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Hitler Diaries
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In April 1983, the German news magazine Stern published extracts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books as well as two "special issues" about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945.
Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann claimed to have received the diaries from East Germany, smuggled out by a "Dr. Fischer." The diaries were supposed to be part of a consignment of documents recovered from an aircraft crash in Börnersdorf near Dresden in April 1945.
Stern submitted them for review by a number of experts in World War II history, notably the historians Eberhard Jäckel and Gerhard Weinberg.
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Encyclopedia
In April 1983, the German news magazine Stern published extracts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries , which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books as well as two "special issues" about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945.
Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann claimed to have received the diaries from East Germany, smuggled out by a "Dr. Fischer." The diaries were supposed to be part of a consignment of documents recovered from an aircraft crash in Börnersdorf near Dresden in April 1945.
Stern submitted them for review by a number of experts in World War II history, notably the historians Eberhard Jäckel and Gerhard Weinberg. The diaries were declared by these experts to be authentic, and Stern began an international auction process for serialisation- and publication-rights.
Before bidding, Times Newspapers asked historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, an independent director of the company, to fly to Germany and see the diaries for himself. He was convinced of their authenticity, writing in the next day's The Times that:
- "I am now satisfied that the documents are authentic; that the history of their wanderings since 1945 is true; and that the standard accounts of Hitler's writing habits, of his personality and, even, perhaps, of some public events, may in consequence have to be revised."
As a result of this endorsement, Times Newspapers paid a substantial sum to Stern for serialisation rights.
However, in the time between Stern's announcement of the diaries' existence and the press conference held to launch publication on April 25, 1983, doubts had begun to emerge about their authenticity. At the press conference, Trevor-Roper and Gerhard Weinberg to some extent retracted their previous endorsements.
Within two weeks the Hitler Diaries were revealed by Dr Julius Grant as being "grotesquely superficial fakes" made on modern paper using modern ink and full of historical inaccuracies. The autograph expert Kenneth W. Rendell also concluded they were not particularly good fakes, calling them "bad forgeries but a great hoax" and stating that "with the exception of imitating Hitler's habit of slanting his writing diagonally as he wrote across the page, the forger failed to observe or to imitate the most fundamental characteristics of his handwriting." Some point out that the most obvious fakery was the monogram on the title page reading 'FH' instead of 'AH' (for Adolf Hitler) - even though in the old German typeface those letters looked strikingly similar. However, 'FH' could conceivably stand for "Führerhauptquartier" ("Führer Headquarters"). Content had been largely copied from a book of Hitler's speeches with additional 'personal' comments.
As a reaction, Stern editors Peter Koch and Felix Schmidt resigned from the magazine. The episode was much ridiculed in the UK media (particularly by the Sunday Times rival newspapers), and historian Hugh Trevor-Roper's reputation was seriously damaged.
The diaries were actually written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Heidemann went to trial in 1985 and were each sentenced to 42 months in prison.
Reception in popular culture
Selling Hitler, a television mini-series based on the book of the same name by Robert Harris, was produced for the British television channel ITV. It was directed by Alastair Reid and starred Jonathan Pryce as Heidemann, Alexei Sayle as Kujau, Tom Baker as Stern editor Manfred Fischer, Alan Bennett as Trevor-Roper, Roger Lloyd Pack as David Irving, Richard Wilson as Henri Nannen and Barry Humphries as Rupert Murdoch.
- A 1992 film by German director Helmut Dietl featured fictional characterizations which mirrored many of the events.
The Simpsons episode, "Lisa the Iconoclast," a museum curator calls the town founder's confessions to be "just as fake as the Howard Hughes will, the Hitler Diaries, or the Emancipation Retraction." (The third hoax being a joke.)
- Berke Breathed's comic strip
Bloom County satirized the incident by having Opus create The Elvis Diaries, the supposed lost diaries of the late Elvis Presley, after being pressured by Milo Bloom in order to gain funds for the Bloom County political party. A panel of fellow comic strip characters (including Dagwood Bumstead) declared them authentic, shouting in unison: "It's the real McCoy!". The diaries were eventually declared fraudulent after experts discovered they were written on "official Dukes of Hazzard stationery."
Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett describe the fictional prophecy book around which the novel's story revolves, "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies made the Hitler Diaries look, well, like a bunch of forgeries."
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, Adrian becomes ecstatic at the news of the "find" (ironically reported in a newspaper page that was going to be used to clean up his dog's excrement) and ends up betting with Pandora that the diaries are genuine. Naturally he loses, claims he will save the newspaper for the original purpose and is saddened by not getting the chance to find out "what maniacs eat for breakfast and how they behave in private".
External links
- Time Magazine, May 9, 1983.
- Time Magazine, May 16, 1983.
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