Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6: Et Cetera
5909 and were put into evidence during the testimony of defendant Gottlob Berger,
SS General, former head of the SS administrative department, Himmler’s
personal liaison with Rosenberg’s Ministry for the Occupied East, and chief of
POW affairs toward the end of the war. In his direct examination, Berger had testified
that he had known nothing of any extermination program and also that
Himmler had indeed delivered an “interminable” speech at Posen in 1943, to an
audience of higher SS leaders which included himself. However, he denied that
document 1919-PS was an accurate transcript of the speech, because he recalled
that part of the speech had dealt with certain Belgian and Dutch SS leaders who
were present at the meeting, and 343
“[…] that is not contained in the transcript. I can say with certainty that he
did not speak about the Ausrottung of the Jews, because the reason for this
meeting was to equalize and adjust these tremendous tensions between the
Waffen SS and the Police.”
In the cross examination prosecutor Petersen played a phonograph recording
of somebody speaking the first lines of the alleged speech, but Berger at first denied
that the voice was Himmler’s and then, after a second playing of the same
lines, he said that it “might be Heinrich Himmler’s voice.” The records were then
offered in evidence and more excerpts, including the one dealing with Jewish
evacuation, which is quoted above, were played in court. Berger was not questioned
further, however, on the authenticity of the voice and was excused immediately
after the playing of the records. It was only with some reluctance that the
court accepted these records in evidence:
“Judge Powers, Presiding: Well, I think that there is enough evidence here,
prima facie, that the voice is the voice of Himmler to justify receiving the
document in evidence. There is no evidence, however, that it was delivered at
Poznan or any other particular place. The discs will be received in evidence as
an indication of Himmler’s general attitude.”
The only “prima facie” evidence for the authenticity of the voice (at only one
point in the speech), as far as I can see, was the Berger statement at one point that
the voice “might be Heinrich Himmler’s.”
In our judgment, the prosecution did not submit one bit of evidence that the
voice was that of Himmler or even that the Posen speech, which everyone would
agree dwelled on sensitive subjects, was recorded phonographically. Thus, the authenticity
of these phonograph recordings has not even been argued, much less
demonstrated.
Reitlinger remarks that a “partial gramophone recording” of the Posen speech
exists, but he does not say what part still exists. 344 I have not pursued the question
any further, because I would not be qualified to evaluate such recordings if they
were produced.
Note that these recordings, claimed to have been belatedly discovered in a
dead man’s files, were put into evidence at the same “trial,” Kempner’s circus,
which the analysis had already conclusively discredited on independent grounds.
343
344
NMT, vol. 13, 457-487.
Reitlinger, 317.
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