A while back I told the story of my father's experiences in World War II.
This saga, which was lavishly illustrated with Dad's own photographs during his time as an employee of the United States Army, was intended to honor Dad. In many ways he epitomized the citizen-soldier that has always been the backbone of the American military, a young man who was called to fight during a specific conflict, did his job, and went home. He was a student at the University of Ohio when he received a missive from President Roosevelt that began with "Greetings," and it was there that he returned after two years of scrubbing barracks, pretending he was the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B even though he was actually in Company M, and engaging the enemy near Lorient.
He also was given a tour of Hitler's home at Berchtesgaden.
I'm not sure of the date when this little excursion took place. "Sometime between V-E Day and when Dad demobbed" encompasses about five months, so your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that Dad and his buddies, like many, many other Allied soldiers, were given the chance to see how and where the Great Dictator had lived, and were allowed to wander through his home to take pictures, notes, and perhaps the occasional souvenir.
I'm not aware that Dad took any actual object from Berchtesgaden. He was almost painfully honest, so I doubt it. He did, however, take several photographs to document what was left after the RAF decided to pay Hitler back for the Blitz:
Clockwise from upper left: Adolf Hitler's luxurious home theater (observed by curious GI's), his luxurious Alpen home (bombed by vengeful Britons), his bathtub (graffiti'd by a gloating American), and his toilet (trashed by Allied bombs).
Stumbling across my father’s wartime pictures had led me on a fascinating journey into an aspect of this warm, funny, intelligent man that I never would have guessed on my own. I’ve learned a great deal about World War II, and my father, in the years since I found those pictures, and I’ve had a great time doing so. It was a lovely surprise, and I can’t wait to learn more.
It also far from unique.
For all that there tens of thousands of books, memoirs, films, television programs, art exhibits, posters, graphic novels, documentaries, and archives that deal with some aspect of World War II and its aftermath, there are plenty of discoveries yet to be made. It was only in 2013 that a cache of paintings stolen during the war surfaced in a Munich closet, after all, and new books on previously unknown or unacknowledged events, people, and effects of the war are published every day. It’s no wonder that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan are still reliable villains in popular fiction and history, not to mention films like Unbroken, The Monuments Men, and The Imitation Game, or television shows like Codename Verity, Foyle’s War, and Agent Carter.
Is it any wonder that the announcement in 1983 that a priceless archive of historical documents penned by the most notorious dictator in history had surfaced sparked a worldwide uproar? Or that the subsequent revelation that the purported author had had as much to do with the collection as Howard Hughes to his 1972 “autobiography” wrecked careers and reputations? Or that the actual creator was a pudgy little career criminal who did his dirty work not out of political conviction or a love of history, but solely to make as much money as possible?
The greatest scandal of 1983 began with a German journalist, Gerd Heidemann, who worked for the respected picture magazine Stern. Heidemann, allegedly part of Stern’s reporting staff, had a problematic reputation in the newsroom. He was an excellent writer with several notable scoops to his credit, but more recently had developed the habit of disappearing for weeks at a time without explanation, forwarding address, or even a telephone number. Worse, he had befriended several prominent ex-Nazis, including a coterie of unrepentant SS officers, and had amassed a fine collection of Nazi memorabilia that included Herman Goering’s yacht, the Karin II.
He was also rumored to be sleeping with Goering’s daughter Edda, which went beyond “problematic” to “more than a little creepy” given how much time and money he’d poured into restoring her father’s boat, but that is neither here nor there.
Despite this obsession with all things Goering, Heidemann was still well enough regarded by Stern’s senior management that no one questioned editor Felix Schmidt’s decision in the spring of 1981 to send him to Turkey to investigate the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. The case, which involved Bulgarians, Turks, and possible links all the way back to the Soviet Union, was exactly the sort of juicy story that Heidemann had excelled at chronicling, and he seemed a natural for the assignment.
