Selling Hitler

by Robert Harris

  Rendell – who was reportedly paid a retainer of $8000 by Newsweek – wanted to tell Maynard Parker of his findings at once. Koch pleaded with him to keep quiet for the time being; Stern would fly him to Europe and give him the opportunity to study the entire archive if he would deal with them exclusively. Rendell agreed.

  At 1.30 p.m. New York time (7.30 p.m. in Hamburg), Koch telephoned Schulte-Hillen.

  The managing director of Gruner and Jahr had taken to his bed with a fever. ‘Rendell thinks the diaries are forged,’ said Koch when he eventually tracked him down. Groggily, Schulte-Hillen agreed with his suggestion that they should invite Rendell to Hamburg to inspect the diaries. But he refused to panic: he would wait, he told Koch, for the Bundesarchiv’s verdict which Stern had been told would be given to them the next day. Besides, Rendell had spent only a few hours with the material; Frei-Sulzer, Hilton and Huebner had been allowed weeks and they had all been certain it was genuine.

  Schulte-Hillen was still feeling confident when Manfred Fischer paid him a visit at home later that evening. Fischer had left Bertelsmann the previous November: despite Reinhard Mohn’s excitement at the purchase of the Hitler diaries, the relationship between the two men had not worked smoothly. Nevertheless, Fischer had continued to maintain an interest in the project he had started in 1981. But over the past week, his pride had turned to dismay. The Hitler diaries could turn out to be the ‘biggest deception of the century’, he warned his successor. ‘I fear we have allowed ourselves to be led by the nose.’

  Schulte-Hillen shook his head. He was sure Fischer was being pessimistic. Anyway, they would both know for certain tomorrow.

  The events which would eventually turn Friday 6 May 1983 into ‘Black Friday’ as far as the participants in the diaries affair were concerned began at 11 a.m. when the two Stern lawyers, Ruppert and Hagen, turned up at the Bundesarchiv to see Hans Booms.

  Booms now had full reports from the scientists at Wiesbaden and Berlin. Reduced to its basic components, Stern’s great scoop had proved to be a shoddy forgery. The paper was a poor quality mixture of coniferous wood, grass and foliage, laced with a chemical paper whitener which had not existed before 1955. The binding of the books also contained whitener. The red threads attached to the seals on the covers contained viscose and polyester. The labels stuck on the front and supposedly signed by Bormann and Hess had all been typed on the same machine. The typewriter came from the correct period – it was an Adler Klein II, manufactured between 1925 and 1934 – but although an interval of seven years supposedly separated the labels attached to the 1934 diary and the Hess special volume of 1941, there was no evidence of wear in the typeface: the labels had been written in quick succession. The four different varieties of ink used in the books were of a type commonly found in West German artists’ shops; they did not match any of the inks known to have been widely used during the war. And by measuring the evaporation of chloride from the ink, the scientists established that the Hess volume had been written within the last two years, whilst the writing in the 1943 diary was less than twelve months’ old.

  Booms told all this to Hagen and Ruppert. They were, he recalled, ‘deeply shocked’ and ‘shattered’: ‘I can still hear their arguments: “Heidemann is certain. He absolutely swears on it. As far as he’s concerned, it’s quite impossible that we could be dealing with a forgery….”’

  But there could be no doubt. In addition to the forensic evidence, the Bundesarchiv had discovered a number of textual errors: for example, a law passed on 19 January 1933 was entered in the diary under 19 January 1934. It did not take the archivists long to discover the forger’s main source: the two-volume edition of Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations, compiled by Max Domarus. ‘It became apparent to us’, said Booms later, ‘that if there was nothing in Domarus for a particular day, then Hitler didn’t write anything in his diary that night either. When Domarus did include something, then Hitler wrote it down. And when an occasional mistake crept into Domarus, Hitler repeated the same error.’ One such mistake was an entry by ‘Hitler’ recording that he had received a telegram from General Ritter von Epp congratulating him on the fiftieth anniversary of his joining the army; in reality, the telegram was from Hitler to von Epp. Kujau had copied the error word-for-word into the diary.

