Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

‘We all had a kind of blackout,’ he commented afterwards.

For all this talk of mental aberration, the businessmen’s behaviour was not totally irrational. As publishers they knew the size of the potential market for any venture connected with the Third Reich. In Britain one publisher, Bison Books, had been built entirely on the strength of the public’s fascination with the Nazis. Hitler’s Wartime Picture Magazine was simply extracts from the Nazi propaganda magazine Signal stitched together in a single volume: it sold over a quarter of a million copies in Britain and the United States; between 1976 and 1978 it was reprinted eight times. Another picture book from the same publisher, Der Führer , edited by a former SS officer, Herbert Walther, was bought by more than 50,000 people. Bison’s flamboyant founder, Sidney Mayer, was quite open about the reason for his success:

I don’t want to end up as Hitler’s publisher. I would have thought the public was as sick of it as I am. But they are not. The booksellers always want more. Hitler sells. Nazis sell. Swastikas sell – and they sell better and better. It’s the swastika on the cover that gets them. Nobody can out-swastika us. I’ve even thought of putting one on our vegetable cook book because Hitler was a vegetarian.

On the wall of his office, Mayer hung a large picture of himself with a small Hitler moustache and the caption ‘Springtime For Mayer’.

If this was the market for what were basically retreads of material already seen, the marketing possibilities of Adolf Hitler’s secret diaries were clearly stupendous. Gruner and Jahr was well placed to exploit it. The company owned a string of successful West German magazines, including Stern and Geo . It had outlets in Spain, France and the United States (where it owned Parents and Young Miss ). Gruner and Jahr had a turnover of almost half a billion dollars and controlled a total of twenty periodicals across the world.

Since 1972, three-quarters of the company’s shares had been held by the West German multinational, Bertelsmann AG, the country’s largest publishing group. Founded in 1835 to produce religious tracts, by 1981 the company had one hundred and eighty subsidiaries operating in twenty-five countries. In America it owned such well-known organizations as Bantam Books and Arista Records. Once this formidable publishing and marketing machine was thrown behind the Hitler diaries, profits could be expected which would easily recoup Fischer’s initial investment of 2.5 million marks.

Hitler was going to make everybody rich, no one more so than Gerd Heidemann. Fischer accepted that the reporter had a special claim to the diaries project. He had pursued it in the face of outright opposition from the Stern editors. He was the only person with whom the supplier of the diaries would deal. Heidemann had already talked vaguely of taking over the project for himself. He could go into partnership with an American publisher. He could sell everything and try to finance the project himself. He could take up those job offers he claimed to have received from Bunte and Quick . He had even mentioned a Dutch oil millionaire named Heeremann, a former member of the SS, who was prepared to put up i million marks towards the purchase of the diaries, providing they proved that Hitler knew nothing of the extermination of the Jews. Fischer was understandably anxious to conclude an agreement with Heidemann. Immediately after the receipt of the first diaries negotiations began, and five days later, on 23 February, the two men signed a contract. Such was the secrecy of the project, the company’s legal department was not told what was happening. Wilfried Sorge personally drafted the agreement in accordance with suggestions from Heidemann.

The first part of the contract set out the reporter’s obligations:

The author [Heidemann] will obtain for the publishing company from East Germany the original manuscripts of the diaries of Adolf Hitler from the years 1933 to 1945 as well as the handwritten manuscript of the third volume of Mein Kampf . The publishing company will place at the author’s disposal for the obtaining of these manuscripts the sum of 85,000 marks per volume and 200,000 marks for Mein Kampf .

The author will be of assistance to the publishing company in reaching a settlement with the heirs of Adolf Hitler. He will attempt to obtain the ownership of the rights and transfer them to the company. The company will compensate the heirs through the author.

Together with Dr Thomas Walde, the author will work on the manuscript for a Stern series and for one, or perhaps several, Stern books…. Other collaborators (for example, historians) will be engaged only with the agreement of the authors.

The authors give the company exclusive and unlimited publishing rights to this material in all its forms. They give over all their copyright and further rights to the publishing company. The publishing company will be able to decide to whom it will syndicate the material. The company will only transfer the rights to a third party for a fee, and any alterations to the material which make it substantially different to the original will require the approval of the authors.

The authors will not be given any special fees for the production of the Stern series. Stern will receive rights to the series for nothing. In return, it will release the authors for two years from their usual editorial work. Those two years will commence when all the original volumes have been obtained.

Next came details of his reward:

For the Stern books, the author will receive a royalty of 6 per cent of the cover price of every volume sold up to 10,000 copies. For sales in excess of 10,000 copies, up to a total of 50,000, the royalty will rise to 7.2 per cent. For sales above 50,000 copies, the royalty increases to 9 per cent.

As a share of the syndication sales made by the company, Heidemann will receive 36 per cent; Walde, 24 per cent.

Ten years after the start of publication, the company will return the original manuscripts to the author. When he dies, the author will bequeath them to the Federal Government. Before the expiry of the ten year deadline, the author will be allowed to use the material for his own researches….

As an advance against royalties, when eight volumes of the Hitler diaries have been delivered, the author will receive 300,000 marks….

If neither the publication of the books nor the syndication of the material covers the advance, nor the sale of the original material, the author will repay the difference within a year from the time when the last payment was made.

If for any reason the publishing company is prevented from publishing the work, it will be entitled to withdraw from this contract. In that case, all the payments due to the author will fall through, and if the author publishes the work with another company, he will be obliged to pay the money back.

Despite the caveat contained in the final two clauses, this contract represented a substantial victory for Heidemann. It was inconceivable that if the diaries were genuine they would fail to cover the cost of his advance. Even if Stern never published the material, Heidemann could keep the money, unless he took the diaries elsewhere: in other words, even if they were forged, Heidemann would not be obliged to pay back the advance. That fact alone gives some indication of the management’s complete faith that the diaries were genuine. Assuming publication went ahead, the potential profit to Heidemann was enormous. Worldwide sales of Hitler’s diaries would exceed 50,000 copies by a factor of ten, perhaps a hundred; the royalties that would yield, coupled with a third of world syndication rights, would make Heidemann financially secure for the rest of his life. To have such a golden vision of the future shimmering on the horizon would tend to make the most sceptical journalist incline to a belief in the diaries’ authenticity. Heidemann was not one of the profession’s natural sceptics. He had already shown himself capable of believing any amount of rubbish about the Third Reich. It is scarcely surprising that his attitude to the diaries from now on was one of blind faith. Gruner and Jahr had given the one man they had to trust an overwhelming financial incentive to deceive himself – and them.