Then Schmidt, who had only been on the job for a few months, received a telephone call that would change his life.
Stern’s publisher, Gruner & Jahr, summoned Schmidt and his fellow top editors, Rolf Gillhausen, and Peter Koch, to a meeting at their offices. There they found not simply Manfred Fischer, the head of the company, but half a dozen nondescript handwritten notebooks. These books, the stunned editors were informed, were what Heidemann had been working on acquiring for the last year or so from East German sources, and were of inestimable historical value. Stern should start making plans to publish the contents, and Heidemann’s accompanying article, with all deliberate speed. This would be the greatest triumph in Stern’s history, the editors were assured, and would cement the magazine’s reputation for generations to come.
After all, it wasn’t every publication’s good luck to stumble upon the actual, genuine, completely handwritten, one hundred percent fresh-from-the-fountain-pen diaries of Adolf Hitler.
Schmidt, Koch, and Gillhausen were less thrilled than one might have expected. The alleged Hitler diaries, which included juicy details like Hitler’s mistress Eva Braun complaining that he had bad breath, might be real, but it was far more likely that they were fakes. Fake Nazi memorabilia, including diaries, had been a thriving business almost before the remains of the Führer bunker had been cool enough to sort through the charred remains of its namesake. Diaries by upper level Hitler intimates like Eva Braun had surfaced periodically since the war, and all had proved to be clumsy forgeries.
That these diaries in Manfred Fischer's office were adorned with Gothic initials that looked vaguely like “A.H.” but actually spelled ”F.H. did not precisely inspire confidence. Neither did the contents, which consisted largely of Nazi Party doings sprinkled with homey little statements like "I've really got to have a serious talk with Eva [Braun, Hitler's long time mistress]. She thinks that a man who leads Germany can take as much time as he wants for private matters," or "Hope my stomach cramps don't return during the [Olympic] Games."
The matter should have rested right there; Hitler may have been a crazed anti-Semite and warmonger, but he was well aware that his first initial was “A,” not “F.” Add in that Heidemann would identify his source for this treasure only as a nameless “high-ranking East German officer” who had gotten it from equally nameless farmers after a plane crash near Dresden in 1945, and the provenance of the diaries was dignified by the term “shaky.” Only an impassioned appeal by Gerd Heidemann himself, who went into great detail about how he’d thrown money at his East German contact and had the diaries chucked through the open window of his car, persuaded the editors that acquiring the complete set of diaries was a good idea.
The next two years saw a steady stream of diaries to Stern and an equally steady stream of money through Heidemann to his “East German officer” buddy. The original twenty-seven volumes had ballooned to over sixty, the diaries were moved for safekeeping to a bank vault in Switzerland (of course), and Stern began preparing to publish what looked fair to be the journalist coup of the century. There were still warning signs – Heidemann began telling his associates that Hitler’s private secretary, Martin Bormann, was not only still alive but had begun calling Heidemann “a kind of Parsifal,” which was neither probable nor accurate – but after handwriting experts confirmed that the diaries were in what certainly looked like Hitler’s handwriting, all those nagging doubts about provenance, the increasing number of diaries and payments, and Heidemann’s sanity were shoved to the side. Time, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, the New York Times - these former bastions of investigative journalism would have to yield pride of place to Stern.
“The ‘Hitler Diary Euphoria’ had taken hold of us all,” Felix Schmidt later wrote, and it’s hard to argue with him.
By the spring of 1983, all was in place. Noted historians Hugh Trevor-Roper and Gerhadr Weinberg had been shown enough of the diaries to pronounce them authentic, and that plus the handwriting tests were enough evidence of authenticity that Gruner & Jahr decided to publish. Stern would break the story, followed by syndication in Newsweek, Paris Match, and the Times of London. The revelations in the diaries, which included Hitler’s reaction to Rudolf Hess stealing a plane and flying to Scotland, an account of Eva Braun’s false pregnancy in 1940, and Hitler’s shock at finding out what his underlings were up to when they were stuffing Jews into boxcars and sending them to Auschwitz, would force a major re-evaluation early 20th century history.
