I have prepared an short essay on the subject of the Himmler telephone conversation log, which I copy below. I still consider it a draft and comments are of course welcome. I have also forwarded it to David Irving.
In his 1977 publication Hitler’s War, David Irving published a page of handwritten notes by Heinrich Himmler, dated Nov. 30, 1941, including four lines referring to a telephone conversation with Reinhard Heydrich, the Reichsprotektor of Böhmen-Mähren. The note is in two columns: on the left is noted the time of the conversation (13:30) and on the right there are four lines that read as follows:
Verhaftung Dr. Jekelius ----- Imprisonment Dr. Jekelius
Angebl[icher] Sohn Molotow. ----- Alleged son Molotov.
Judentransport aus Berlin. ----- Transport of Jews from Berlin.
Keine Liquidierung. ----- No liquidation.
As I shall show, each of the four lines refers to a separate contemporary event. Applying the fourth line to the third (as attempted by David Irving, in the sense that the Jewish transport from Berlin was not to be liquidated) is as groundless as applying the second line to the first (that Dr. Jekelius was an alleged son of Molotov). Even more fantastic is the speculation, which has appeared in online discussions, that the order not to liquidate the transport of Jews was motivated by the circumstance that Molotov’s alleged, son, Dr. Jekelius, happened to be on it.
The events to which the four lines refer are explained below:
The first line: “Verhaftung Dr. Jekelius”
Refers to the detention Dr. Erwin Jekelius, who was dismissed from his position as head of the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna in November 1941, following a disciplinary proceeding. He was arrested a briefly imprisoned before being drafted by the Wehrmacht and at the beginning of 1942 sent to the Eastern front. There is speculation that the real cause of his fall from grace was his having become engaged, against Hitler’s wishes, to Hitler’s sister Paula. Dr. Jekelius died in 1952 in a Soviet prison camp.
The second line: “Angebl.[icher] Sohn Molotow.”
Refers to a German propaganda campaign featuring a Soviet prisoner of war who, upon his capture on October 10, 1941 declared himself to be Vyacheslav Molotov’s son, hoping no doubt to receive preferential treatment. The prisoner’s real name was Vasily Gegorgiyevich Tarasov from the city of Voronezh. Though the Germans saw through the ruse (as is clear from Himmler’s use of the word “Angebl.”), they exploited the opportunity for propaganda broadcasts to Soviet troops in November and December 1941, the purpose of which was to assure them that they would be well treated were they to surrender to the German army. For a detailed account of the incident, as well as a transcript of the interview with Molotov’s alleged son, as broadcast by the Germans to Russian troops in the fall and winter of 1941, see the account given to RFE/RL by Sergei Kudryashov of the German Historical Institute in Moscow on December 5, 2009.
http://www.svobodanews.ru/content/trans ... 96844.html.
The third line: “Judentransport aus Berlin.”
Refers to a transport of 512 Jewish deportees which left Berlin via Nüremberg on November 27th, 1941, bound for Riga, where it arrived in the morning of November 30th. It is often claimed that all deportees were murdered the same day at Rumbula Forest; however this is contradicted by the testimony of one of the deportees on this train, Klothilde Lehmann (Henry Schwab, The Echoes that Remain, p. 136):
The torturous journey took 3 days and 3 nights. Upon arrival the deportees were confined in the concentration camp Kaiserwald, located near Riga, as well as the KZ camps Spilwe and Jungfernhof, as well as the Riga Ghetto. They performed hard labor in forests, construction and other projects under the Wehrmacht supervision until May 1944. With the approach of the Soviet armies the Germans abandoned these camps, transporting the inmate population by ship to KZ Stutthof (Sztutowo), near the port city of Danzig.
The railroad from Nüremberg to Riga passed through Pilsen, Prague and other cities in the Protectorate, which may be one reason why it was mentioned in a conversation with Heydrich.
The fourth line: “Keine Liquidierung.”
Refers to Hitler’s order to Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt countermanding the retreat of the 1st Panzer Army from Rostov. The Red Army recaptured Rostov on the 28th of November 1941. Von Rundstedt was sacked for refusing to obey the order. In a narrow sense Liquidierung may refer to the clearing out of positions held by the army, with the implication that heavy equipment would be destroyed in order to prevent its falling into enemy hands. But here it evidently refers to the general notion of “giving up the fight”.
On June 1, 1942, speaking in Poltava, Hitler declared: “If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny, then I have to liquidate the war” (“Wenn ich das Öl von Maikop und Grosny nicht bekomme, dann muß ich den Krieg liquidieren”).* In German the word “liquidierung” in the context of a war is a stark expression as in “einen verlorenen Krieg liquidieren zu müssen” — it means to give up, to surrender.
*Aussage von Generalfeldmarschall Paulus in den Hauptverhandlungen des Nürnberger Prozesses, Nachmittagssitzung am Montag, dem 11. Februar 1946 (56. Tag). Veröffentlicht in: Der Prozeß gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Gerichtshof Nürnberg. Nürnberg 1947, Bd. 7, S. 283-310.
I am convinced the mystery of the Himmler phone conversation jottings is hereby solved. Any comments?