a typed copy was easy to read. (They didn't have xerox machines or scanners back then -- just dirty carbon copies and mimeograph machines). The German typists and witnesses certified it to be a true copy.

(4) The notes were translated and typed up in English. The English translation was certified to be a true copy.

(5) The documents were then microfilmed, for ease in preparing duplicates.

(6) The duplicates were provided to the judges, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys and the defendants.

(7) At the IMT proceedings, the prosecution introduced the Hossbach memorandum as Document 386-PS -- US Exhibit 25.

(8) Goering, von Ribbentrop, Raeder and von Neurath got the chance to read it, and then testified about it. They were asked whether various parts of the memorandum were accurate. Some of them said yes, some of them said no, and some didn't remember.

(9) The defendants' attorneys got to argue over the accuracy of the memorandum, and the defendants got to say what they thought about it as well. All of the defendants also got to describe the purpose and sense of the "Hossbach meeting" from their point of view, and say what went on.

Which brings me to my point: So what?

Why not apply the same standards used in the Irving quote to the passage you quoted from David Irving's book? Then the Irving quote might be described like this:

‘This document turned out to be a portion of an uncertified re-posted copy of an uncertified pdf e-copy on an internet site, of an uncertified copy of the supposedly published book, prepared by an American, of a printed copy of an unauthenticated manuscript prepared by Irving or perhaps one of his English or German helpers on a word processor, from his memory of documents and notes of interviews he claimed had read some time earlier.'

If you're impressed by this sort of description, you might as well throw your uncertified copy of Irving's unauthenticated book into the trash can -- it's probably a fake.

Interested readers can review the text of the Hossbach memorandum on the thread "The Hossbach Memorandum (Text)" at:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=55420