It would be glorious.
Oddly enough, the only person on the Stern staff was who not practically wetting himself with anticipation was Gerd Heidemann. He had learned, or so he told his superiors, that the “East German officer” not only possessed the diaries and plenty of ancillary material, but a draft of a third volume of Mein Kampf and an opera written by the multi-talented Herr Hitler. Surely publication could wait until these priceless items were safely in Heidemann’s possession? Surely Stern owed this much to history?
The editorial staff at Stern was unmoved. The type had been set, the articles written, the diaries painstakingly transcribed. It was too late to delay publication any longer without risking Stern’s reputation (or its scoop, given how many people now knew they existed). Posterity would have to make due with what Heidemann had already unearthed.
And so it was that on April 22, 1983, after two years, 9 million DM in payments, and God alone knows how many packages tossed through the window of Gerd Heidemann’s car, Stern revealed its great secret to the world.
Needless to say, word that Hitler had kept a diary, and Stern (and Newsweek, Paris Match, the Times of London, etc.) had it, caused the sort of hysteria that only the name “Adolf Hitler” can excite. Newspapers and magazines flew off the stands, television shows trotted out a succession of stunned historians to comment, and for a few precious days it looked like Stern had indeed accomplished one of the greatest scoops in history. Oh, there were doubters – former West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt said, “I just can’t believe it’s true” – but the idea that one person could have forged so many diaries was considered risible. The critics were jealous, nothing more, that they hadn’t had the foresight to employ a brilliant investigator like Gerd Heidemann.
Alas, the moment of triumph was as fleeting as a mayfly’s existence. For all its questions about provenance, Stern had been so concerned about keeping the diaries’ existence a secret that no forensic tests had been performed. Trevor-Roper and Weinberg, who had both endorsed the diaries’ authenticity, had signed confidentiality agreements that prevented them from consulting other experts. Neither had seen more than a few pages of the diaries before publication, and they were happy to tell the assembled reporters of the world this interesting fact at the April 25th press conference Stern called to celebrate the diaries’ publication.
All of this was before gadfly historian David Irving crashed the press conference and managed to steal the show by holding up photocopies of a similar “Hitler diary” that he had been offered by what he claimed was the selfsame source who had sold Gerd Heidemann his archive.
Oops.
To say that it was not a good day for Felix Schmidt, Peter Koch, Rudolf Gillhausen, Gerd Heidemann, Hugh Trevor-Roper, or pretty much anyone else involved is to soft pedal what was shaping up to be a major, and very embarrassing, fiasco. Heidemann, who had resisted all efforts to get him to reveal his source, finally broke down and admitted the “East German officer” was a civilian named Konrad Fischer.
Fischer, whose real name was Konrad Kujau, was a plump, cheerful career criminal from Stuttgart who had become notorious for trafficking in less than authentic Nazi memorabilia. He’d told Heidemann that his brother, supposedly (but not) an East German general, had obtained the diaries from the Saxon peasants who had rescued them from a plane crash, along with much other material (uniforms, books, weapons, artwork by Hitler, etc.) pertaining to the Third Reich. The brother was now short on money and wished to sell to the right buyer. Would Heidemann be interested?
Heidemann, who seemingly had the word "MARK" tattooed on his forehead, did indeed wish to buy. He purchased a few, brought them to the attention of Gruner & Jahr, and before one could sing a verse of the "Horst Wessel Lied," Kujau was busily forging the entire set. His major source was not a secret Nazi archive, but Max Domarus' Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship.. This excellent book, a day-by-day guide to Hitler’s life and writings, was, my hand to God, the same book that Stern’s fact checkers had used to authenticate the contents of the diaries...which were frequently word for word copies of Domarus' work, including the occasional error.
