Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

His colleagues at Stern treated Heidemann’s behaviour at this time as if it were no more than a minor eccentricity. It does not seem to have occurred to any of them that a man capable of such obvious self-delusion over Martin Bormnn might be equally unreliable on other matters. Leo Pesch recalled that Heidemann now seldom came into the office. When he did so, it was to show them the photograph and to ‘talk very intently about Bormann’. Pesch and Walde regarded it as a ‘half-crazy story’ and used to have ‘teasing conversations’ with him about it. It was another example of Heidemann showing off, trying to convince people of his importance. ‘My impression was that Heidemann had lost more and more contact with reality through his success,’ Pesch said afterwards. ‘In my view, Heidemann had a great deal of vanity. Again and again, quite unprompted, he would tell colleagues stories about the diaries and about Martin Bormann.’ The general view was that funny old Heidemann was up to his usual tricks; as long as it didn’t interfere with his real work, the best thing was to humour him. ‘Our main concern’, admitted Walde, ‘was that Heidemann might be diverted by this myth about Bormann from the task of obtaining the diaries.’

Was there a connection between the two stories? Heidemann certainly acted as though there were. Whenever he came across a flattering reference to Bormann in the diaries, he photocopied it and gave it to Klapper to pass on to Bormann. Klapper reported back that ‘Martin’ was so pleased, he had hung an enlargement of one extract on his study wall in Madrid. Heidemann also talked about Bormann to Kujau. During one of these conversations, the forger told Heidemann that his East German brother could obtain Hitler’s gold party insignia, allegedly given to Bormann at the end of the war. Heidemann reported this to Klapper who subsequently passed on ‘Martin’s’ confirmation that the story was indeed correct. Heidemann told Kujau and shortly afterwards, a reference to the decoration appeared in the final volume of the diaries.

Further evidence of possible collusion between Kujau and Klapper surfaced at the beginning of December 1982. Every reference in the Hess special volume was being checked methodically against published sources to make certain it contained no errors. The name of one SS captain, supposedly appointed by Hitler to watch over Hess, proved to be almost indecipherable. Even Wilfried Sorge was called in to give an opinion. Lautman? Lausserman? Eventually, the consensus was that the name was Laackman. Because Walde and Pesch could find no mention of the name in any of their reference books, they asked Josef Henke of the Bundesarchiv to undertake a search on their behalf in the closed records of the Berlin Document Centre. Three weeks later, Henke sent them thirty photocopied pages of SS Captain Anton Laackman’s military record. Heidemann also asked Klapper to check with Bormann. In January, Klapper returned with three original pages from Laackman’s personnel file which he told Heidemann he had removed from Bormann’s office in Spain. There was no question but that the documents were authentic. Once again, the Bormann story and the Hitler diaries appeared to be substantiating one another.

Naturally, the Laackman papers did not come from Bormann. They were stolen, at Klapper’s request, along with other Nazi documents, by a corrupt employee of the West German state archives named Rainer Hess. But Heidemann was not aware of that. For him, the production of the papers was the clinching proof that Bormann was still alive.

Months later, after the diaries were exposed as forgeries, the Sunday Times used this episode as the basis for its assertion that ‘Klapper played a pivotal role – perhaps the central role – in the diary fraud.’

The kindest thing that can be said about the Sunday Times investigation is that it overstated its case. If Laackman’s name had not appeared in any book, and Kujau could have forged the diary entry only on the basis of documents supplied by Klapper, the evidence that the two men were working together to trick Heidemann would be conclusive. But Laackman’s name does appear in a book. It occurs – as the Sunday Times was forced to admit – on page 221 of the Nazi Party’s Yearbook for 1941: police discovered it, carefully marked by Kujau, when they raided his home in 1983. Moreover, the Hess volume was forged by Kujau in 1981. If the planting of Laackman’s name was part of a carefully laid plot, it is hard to see how he could have known fourteen months in advance that Stern would fail to spot the reference in the 1941 Yearbook and ask Klapper to obtain the documents.

It is possible there was a link between Kujau and Klapper. The fact that both men, proven liars, deny knowing one another, is no proof to the contrary. But if they were working together, they have covered their tracks with great care. The only place in which the Bormann story, the hunt for secret Nazi treasure and the discovery of Hitler’s diaries all came together with any certainty was in the overwrought imagination of Gerd Heidemann.

Now that the Plan 3 had been completed, sale of the syndication rights could begin in earnest. On Wednesday 5 January, Manfred Fischer turned over control of the safe-deposit box in Zurich to Dr Jan Hensmann, deputy managing director of Gruner and Jahr. The following day, Hensmann, Wilfried Sorge and Gerd Schulte-Hillen, accompanied by Olaf Paeschke representing Bertelsmann, flew back to New York for a second round of negotiations with Bantam Books.

Knowing the extent of the market for books on the Second World War, Bantam was enthusiastic about the project. Plan 3, based on new writings by Hitler, with its revelation that the Führer authorized Hess’s peace mission, would make headlines all over the world. If the hardback edition appeared that autumn, the paperback could tie in with Hess’s ninetieth birthday in April 1984. But once again, the discussions foundered. Bantam’s President, Louis Wolfe, wanted to involve expert historians in the project. He also demanded extensive guarantees of compensation should the book’s authenticity be called into question – an open-ended commitment which the Germans were reluctant to make. A more serious problem concerned newspaper rights. Bantam was prepared to offer $50,000, but their visitors were insistent on retaining syndication rights for themselves. Wolfe ‘found it difficult to grasp what Schulte-Hillen and Hensmann actually wanted’. He was not aware that Plan 3 was regarded in Hamburg merely as a trial balloon for a much bigger scoop. Wolfe could not understand it. He thought that ‘the whole thing was being handled in an amateurish way’.

While the businessmen were arguing in the United States, David Irving was preparing to speak to a packed meeting in West Germany. At noon on 9 January, 2000 supporters of the DVU jammed into one of Munich’s enormous beer cellars to listen to Irving speak at a memorial meeting for Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the highly decorated fighter pilot who had lived in exile in Brazil and Paraguay, an unrepentant admirer of Adolf Hitler until the end of his life. ‘I spoke first,’ noted Irving, ‘and was interrupted by a huge roar of applause as I called the Bonn politicians Charakterschweine for not allowing military representation at the Rudel funeral.’

At the end of the meeting, Irving drove across town to see August Priesack to return his Hitler documents. The material was so riddled with fakes, he told him, he was not going to waste any more time trying to sort it out. He showed Priesack the misspelt Goering notepaper. ‘He indicated by his manner that he had already noticed that, but did not consider it important. At this I mildly exploded: “If even the printed letter head of the second most important man in Germany contains a printing error, how can the document be anything other than a fake?” He implied that in 1944 even Goering would be happy to have headed notepaper, printing error or not. I did not even bother to discuss that remark.’ Priesack said that he thought he should contact Gerd Heidemann. ‘Why contact him?’ asked Irving. ‘It is quite obvious from these documents that they are fakes.’ He told Priesack that he suspected Fritz Stiefel had a hand in the forgeries. Priesack flushed and insisted that was not the case. ‘Throughout the half hour conversation he kept putting his hand on my shoulder,’ noted Irving, who was as fastidious as the Führer about physical contact. ‘At one stage he even held my hand, which was not pleasant.’