Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

Meanwhile, as the summer wore on, Thomas Walde and Leo Pesch worked hard on the manuscript of Plan 3 . Heidemann appeared in the offices occasionally and continued to deliver new volumes of diaries, but they had no time to look at them. To help them with the background for the Hess book, the two would-be historians hired a team of freelance researchers. ‘We employed them without telling them the context in which they were working,’ said Walde. ‘We simply asked them to do some research in certain areas.’ At the beginning of September, after three months’ intensive work, more than half the book was completed. On Monday, 6 September, chapters 2–7 were submitted to the editors of Stern . Walde explained in a memorandum to Felix Schmidt how the book would be structured. The first chapter would be an account of Hess’s life in Spandau and of his relations with his family. ‘We have already won over Hess’s son,’ confided Walde, ‘but not yet Frau Ilse Hess.’ Not until chapter 8 – which had still to be written – did the authors intend to introduce quotations from the Hitler notebook on the Hess affair. Then would come an account of Hess’s experiences in Britain, the Nuremberg trial, and his sentencing to life imprisonment. There was to be no mention of the existence of the diaries.

Schmidt later described himself as ‘amazed’ at Walde’s proposed treatment. He was a journalist. It was ridiculous, in his opinion, to start publication of the documents with a history lesson on Rudolf Hess. Stern should launch its scoop with an account of the discovery of Hitler’s diaries. Once again the editors realized that decisions had been taken behind their backs. Plan 3 was the child of the Bertelsmann marketing division, not the company’s journalists, part of a long-term commercial scheme to exploit the diaries.

The sales strategy was based on two premisses. First, to enable the company to recoup its investment, publication would have to be spread over as long a period as possible – somewhere between eighteen months and two years. Secondly, the company would have to find reliable foreign partners to syndicate the material. Plan 3 would enable Bertelsmann to begin earning money, whilst leaving the bulk of the diaries untouched. The manuscript would be sold to news organizations all over the world. Only if they paid promptly, adhered to Stern ’s publishing timetable, and generally behaved ‘correctly’, would they be told of the existence of the real prize – Hitler’s diaries – and be offered a share in its exploitation.

The moment Walde and Pesch had finished the first part of the manuscript, Wilfried Sorge and Olaf Paeschke flew to New York to hold discussions with the management of Bantam Books. The talks took place on Friday, 10 September. They did not go well. The Germans wanted to draw on Bantam’s experience of the American and British markets. They wanted to know which would be the best magazines and newspapers to approach. As far as Bantam was concerned, their interest was in a book, not a newspaper serial – especially as the two Germans were insistent that they should retain the syndication rights. As paranoid as ever, Sorge and Paeschke refused to reveal the secret of the diaries, leaving the American publishers with a feeling that they were being used. The talks ended, according to one of the participants, with a ‘bitter feeling’ on both sides.

Sorge flew back to Hamburg over the weekend. On Monday he went in to see Schulte-Hillen to brief him on his trip. The managing director wanted to know how much the diaries were likely to fetch on the world market. This was a difficult question to answer. Sorge had no idea of the total sales potential. The project was unprecedented. After the discussions in New York, it was clear that the only author who might remotely be compared to Adolf Hitler was Henry Kissinger. His memoirs had been syndicated across the globe in 1979 in an intricate network of deals, simultaneous release dates and subsidiary rights, which was a wonder to behold. Hitler was probably bigger than Kissinger – ‘hotter’, as the Americans put it. Certainly, the company was looking at an income of upwards of $2 million.

Sorge’s report did not please Schulte-Hillen. The company had already paid out 7 million marks – roughly $2 million – to obtain the diaries. Under the terms of the contracts agreed with Heidemann and Walde in 1981, Gruner and Jahr was entitled to only 40 per cent of the revenue from syndication sales. That figure made sense when there were only twenty-seven diaries; but now there were more than forty, the tally was still rising and the costs were going to be more than four times the amount originally predicted. Unless something was done, the company was going to end up making a loss. During a business trip to Majorca, Schulte-Hillen took the opportunity to tell Manfred Fischer that he had decided to renegotiate the original contracts. On 14 October, he summoned Heidemann and Walde to a meeting in a Cologne hotel and explained the problem.

Legally, both men would have been entitled to reject Schulte-Hillen’s proposal. Nevertheless, they were forced to accept the logic of what he said. A new, handwritten contract was drawn up, under which both men would be entitled to the same percentage of the syndication revenue – but only after Gruner and Jahr had cleared its costs. Walde signed, reluctantly. Heidemann, characteristically, demanded something in return. He pointed out that he was giving up a probable income of 2.3 million marks. Schulte-Hillen had no alternative but to agree to pay him yet more ‘compensation’. Under the terms of the contracts of February 1981 and June 1982, he had already received 1.1 million marks in advances and ‘loans’. Schulte-Hillen arranged for that sum to be converted into a once-and-for-all ‘fee’ of 1.5 million marks.

Heidemann also extracted another concession. From now on, it was written into his contract that he was ‘not obliged to reveal in fine detail the method by which the diaries were acquired, nor the names of his sources’. Schulte-Hillen took this as further evidence of Heidemann’s integrity – of his determination to protect the lives of his suppliers. In reality, Heidemann’s manoeuvre was almost certainly designed to cover up his own fraudulent activities: if he could prevent the company checking with Kujau, no one would ever know precisely how much he had paid for the diaries. Schulte-Hillen’s concession, seemingly trivial at the time, was to have important consequences.

The day after the meeting in Cologne, Heidemann withdrew another 450,000 marks from the bank in Adolphsplatz.

ON SATURDAY 20 NOVEMBER, the German People’s Union (DVU), a right-wing political group, organized a meeting in the Westphalian village of Hoffnungsthal. The speaker – a regular favourite among DVU audiences, with his stirring denunciations of communists and socialists – was David Irving.

Irving arrived at the hall to be met by the unmistakable figure of Otto Guensche. The devoted SS major, whose claim to fame was that he had burned Hitler’s body, was a local DVU supporter. ‘He talks to nobody,’ noted Irving in his diary, ‘but has been an informant of mine for twelve years or more.’ After a few pleasantries, Guensche abruptly asked the historian: ‘What’s your view of the Rudolf Hess affair?’ According to Irving:

I did not know what he was getting at. He continued, ‘Do you think the Chief knew about it in advance or not?’ I said I thought there were signs that Hitler approved of the idea in the autumn of 1940, but unless it was discussed by Hitler with Hess when they met briefly after the Reichstag session of 4 May 1941, Hitler was probably taken by surprise. Guensche said: ‘He knew about it. I know.’ I asked how. Guensche: ‘I’ve seen the proof.’