I repeat: oops.
Stern, its back against the wall and its reputation on the line, turned the diaries over to the West German Federal Archives for testing. Word came back almost immediately that the diaries were not only fakes, but bad fakes. Kujau had been such a clumsy forger not only had he mistaken a Gothic “F” for an “A,” the letters themselves had been modern plastic, not Bakelite or leather or any other material known in the 1940’s.
Worse, Kujau had written out the first volumes of the diary in pencil and traced over the letters in ink until he was comfortable copying Hitler’s penmanship – and even then, he was such a mediocre copyist that the forgery should have been obvious to a child. The only reason the diaries had passed the initial handwriting tests was because the supposedly authentic handwriting samples Stern had provided were on loan from Gerd Heidemann, who’d bought them from...
...you knew this was coming....
Konrad Kujau.
Do I need to say “oops” again?
The fallout from the Hitler Diaries was swift and profound. Hugh Trevor-Roper, by then Lord Dacre and Master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge, suffered comparatively little damage to his academic career, but he never entirely lived down his endorsement of Konrad Kujau's fine work. Peter Koch and Felix Schmidt resigned as soon as the Federal Archives rendered their verdict, with Schmidt going on to a successful career as a television producer. Frank Giles of the Sunday Times and William Broyles of Newsweek also resigned in disgrace, although both publications eventually recovered. David Irving, ever the contrarian, suddenly announced that he thought the diaries were now authentic, but the abrupt volte face made him look almost as gullible as the editorial staff of Stern.
About a year after the diaries were published and exposed, both Gerd Heidemann and Konrad Kujau were arrested on charges of forgery and embezzlement. During their trial it came out that Heidemann, who had been given 9 million DM to purchase the diaries, had used almost half to purchase rare (and authentic) memorabilia for his collection, maintenance on the Karin, extravagant vacations, fine jewelry, expensive cars, not one but two Spanish villas. He claimed that these riches were actually purchased with what he made at Stern, but given that he only made around 65,000 DM per year, had been obtained with monies intended to purchase the diaries. Konrad Kujau, who’d actually done all the work, only got about 2.5 million DM.
Both men were convicted, which did not surprise anyone even though Heidemann was found not guilty of the actual forgery. He might have been venal, and greedy, and obsessed with the Nazis, but he had genuinely believed that he was purchasing Adolf Hitler’s diaries. His subsequent fate was grim - he lost everything, including his Nazi collection, then was accused of being an agent of the Stasi, the East German secret police - and he is currently living in reduced circumstances in an undisclosed location.
Konrad Kujau, still plump and cheerful, parlayed his newfound fame into a surprisingly successful career as television personality and forgery expert. He opened up a business selling “genuine Kujau fakes” in the style of famous artists, and did well enough that he actually received about 1,000 votes when he ran for mayor of Stuttgart a few years after being released from jail. He died in 2000 of cancer, about six years before his grandniece Petra attempted to follow in his footsteps by forging his signature onto cheap Asian copies of famous paintings.
As for the Hitler Diaries themselves…Stern donated most of the originals to the German Federal Archives in 2013, with one volume each to other museums. They did so over the objections of Gerd Heidemann, who fruitlessly protested that a clause in his original contract with Stern required the magazine to return them after ten years. He said he would make them available to archivists, not sell them to collectors, which was just as well; the 61st diary had been sold at auction in 2004 for the paltry sum of 6,500 euros.
Considering that they’d original sold for about 140,000 DM apiece, this has to qualify as a bargain; genuine Kujaus are not all that common, you know, and getting a piece of the most famous one of all has to count for something.
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Do you remember the Hitler Diaries? Did you buy the special copy of Newsweek that splashed them on the cover? Have you ever heard of Gerd Heidemann or Konrad Kujau? Do you have a picture of Hitler's bathtub? Gather round the flaming ruins of the Reichstag and share....
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