Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

Suddenly, Irving remembered his dinner with Priesack in London back in April.

Acting on a hunch I said, ‘You’ve seen the Stuttgart diaries too?’ He said he had, that they were beyond doubt authentic, and that in this particular case they reveal Hitler as deliberating different courses of action: what to do if Hess’s mission succeeded, what if it failed, etc. The diaries also contain Hitler’s character assessments of his contemporaries, showing him a better judge than has hitherto been supposed, etc. Guensche implied that he has seen the originals.

The conversation ended when Irving had to go up on to the platform to deliver his speech. Afterwards, hoping to pick up more information, he went back to Guensche’s house for tea. But Guensche had not withstood ten years of interrogation in the Soviet Union in order to be tricked into disclosure in his own home. He refused to say any more about the diaries and Irving left frustrated.

Despite his elaborate show of concern for secrecy, Heidemann had always been remarkably indiscreet about the diaries. He had shown original volumes to former Nazis like Guensche, Mohnke and Wolff and to such shady contacts as Medard Klapper. On several occasions, Walde and Pesch had been forced to restrain him from boasting openly about his discovery to colleagues in the corridor at Stern. In 1981, he had sat his old friend Randolph Braumann down on the sofa in his apartment. According to Braumann: ‘He said: “Are you sitting comfortably?” and then from under the sofa he pulled out a plastic bag stuffed with bundles of money. He said it was for the diaries and asked me not to tell anybody.’ The following year, meeting Braumann in the Stern canteen, Heidemann had taken him outside to his car ‘and produced a packet containing seven or eight books. He seemed very proud, positively euphoric.’ Now Stern was to pay the price for Heidemann’s showing off.

Returning to London twelve days later, Irving telephoned Phillip Knightley, the senior reporter on the Sunday Times , and told him of the existence of the Hitler diaries. ‘He is interested,’ wrote Irving in his diary. ‘I said I’d let him have a note about it at his private address.’ That same afternoon, Irving wrote to him, enclosing an account of his conversations with Priesack and Guensche, and stressing the usefulness of his reputation as a right winger: ‘I would be prepared to set up or conduct such negotiations with traditionally awkward German personalities as might prove necessary in an attempt to secure this material.’ In return, he made it clear that he expected a ‘finder’s fee’ of 10 per cent of the cost of the diaries. Knightley – who was about to return to his native Australia for four months – passed Irving’s offer on to Magnus Linklater, the features editor of the Sunday Times . On Wednesday .8 December, Linklater telephoned Irving to confirm that the paper was interested. At 9.15 that night, Irving rang August Priesack in Munich to try to extract more information from him. The first part of the conversation concerned itself with the old man’s forthcoming trial for ‘propagating the swastika’ in his book about the Nazi Party rallies.

‘ You promised to provide a reference for me,’ said Priesack, reproachfully.

‘Yes,’ lied Irving, ‘that’s why I’m calling.’ (He had found the old man, frankly, to be rather a bore and had never had any intention of allowing his name to be associated with such an obvious crank.) He then had to endure five minutes of Priesack alternately moaning about his persecution and bragging about the book on Hitler’s art he was working on with Billy Price. (‘The book is written by me in every way. But it can’t be put out like that because the American has paid 400,000 marks for it – so he has to appear as the author.’) At last, after a number of false starts, Irving managed to turn the conversation to the diaries. According to Priesack ‘six or seven’ were already in America, where they were to be published. ‘That’s interesting,’ said Irving.

PRIESACK: They’re just headlines from the Völkischer Beobachter.

IRVING: The whole twenty-seven volumes?

PRIESACK: Yes. He wrote them as something to jog his memory…. I’ve only seen a half-yearly volume from 1935, and there were in total only six interesting pages. You can read them in Hitler’s handwriting here [i.e. in Priesack’s apartment].

IRVING: Good. When I’m there, I’ll—

PRIESACK: But I’ve also got Mein Kampf . The third volume.

IRVING: [ emits stifled cry ]

PRIESACK: Haven’t you heard about that?

IRVING: When did he write that ?

PRIESACK: He started that on the day after the seizure of power. Mein Kampf Three . I’ve got a few pages. They’ve not been sold. They’ll probably end up in America because America pays better.

IRVING: Do you know where all this is? Can you find that out?

PRIESACK: Up to a point, yes.

IRVING: You are a real gold mine.

PRIESACK: [ laughs ]

After promising to send Priesack a character reference (describing him as ‘a well-known scientist’), and suggesting he might come and see him in Munich in a few days’ time, Irving hung up and switched off his tape recorder.

The following day in Hamburg, the Hitler diaries team received an unpleasant surprise. In the belief that it might shake loose some information from someone, somewhere in Germany, Irving had written letters to dozens of West German newspapers to alert their readers to the existence of the diaries. On Thursday, 9 December, these seeds of mischief began sprouting in news columns and letters pages across the country:

I am of the opinion that German historians are guilty of failing to explain to the German public the facts behind the Nazi crimes against the Jews. We know that Adolf Hitler’s own diaries – 27 half-yearly volumes, including the first six months of 1945 – have entered the Federal Republic as a result of horse-trading with a major-general in the East German Army. They are however in private hands in Baden Wuerttemberg [the area of Germany which includes Stuttgart] and German historians are taking no notice of them. The Hitler diaries would surely clear up any doubts about whether he knew or did not know of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek.

Among the thirteen West German newspapers which eventually carried Irving’s letter was Kujau’s and Stiefel’s daily paper, the Stuttgarter Zeitung .

The effect of this burst of publicity on the furtive circle of south German collectors was dramatic. Like insects whose stone had been kicked away, they scurried for cover. Kujau rang Heidemann to warn him that Irving was on their trail. The reporter told him to put as much pressure as he could on Stiefel to ensure he kept quiet: above all, Irving must not get to see the 1935 diary which Stiefel still had in his safe. Kujau contacted the industrialist and warned him that he had heard from his brother that sixty-four East German generals had been summoned to Berlin in an effort to flush out whoever was supplying the diaries. Stiefel panicked. Convinced that he would be raided by the police at any moment, he packed his entire collection – his medals, papers, paintings and concentration camp china – and shipped it out of the country to his holiday home in Italy. He also wrote to Priesack. ‘I must ask you,’ he told him, ‘under the terms of our agreement, to, return to me all the copies and photographs which are in your possession and which come from us.’

At four o’clock in the afternoon, Heidemann spoke to Irving on the telephone. He pleaded with him to keep quiet about the diaries. Not all the material, he said, was in the West: he was having to make repeated trips into East Germany and his life would be in danger if there were any more publicity. Irving replied that Priesack had told him that most of the material had already been smuggled out. ‘What has Priesack got?’ asked Heidemann. For a moment, Irving – who had not yet seen any of the material – was stumped for an answer. Recalling his conversation with Guensche he replied that Priesack had a letter from Hess to Hitler dated May 1941. As the conversation went on, Heidemann began to realize that Irving was bluffing. He did not know the scale of the archive in Stern ’s possession. He thought that some of the books were still in America. He did not know about Hitler’s special volume on Hess. Almost all his information was either two years old or based on nothing more than regurgitated gossip. ‘Priesack’, he warned Irving, ‘is talking about things of which he knows nothing.’