  Throughout the half-hour conversation, Booms was repeatedly interrupted by telephone calls from Berlin, Wiesbaden and Bonn. Suddenly, Hagen realized what was happening: the two forensic laboratories, both official organizations, were reporting direct to the Federal Government. Booms confirmed that this was the case. But what about the guarantee of confidentiality? That no longer applied, answered Booms. The affair was now ‘a ministerial matter’. There would be a government news conference to announce that the diaries were fakes at noon.

  The two Stern lawyers scrambled to a telephone to alert Hamburg to what was about to happen. They reached Jan Hensmann. Hardly anyone seemed to be around. Hensmann rang Schulte-Hillen who left his sick bed immediately to come in. Hensmann tried to find Nannen.

  Nannen was at Hamburg airport, preparing to fly to Rome for a ceremony to open Stern’s new Italian office. A stewardess told him he was wanted urgently on the telephone.

  ‘It’s all a forgery,’ wailed Hensmann.

  Nannen asked how he could be certain. The Bundesarchiv, said Hensmann. They were going to announce it in less than thirty minutes.

  The sixty-nine-year-old publisher dropped the telephone, sprinted through the terminal, abandoned his luggage and his car, and jumped into a taxi. At the office, he dictated a statement acknowledging the Bundesarchiv’s findings and promising a full investigation. The message was rushed to a telex machine but it arrived just five minutes too late to beat the official announcement.

  The news that the diaries were forgeries had been whispered to the West German Minister of the Interior, Friedrich Zimmermann, during a debate in the Federal parliament. Broad smiles appeared as the news spread along the Government bench. Zimmermann told the Chancellor, Helmut Kohl. ‘Now that is something,’ laughed Kohl. Stern was an old enemy of the Christian Democrats: the discomfiture of Nannen and the rest of ‘the Hamburg set’, as Kohl dismissively called them, was a pleasant prospect to brighten the Government’s day. Zimmermann hurried out of the Chamber to brief the press.

  Zimmermann’s determination to announce the news immediately was not motivated solely by party considerations. The legacy of Adolf Hitler was too important to be bandied about as Stern had done. Any West German government would have been sensitive about the diaries; the fact that the scandal had blown up on the fiftieth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to power, at a time of intense interest in the Nazis, made the matter especially delicate. There was no question of the Interior Ministry permitting the Bundesarchiv to suppress the news that the diaries were forged while Stern tried to wriggle off the hook. The whole business was out of hand. It could no longer be left to a collection of scoop-happy journalists.

  ‘On the basis of an analysis of the contents and after a forensic examination, the Federal Archive is convinced that the documents do not come from Hitler’s hand but were produced after the war,’ Zimmermann told reporters. ‘I regret most deeply that this analysis was not undertaken by Stern before publication.’ A press conference giving more details would be held shortly by the Bundesarchiv.

  A few minutes later, the German Press Agency put out a rush statement: ‘HITLER DIARIES ARE POST-WAR.’ It was two weeks, literally to the hour, since the same agency had issued the announcement of Stern’s scoop.

  In the Sunday Times offices in London there had been, according to the paper’s own account, ‘an air of considerable elation’ all morning. Stern had finally agreed to lend the newspaper two volumes of the diaries to enable it to carry out its own forensic tests. A Stern courier had flown in from Hamburg and handed them personally to Rupert Murdoch. Someone suggested to Murdoch that they should have the books photocopied. Murdoch would not allow it. He had given his word
, he said, that they would be used only for scientific evaluation.

  The atmosphere of self-congratulation was punctured abruptly at noon. Peter Hess, the publishing director of Gruner and Jahr, rang through from Germany with the news that the diaries were forgeries. ‘It’s staggering, shattering,’ he said, stammering out his apologies. ‘We still just can’t believe it.’

  Murdoch told his journalists to photocopy the diaries.

  Arthur Brittenden issued a statement to Associated Press: ‘The Sunday Times accepts the report of the German archivists that the volumes they have examined contain materials that demonstrate the diaries are not authentic. In view of this, the Sunday Times will not go ahead with publication.’ News International announced it would be seeking an immediate repayment of the $200,000 it had paid as a first instalment for the diaries.

