Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

On 29 July, Heidemann flew to Spain and arranged to buy two holiday villas in the Mediterranean town of Denia, midway between the resorts of Valencia and Alicante. The two houses, which stood next to one another, cost him 390,000 marks in cash. In August, he suggested to Kujau that he should buy one of them. The two villas, he said, both had spacious cellars which could be knocked together to make a large underground vault. Heidemann proposed that they should each move their Nazi collections there. Together they would create the biggest museum of Third Reich memorabilia in the world. The plan came to nothing the moment Edith Lieblang got to hear of it. She told Kujau, in forceful tones, that she was ‘absolutely against’ it. ‘It seemed to me completely worthless,’ she recalled, ‘owning it and only spending a couple of weeks a year in it. For 200,000 marks, I could go on holiday around the world until the end of my life.’ Edith’s word was final and Heidemann’s dream of erecting a monument to the Führer amid the haciendas and cicadas of the Costa Blanca evaporated.

Not all the money Heidemann spent at this time belonged to Stern ; at least some of it was his own. He was now drawing a salary of over 100,000 marks a year. He had received a bonus of 20,000 marks. He had already been given an advance of 300,000 marks by Manfred Fischer and his position as the sole contact between Gruner and Jahr and the ‘antiques dealer’ in Stuttgart meant that he found no difficulty in extracting more. His moodiness and periodic threats to take his great scoop elsewhere were guaranteed to throw the Stern management into a panic. Without him, the flow of diaries from East Germany would dry up. Like wealthy drug addicts, they were prepared to pamper their supplier: to ensure he continued to deal with them, they were willing to give him whatever he asked.

In June 1982 Heidemann told the company that in order to keep up the pretence of being a Swiss collector, he was having to buy additional material from the communist general: Nazi documents and paintings and drawings by Adolf Hitler. Although as a collector he was naturally interested in obtaining such items, he did not see why he should have to go on paying for them out of his own pocket. Gerd Schulte-Hillen accepted Heidemann’s argument and on 11 June concluded a new contract with him, by which the reporter was to be paid a ‘loan’ of 25,000 marks for each volume of diaries he delivered. To date, there were thirty-five books in the company’s possession. Heidemann was therefore entitled to receive 875,000 marks, minus the 300,000 marks advance paid to him in February 1981, and the 80,000 marks still outstanding for his unwritten books – Bord Gespräche and My African Wars . The money was described, for tax purposes, as an ‘interest-free loan’ to be recovered through ‘profit-sharing and royalty fees’ following ‘the commercial exploitation of the diaries’.

But Heidemann wanted more than mere money. Incapable of writing up the stories he researched, he had, throughout his career, suffered from an inferiority complex. Now, as he watched Walde and Pesch start putting together a book based on the material he had gathered, his resentment welled up in a demand for praise for his achievement. He craved respect and recognition. It was like dealing with a child. Gerd Schulte-Hillen had already had to cope with one of these bouts. On that occasion, at the end of 1981, he had forced the editors to give Heidemann a salary increase. In the summer of 1982, Wilfried Sorge warned him once again that the company’s ageing prima donna was proving difficult. ‘He was portrayed to me,’ remembered the managing director, ‘as being rather like a circus horse: because he’d made this find, you had to say “hello” to him and pat him on the head from time to time.’

Acting on Sorge’s advice, on Monday 28 June, Schulte-Hillen took Heidemann out ‘for a meal on expenses’. They met in the Ovelgonne, a restaurant in a picturesque street overlooking the Elbe. For three courses, Schulte-Hillen listened patiently to Heidemann’s stories. He heard of the reporter’s adventures in Africa and the Middle East, of his experiences with the white mercenaries in the Congo, of his long search for Traven. Finally, over dessert, Heidemann invited him back to his home in the Elbchaussee to see part of his collection. ‘He showed me drawings by Hitler,’ said Schulte-Hillen, ‘and the pistol with which Hitler was supposed to have shot himself.’ The businessman inspected Heidemann’s archive: the shelves full of history books and folders crammed with documents, all neatly arranged and catalogued. He congratulated Heidemann on his professionalism and, after a couple of hours, the two men parted on excellent terms.

Heidemann was given another opportunity to show off a few weeks later, when Henri Nannen also decided to visit him at home. Nannen had retired from daily involvement in Stern to devote himself to the erection of his own memorial: an art gallery in his home town of Emden, to house his collection of German Expressionist paintings. But to Heidemann – as to most West German journalists – Nannen, despite his retirement, was Stern , and he was determined to impress his old employer. Nannen parked his car beside the Elbe and got out to see Heidemann on his balcony, waving at him with one hand, and raising a glass of iced champagne to him with the other. Climbing the stairs, he suddenly realized that Heidemann not only had the top floor apartment, but the one underneath as well. Inside, the impression of luxury continued. ‘The place was decorated in the very best taste,’ recalled Nannen. ‘There were some superb pieces of furniture – Queen Anne, I think – and on the walls were drawings. The first thing that hit me was the original manuscript of ‘ Deutschland über Alles ’ by Hoffman. He also had the autographs of Bismark and Moltke, along with other historical documents under glass and in frames. I was astonished. Where has he got all this from? I thought.’ Heidemann told him he had been forced to buy it from the supplier of the Hitler diaries in order to disguise the fact that he was interested only in the diaries themselves. ‘He gave me some convoluted story and showed me thirty or forty Hitler drawings,’ said Nannen. ‘I’m something of an art historian. They seemed to me to be perfectly genuine.’

After seeing Hitler’s suicide weapon, and a pair of busts supposedly sculpted by the Führer, Nannen inquired about the diaries.

Heidemann crossed the room, pulled a cord, and a pair of black curtains slid back to reveal a bookcase full of files. These were Heidemann’s private photocopies of the diaries, each sheet protected by a transparent plastic cover.

‘What do you want to see?’ asked Heidemann.

‘The Roehm putsch ,’ replied Nannen.

He was handed the relevant volumes and read a few pages. He found them ‘unbelievably boring’ – a fact which further convinced him that they must be genuine: ‘I couldn’t believe that anyone would have gone to the trouble of forging something so banal.’

But although Nannen had no doubts that the diaries were authentic, his visit convinced him that Heidemann was a crook. Unlike Schulte-Hillen – who had known Heidemann for only a year – Nannen had been his employer since the 1950s. The change in the man’s fortunes was startling. It was inconceivable that he could have moved from near bankruptcy to such affluence without robbing the company. Nannen left the Elbchaussee and immediately drove to the Stern building. Within ninety minutes he was in Schulte-Hillen’s office. ‘I’ve just come from Heidemann’s,’ he told him, ‘and he’s shitting on us – from a great height.’ Schulte-Hillen asked if he meant that the diaries were forgeries. ‘No,’ said Nannen, ‘but he’s clearly pocketing our money.’ Privately, Stern ’s editors thought the same: Peter Koch had been in no doubt ever since he learned of the expensive renovation work being carried out on Carin II. But they could have warned Nannen that to raise such suspicions with Schulte-Hillen was useless. The managing director regarded himself as a good judge of character; he was convinced of the reporter’s integrity; and having made up his mind, he was unshakeable. He reacted, in Koch’s words, ‘like a man with an allergy’ whenever Heidemann’s honesty was questioned. That afternoon, when Nannen told him of his fears, Schulte-Hillen stared at him with contempt. Heidemann, he said, was being well rewarded for his work: the only sort of person who would think that he was robbing the company was someone who was capable of committing such a crime himself.