Hitler and the Jews
Sir: Your correspondents' points are easily disposed of. No English court would accept The Testament of Adolf Hitler (London, 1961) – Martin Bormann's alleged notes on Hitler's last conversations – as evidence. Mysteriously, no original German text has survived, and when the Swiss owner of the French (!) text was unable to satisfy the well-known Hamburg publishers, Hoffmann & Campe, of its authenticity they scrapped their plan to publish a German re-translation recently. Since the 1945 Bormann and Goebbels diaries have lately become available, enabling certain comparisons to be made, there is no reason to accept the Testament as genuine.
As for Hitler's meeting with Admiral Horthy on 17 April 1943 (isn't it odd how it is always the same half-quotations that are trotted out!) the full text shows that Hitler was not referring to the death camps that operated from 1942 to 1944, e.g., Auschwitz and Treblinka, although your readers would be forgiven for inferring from Mr Ashton's letters that they were indeed the topic of discussion. Hitler was alluding to his draconian ordinances of 1939, provided the death penalty for Poles refusing to work. (Incidentally, General Eisenhower signed an identical ordinance, Number 1, in 1945, for occupied Germany, but nobody will iccuse him on this basis of trying to exterminate 'the Gprmans'.) What Mr Ashton does not state, is that when Horthy inquired of the Fiihrer one day earlier, on 16 April, what then he was expected to do with Hungary's Jews, 'We can't just exterminate them', Hitler explicitly replied: 'No, there's no need for that.'
Mr Ashton will find answers to all his six questions in my recent books Hitler's War and The War Path. And, if Mr Midgley really requires a documentary reference of the 'Mein Gott, what if Adolf find out!' variety, he too should consult Hitler's War, for one of several references: in January 1943 Reichsfiihrer SS Himmler commissioned a statistical survey on the Solution of the European Jewish question so far; when the document reached him in March, Himmler sent it back for shortening before being submitted to Hitler, and for one damning phrase to be changed before the Ffihrer saw it – the bald statement that over one million deported Jews had been "submitted to Special Treatment in the concentration camps" in Poland, was to be altered to read: had been `. . channelled through the Concentration camps to the East.' No doubt this was the belief in which Hitler was to be left. David Irving 81 Duke Street, London W1
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