  In Hamburg a debate was underway as to what Stern should do next. Astonishingly, Henri Nannen thought the magazine should cut out all the references drawn from the Hitler diaries and continue with its series about Rudolf Hess: it was still an interesting piece of journalism in his opinion. The others were horrified. The magazine would be torn apart by its critics if it tried to carry on as if nothing had happened. Nannen was forced to back down.

  At the Itzehoe printing works, thirty miles north-east of Hamburg, the third issue of Stern to be built around the Hitler diaries was already being printed. By the time the arguments on the editorial floor had ended and the order had been given to stop the presses, 160,000 copies of the inside pages and 260,000 covers had already been printed. An additional 70,000 magazines were actually finished and in lorries on their way to the distributors; they were recalled only after frantic telephone calls. Every trace of the issue was pulped, losing Stern a quarter of a million marks in the process. The cover picture of Rudolf Hess was replaced by a photograph of a new-born baby.

  At 2.30 p.m. Felix Schmidt addressed a hastily convened editorial conference. Everyone had to set to work to remake the next issue, he told them. He refused to answer detailed questions. Confused and angry, the Stern departmental chiefs drifted away. At 5 p.m. the entire staff held a meeting and elected a committee to negotiate a new code of conduct with the management.

  In Cambridge, Hugh Trevor-Roper’s telephone was once again ringing incessantly. ‘I just don’t want to say anything about it,’ he told one reporter. ‘I think I should only comment to Times Newspapers.’

  In America, Leslie Hinton, the associate editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Boston Globe, confirmed that the paper had been on the point of running extracts from the Hitler diaries. ‘We have suspended our plans to publish,’ he said in a statement to UPI, ‘in view of what the German archivists said today.’

  David Irving was in Düsseldorf on another speaking tour for the DVU when he heard the news from his secretary in London. It was a disastrous turn of events. He hastily dictated a statement for the press accepting the Bundesarchiv’s ruling but drawing attention to the fact that he was the first person to declare the diaries fakes. (‘Yes,’ said a reporter from The Times when this was read out to him, ‘and the last person to declare them authentic.’) NBC sent a television crew to interview him after his speech to an audience of right-wing extremists in the nearby town of Neuss. ‘They questioned whom I was speaking to,’ Irving recorded in his diary, ‘but I ducked the issue. As I was sitting down for the interview the whole audience streamed past behind the cameraman, several of the nuttier of them wearing the uniform and badges of the Vikinger Jugend [a fanatical sect of young neo-Nazis]. Fortunately NBC did not observe them.’

  For Konrad Kujau, the newsflash announcing that the diaries were forgeries was the signal to pack up and leave Stuttgart as quickly as possible. Things had already started becoming uncomfortable for him. Stefan Aust, the editor of Panorama, West German television’s leading current affairs programme, had managed to reconstruct the trail back from David Irving through August Priesack to Fritz Stiefel. Working from a clue dropped by Priesack that the supplier of the diaries was apparently a dealer in militaria named Fischer, Aust had begun trailing round every antiques shop in Stuttgart until someone remembered a Herr Fischer who had kept a shop in Aspergstrasse. Neighbours there told Aust that Fischer had moved to Schreiberstrasse. Aust had arrived on Thursday to find the shop deserted. He had driven straight round to see Fritz Stiefel to confront him with this information, and whilst there had actually spoken to Kujau on the telephone. ‘Tell me where you are,’ insisted Aust, ‘and I’ll come over.’ Kujau had managed to stall him. But now that the diaries had been exposed, it was obviously going to be only a matter of time before a dozen other journalists followed Aust’s path to Stuttgart.

  According to Maria Modritsch, her lover turned up on her doorstep at 7 p.m. on Friday, accompanied by Edith Lieblang. ‘There was a conversation between us,’ recalled Maria. ‘Conny told Edith that I was cleaning for him.’ Kujau insisted that all three of them leave Stuttgart immediately. Both women knew too much for him to be able to leave them behind. ‘Conny wanted to go to the Black Forest,’ said Maria, ‘but then he took up my suggestion that we go to Austria.’

  Shortly afterwards, the forger, his common-law wife and his mistress all clambered into a car, and this bizarre ménage à trois headed off to the Austrian border.

