Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

But the sudden spectre of Hitler had clearly infected the holiday mood. Nursing their secret, the two men crossed over the border into Austria. They inspected Hitler’s birthplace in Braunau, and the town of Leonding, near Linz, where the Führer had spent part of his youth, before returning to Hamburg on 31 October.

On 15 November 1980, Heidemann and Walde drove through one of the checkpoints from West to East Berlin, picked up Walde’s contact who had arranged the trip, and travelled 120 miles south to Dresden. Another hour’s drive brought them to a tiny cluster of farmhouses and barns, nestling amid hilly fields and gentle woods three miles from the Czech border, in a region known as ‘Saxon Switzerland’. With its tiny kindergarten and scattered population of 550, it was difficult to imagine a sleepier village than Boernersdorf.

The Stern men parked their car on the side of the main road outside Boernersdorf’s small church. Behind it, in the cemetery overlooking the village, in the south-eastern corner, half hidden amongst the weeds and the long grass, they found eight weather-beaten wooden crosses. Attached to each one was a small white tile giving the name of the person buried there, the date of their birth and the day of their death: 21.4.45. They found Gundlfinger’s grave and Wilhelm Arndt’s; two graves were simply marked ‘unknown man’ and ‘unknown woman’. This physical evidence of the plane crash thirty-five years earlier made a profound impression on the two men. ‘The discovery of the graves’, said Walde, ‘was like another stone in the mosaic.’

Anxious to avoid drawing attention to themselves, Heidemann and Walde did not stay for long. They made notes of the names on the crosses and took some photographs. Half an hour later they returned to their car and drove back to Berlin.

Heidemann and Walde now sensed they were close to a breakthrough. On their return from East Germany, Walde informed Wilfried Sorge of the success of their visit.

The story as they had pieced it together seemed simple and credible. Papers of great value to Hitler undoubtedly had been loaded on to a plane in Berlin; that plane undoubtedly had crashed in East Germany; part of its cargo, a diary, had surfaced in the West. The remaining task was to find the link between the wrecked aircraft and Fritz Stiefel – and to find him before anyone else did.

A few days after their arrival back in Hamburg, Heidemann and Walde renewed their contact with Jakob Tiefenthaeler. They asked him to pass on to the mysterious ‘antiques dealer’ an offer generous enough to tempt him out of his seclusion. They were prepared, they told Tiefenthaeler, to guarantee a payment of 2 million marks in return for the complete set of Hitler’s diaries; this sum could be paid, according to his preference, in either cash or gold. If necessary, they would be prepared to accept photocopies of the diaries rather than the originals. The whole matter would be dealt with in the strictest confidence: even if the West German government tried to force Stern to disclose the identity of the supplier, they would stand by the traditional prerogative of a newspaper to protect the anonymity of its informants. It was a remarkable offer, all the more so considering it was made without the knowledge of the magazine’s editors. It showed the extent to which Heidemann and Walde had already convinced themselves that the diary held by Stiefel must be genuine.

While they waited for Tiefenthaeler to bring them the supplier’s response, Heidemann, using the notes he had made from the graves in Boernersdorf, set about tracing the victims’ relatives. On 1 December, in the Ruhr steel town of Sollingen, he found Frau Leni Fiebes, the widow of Max Fiebes, one of Hitler’s bodyguards who had been among the passengers. She had been notified of her husband’s death in 1948. She showed Heidemann the official report which had been forwarded to her, recording the discovery of:

a male corpse with the remains of a grey-green uniform with two stars on the collar, a wallet containing a number of passport photographs, and the name Max Fiebes, Oberscharführer of the SS, born 27 March 1910 in Sollingen. No personal property could be found as it had been completely burnt.

This was of interest to Heidemann only in so far as it showed that oddments of paper could have survived the crash. But Frau Fiebes was at least able to give him the name of the plane’s rear gunner, Franz Westermeier, and on 10 December, the indefatigable reporter tracked down his family in Haag in Upper Bavaria. Westermeier, he learned to his surprise, had actually survived the crash, thrown clear of the burning wreck on impact, together with an SS guard, Gerhard Becker. Becker had died of his injuries two days later, but Westermeier had lived on into old age, dying in April 1980 of a kidney tumour: Heidemann had arrived just eight months too late.

Another trail seemed to have gone cold, leaving them no further forward. All Heidemann and Walde could do now was hope that the offer being relayed by Tiefenthaeler would flush out their prey.

THE NEW YEAR arrived, cold and bleak, with a symbolic reminder of Germany’s Nazi past and the conflicting emotions it aroused.

On 6 January 1981, a crowd of about 5000 German naval veterans and right wingers gathered in the snow at Aumuehle near Hamburg for the funeral of Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler’s successor as leader of the Third Reich. Doenitz, who had died on Christmas Eve at the age of 89, had been a devoted Nazi and the West German government announced that it would be boycotting the ceremony. ‘But in buses, cars and trains,’ reported The Times, ‘mourners came to his funeral, many of them old men with an upright military bearing, Iron Crosses glinting on their breasts and evident nostalgia for what Doenitz stood for.’ Rudolf Hess sent a wreath from his cell in Spandau. Serving naval officers – some in uniform, despite an official ban – formed an honour guard around the grave. As the coffin, draped in the red, black and gold flag of the Federal Republic and bearing Doenitz’s service dagger, was lowered into the frozen ground, the mourners broke into the militaristic first verse of ‘ Deutschland über Alles ’. At a rally afterwards, speakers from the extreme right were applauded as they denounced the craven behaviour of the republic’s politicians. It was an ugly start to the year and the ensuing political row lasted several weeks.

SS General Wilhelm Mohnke, who lived close to Aumuehle, marked Doenitz’s passing by arranging a small reception at his house on the day of the funeral. Otto Guensche and Richard Schulze-Kossens, two of Hitler’s SS adjutants, attended; so too did Gerd Heidemann. They all met at the graveside and then went back to Mohnke’s for his little party. ‘It was on this occasion,’ remembered Mohnke, ‘that Herr Heidemann told us for the first time that there were supposed to be Hitler diaries.’ Heidemann described the story of the plane crash and revealed that he had discovered its location in Boernersdorf. When he insisted that a set of Hitler’s diaries had survived, the three old SS men were sceptical. ‘That was thought by the people there to be impossible,’ declared Mohnke. Schulze-Kossens, who had helped found Hitler’s SS honour bodyguard in 1938 and who had often been in the Führer’s company, doubted if Hitler had had the time to write a diary. Heidemann was undeterred. Nothing could now shake his conviction that somewhere out there were Hitler’s diaries.

Nine days later, his confidence appeared to be vindicated. On Thursday 15 January, after an interval of more than seven weeks, Jakob Tiefenthaeler at last rang back. Herr Fischer, he reported, was interested in Heidemann and Walde’s offer and had authorized him to pass on his telephone number. It was 07152 41981. The reporter noted it down. He could hardly contain his impatience. ‘I remember that Herr Heidemann was in a real hurry to end the conversation,’ recalled Tiefenthaeler. ‘He thanked me and promised to keep in touch.’