Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

He was soon deeply involved in the operation. On 29 July, Heidemann received 345,000 marks for the next batch of diaries. A week later, on 5 August, he picked up another 220,000 marks. This meant that since January he had removed a total of six suitcases full of cash from the Deutsche Bank, containing 1.81 million marks. There were now eighteen diaries in the management safe.

The next day, Hensmann and Sorge went to see the new managing director in his office. Before any further payments could be made, they explained, Schulte-Hillen had to sign a fresh authorization for the transfer of the company’s funds. Without hesitation, he signed a document endorsing Sorge to use another i million marks of the company’s money. According to Schulte-Hillen:

Somehow I thought – oh, you don’t have to worry too much about that. I was still feeling my way into the job. I said to myself – well, two million has already been spent, it must be OK. Fischer himself did it, and now he’s on the overall board of the company and is my boss. Who was I to question it? That was a mistake. The next time I was asked to give my approval for the payment of another million, the room for manoeuvre was even smaller.

Manfred Fischer, the man who had initiated the operation, was 150 miles away, grappling with the day to day running of a multinational company. Schulte-Hillen, a relatively inexperienced businessman in a new job with little experience of journalism, was merely carrying on what Fischer had started. Hensmann was a weak man. The finance director, Kuehsel, did what he was told. Sorge’s objectivity was compromised by his friendship with Thomas Walde. Walde and Heidemann, both expecting to make a fortune when the books were published, were the last men to call a halt to the delivery of the diaries. The editors were sulkily refusing to show much interest in the management’s scoop.

The whole project was out of control.

The only person who seemed to be showing any financial sense was Edith Lieblang in Stuttgart. She took charge of the envelopes full of cash which Heidemann was delivering and invested them in bricks and mortar. When it came to money, she said firmly, ‘We didn’t have “mine” and “yours”.’ In May the couple bought a new apartment in Wolfschlugen for 235,000 marks, together with a garage for 18,000 marks. In July she paid 230,000 marks for a flat in Schreiberstrasse. This was on the ground floor of a substantial, heavy masonried, four-storey block, tucked away at the end of a quiet street near the centre of Stuttgart. Schreiberstrasse became Kujau’s new shop. He bought a large building at the back for 120,000 marks, installed heavy steel shutters and a security camera to scan the courtyard, and transferred to it his entire collection from Aspergstrasse. He hired a local taxi company to do the removals.

Kujau continued to work on the diaries during the day at home. Edith knew he was supplying Hitler diaries to Stern but claimed, somewhat implausibly, that she thought they were genuine: she did not know, she said, what Kujau was up to during the day when she was out working at the Café Hochland. ‘I don’t know what he did in my absence. I rarely went into his workroom. He used to clean it himself.’

Once he had done the research, it took Kujau, on average, only four and a half hours to forge a complete diary. His favourite source was a weighty, two-volume edition of Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations 1932–45 , a daily chronology of the Führer’s activities, compiled in 1962 by the German historian Max Domarus. Working against the clock to satisfy Heidemann’s demand for diaries, Kujau resorted to wholesale plagiarism, copying out page after page from Domarus. The Hitler Diaries – the object of one of the most extravagant ‘hypes’ in the history of journalism – were for the most part nothing more interesting than a tedious recital of official engagements and Nazi party announcements. Nine-tenths of the material being so carefully hoarded in the Gruner and Jahr safe was unpublishable. These, for example, are the entries for the first seven days of September 1938 – a typically uninspired week in the life of the Führer, as recorded by Konrad Kujau:

1. The Reich Air Defence Federation received its own insignia and flag. The founding of the ‘Federation for the unity of Germany and Poland’ was today announced by the Polish Prime Minister.

2. Opening of the exhibition ‘Great Germany’ in Japan (telegram). A youth delegation from Japan is received in Munich by Schirach (telegram).

Reception at the Berghof for Henlein. Conference.

3. Admiral Horthy has kept his word. As from today there is compulsory military service in Hungary.

4. Opening of the Party Rally ‘Great Germany’.

Reception in the Nuremberg town hall.

5. Opening of the Party Congress. Proclamation. Handing over of Reich insignia to the mayor of the town of Nuremberg. A cultural meeting.

6. Call to the Reichs Labour Service. Diplomatic reception in the Hotel Deutscher Hof.

The bulk of the diaries, especially the early ones, consisted of padding of this sort – a technique which reached a pinnacle of improbability in the entry for 19 July 1940, when Hitler was supposed to have devoted five pages to copying out the entire list of senior promotions in the German armed forces following the fall of France.

At the end of each month’s entries, Kujau had ‘Hitler’ write a set of more general notes headed ‘Personal’. It was in these sections of the diary, unfettered by chronology and so less vulnerable to checks for accuracy, that Kujau allowed the Führer to think aloud about the state of his affairs. There were occasional revelations: that the burning of the books in May 1933 ‘was not a good idea of Goebbels”; that some of ‘the measures against the Jews were too strong for me’. But overall, the tone remained relentlessly trivial. Health was one recurrent theme: ‘My health is poorly – the result of too little sleep’ (April 1933); ‘I suffer much from sleeplessness and stomach pains’ (June 1934); ‘My stomach makes it difficult to sleep, my left leg is often numb’ (July 1934). Eva Braun was another regular source of concern: ‘Although I have become Reichs Chancellor, I have not forgotten E’s birthday’ (January 1933); ‘She is the sporty type – it has helped her very much to be in the fresh air’ (October 1934). Occasionally, as in June 1941, these twin preoccupations met: ‘On Eva’s wishes, I am thoroughly examined by my doctors. Because of the new pills, I have violent flatulence, and – says Eva – bad breath.’ It was for material of this sort that Stern was to end up paying roughly £50 per word.

Kujau turned out the diaries so quickly that he had soon exhausted the stock of school notebooks in his cellar. In the summer of 1981 he flew to West Berlin, crossed into the East, and in a taxi travelled from shop to shop, buying up the old-fashioned, black-bound volumes. He returned home the same day bearing twenty-two of them. The whole lot cost him 77 marks.

Shortly afterwards Kujau passed on to Heidemann some wonderful news from his brother in East Germany. Contrary to their initial estimate, it now appeared that there were more than twenty-seven diaries. The haul of Hitler writings salvaged from the Boernersdorf crash was much larger than had been thought.

Heidemann returned to Hamburg to tell Gruner and Jahr of this latest development.

On 23 August, less than two and a half weeks after he had been asked to authorize payment of i million marks, Schulte-Hillen had to sanction a second transfer of money, this time of 600,000 marks. Heidemann reported that the price of the diaries had shot up to 200,000 marks each. The East German general, he said, was now having to pay money to members of the Communist government as well as to other corrupt officials. The company once again felt that it had no option but to pay up. Indeed, perversely, the price rise increased the company’s confidence that the diaries were genuine. ‘We weren’t surprised,’ said one of the managers later. ‘In fact, we expected it. Once you’ve bought part of a collection, you naturally want the rest. It’s worth that much more to you. The seller knows that and takes advantage of it. It’s normal commercial practice.’