  Gerd Heidemann had been incommunicado all day, driving around the countryside between Berchtesgaden and Munich trying to find evidence to shore up his crumbling scoop. The Stern executives were itching to get their hands on him. So too was Gina, who was having to field telephone calls from their apartment in the Elbchaussee. She refused to believe what the Bundesarchiv was saying. ‘I am not surprised,’ she told Gitta Sereny. ‘We expected something like this.’ Was she saying the diaries were genuine? ‘Yes.’ Those who said the diaries were fakes, she insisted to a reporter from the New York Times, were trying to ‘suppress the truth’. ‘It’s terrible, but no matter what happens, we will always believe in the diaries…. It would have been a joy to tell the world about the Führer. We have received letters and telegrams above all from young people who are overjoyed finally to learn the truth.’ Between conversations with journalists, Gina managed to reach the couple’s friend, Heinrich Hoffmann, the son of Hitler’s photographer, who was also in Bavaria, undergoing treatment in a private clinic. Did he know where her husband was? Hoffmann said he did not. It was an emergency, said Gina, Gerd must ring her immediately. ‘Shortly afterwards,’ recalled Hoffmann, ‘Heidemann rang.’

  He told me he was in the neighbourhood, but had no time to drop by. He asked how I was. I told him that his wife had rung and that he was being looked for. He said: ‘Yes, that’s the reason I’m in a rush – to get the last plane from Munich to Hamburg….’ I then rang Frau Heidemann and said: ‘You can relax. Gerd’s all right and he’s on his way back home.’

  According to Heidemann’s own account, he had heard the news of Zimmermann’s announcement towards the end of the day on the car radio. He was ‘completely shattered’. At 8 p.m. he rang the Stern office, and was briskly informed that they had been trying to find him all day and that a private plane was waiting on the tarmac at Munich to bring him straight to Hamburg.

  The plane touched down shortly after 11 p.m. A Stern representative was waiting for Heidemann at the airport with a car to take him to the office. Gina was also there. At first she had been told by Stern to keep away, but she was determined to meet her husband. Stern had relented, but its official had instructions to make sure the couple did not try to rehearse a story together. ‘All Gerd could say to me in the car’, recalled Gina, ‘was: “I know they are genuine. I know.” He looked shaken to the core.’

  Heidemann faced a grim reception committee in the managing director’s office: Henri Nannen, Felix Schmidt, Rolf Gillhausen and Gerd Schulte-Hillen had been waiting for him all evening. ‘We are going to uncover the full story of this forgery and lay it before our readers,’ Nannen had promised in an interview on West German television that night. ‘We have
reason to be ashamed.’ No one was in any mood to listen to excuses. ‘What do you have to say?’ demanded Schulte-Hillen.

  Heidemann said he was sure that most of the diaries were genuine. He needed more time. He wanted to meet a contact in East Berlin.

  Schmidt interrupted him. ‘Stop playing around. I’m sick of this performance. Let’s get down to the real issues.’

  Very well, said Heidemann. He opened his briefcase and placed a cassette recorder on the table. He switched it on and played his interrogators a recording of a fifteen-minute telephone conversation he had had from Munich with Medard Klapper. Klapper promised the reporter that Martin Bormann was now willing to fly over from South America to authenticate the diaries – he was an old man, he no longer feared prosecution, he would come and help Heidemann out of his predicament. Heidemann switched off the tape. The four Stern officials looked at one another. After a while, Schulte-Hillen spoke. ‘How is Bormann proposing to get here?’ he inquired.

  ‘In a Lear jet,’ said Heidemann.

  There were angry and frustrated shouts from around the table. Felix Schmidt pointed out that a Lear jet did not have the range to cross the Atlantic: it would fall into the sea in mid-flight.

  The atmosphere became progressively more unpleasant as Heidemann still refused to name his source. ‘Lives are in danger,’ he insisted. ‘Nonsense,’ said Schmidt. ‘We’re the ones in danger.’ Heidemann replied that his supplier had returned to East Germany to try to obtain the original score of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, one of Adolf Hitler’s most treasured possessions which had also been on the Boernersdorf plane.