HITLER'S DIARIES
FAIL TEST
G'day folks,
"Hitler's Diaries Discovered!" screamed the front page of the German magazine Stern in April 1983. More conservatively, the Sunday Times in London – which had agreed to pay Stern £600,000 to share in the glory of this stunning story – offered its readers a "world exclusive" on "The Secrets of Hitler's War."
German journalist Gerd Heinemann had told Stern that 62 volumes of
diaries written by the Führer between 1932 and 1945 had been recovered
from a plane crash in East Germany at the end of the war. The magazine
paid out £2.5 million for them.
But it turned out they were fake – created by Konrad Kajau, a notorious
Stuttgart forger and antiques dealer calling himself Herr Fischer.
Before paying out, Stern had employed experts to compare handwriting in
the "diaries" with other examples of Hitler's writing. They concluded,
to Stern's initial great satisfaction, that all were written by the same
person. They were right, but it later turned out that the "genuine"
Hitler handwriting they looked at had also been forged by Kajau!
In London, Rupert Murdoch's
Sunday Times had turned for assurance to historian Hugh Trevor-Roper
who enjoyed huge academic prestige after publication in 1947 of his
book, "The Last Days of Hitler".
He told bosses at the newspaper he was satisfied that the "diaries" were genuine.
Trevor-Roper later became skeptical, however, and expressed his doubts
when Stern admitted it did not know the identity of the East German
source supplying the volumes.
With suspicion mounting, and amid fears of possibly facing charges of
illegally circulating Nazi propaganda, Stern submitted three of the
volumes to West German police for examination.
Forensic analysis quickly revealed that they were fakes, the paper and
ink used for the "diaries" not being available until well after the war.
They had actually been produced between 1981–83 by Kujau, who had
previously forged and sold paintings which he also claimed were the work
of Hitler.
Heidemann, making the most of his opportunities, had been creaming off
money from Stern by inflating the sums that he claimed had been demanded
by Kujau. So, after the forgery was revealed, he was convicted of fraud
and, like Kujau, was sentenced to 42 months in prison.
As a result of the "Hitler Diaries" fiasco, two top editors at Stern
were fired. And the reputation of Hugh Trevor-Roper, who became Lord
Dacre and died in 2003, never fully recovered.
But Kujau, brazen and opportunistic, never looked back. After his
release from prison, not wishing to waste his skills, he opened a
gallery selling his “genuine forgeries” of paintings by Hitler,
Rembrandt, Dali, Monet, Van Gogh, and other masters. The works sold at
high prices and became so popular that other forgers moved in and began
to produce counterfeit reproductions of his counterfeits!
Clancy's comment: I guess it had to happen, eh?
I'm ...
