Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

The meeting in Koch’s office that afternoon was noisy. Heidemann was horrified by the new idea. He returned to his old argument that premature publication would endanger lives and jeopardize the supply of the remaining diaries. Koch was sarcastic: the reporter had already spent more than two years bringing in the books; how many more were there? Schmidt and Gillhausen also arrived to add their support to Koch. Schmidt was worried that if they delayed much longer, David Irving or some rival organization would obtain photocopies of the diaries. Gillhausen – the most junior of the editors, but nevertheless respected as a man with a ‘nose’ for a good story – added his opinion. ‘His feeling’, recalled Walde, ‘was that the newsworthy part came in three little paragraphs before the end. The whole story should be published the other way round, starting with the story of the find.’

Walde shared Heidemann’s fears. He also had two additional concerns: he did not want to see his book swamped by the controversy which would be aroused by the announcement of the diaries’ discovery; and secondly, he wanted to write the story of the find himself – something which would be impossible if he had to prepare extracts from the diaries as well. Suddenly, he saw his dreams of becoming an authority on Hitler disappearing into the maw of Stern ’s accelerating timetable. But Koch had been pushed around by his own staff for long enough. According to Walde he ‘threatened’ him. He said that ‘he would take the work on the diaries out of my hands if I persisted in obstructing publication by my “inflexible” behaviour’.

‘Despite my huge reservations about whether publication was possible in the time allowed,’ said Walde, ‘I gave in. That was my big mistake.’

Walde had one particularly good reason for being alarmed by the decision to speed up publication. Although the company had obtained three reports authenticating the handwriting of its Hitler archive, no part of it had yet been subjected to forensic tests. If he had contacted a freelance chemical analyst, these could have been performed in a matter of days. Walde’s mistake had been to rely upon the West German Federal Police, the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA). On 5 July 1982, under the auspices of the Bundesarchiv, the BKA had been sent the originals of the material studied by the handwriting experts – the Hess statement and the Horthy telegram – with a request that they conduct tests to determine the age of the paper. Later, they had also been sent the various signed Hitler photographs and the Kleist document. Nothing happened. Despite occasional reminders from Walde, the BKA forensic experts continued to concentrate on their official police work. In December, Stern had asked for their request to be given ‘the highest priority’. Still nothing had been done. Now the unpleasant meeting with Koch galvanized the history department into making a new approach, this time enlisting the help of the Bundesarchiv. On Tuesday 1 March, Leo Pesch telexed Dr Oldenhage, pleading with him to contact Stern as quickly as possible: ‘We have some urgent deadline problems regarding the expert reports.’

On Friday 4 March, Wilfried Sorge, jet-lagged in his bedroom in a hotel in Tokyo, was telephoned by Peter Hess, Gruner and Jahr’s publishing director, and summoned back to Hamburg. ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘The whole publishing concept has been changed,’ he was told: he must return immediately ‘in order to pitch the sales strategy in line with the new plan’. Sorge was bitter at this news. In the space of a single telephone call, thousands of miles of air travel and days of meetings and planning had been ruined. He had no choice but to book himself on the first available flight back to Germany.

In New York, Lynn Nesbit’s contract to sell Plan 3 was terminated. She received a fee of $10,000 for her efforts. Newsweek , which had already submitted a tentative offer of $150,000 for the serial rights to the Hess book, was told that Stern had changed its mind. From Hamburg, telexes were dispatched to all Sorge’s potential customers informing them that they ‘could no longer be offered the material’.

The following Tuesday, Gerd Schulte-Hillen convened a meeting in a conference room on the ninth floor of the Stern building. It was attended by all those involved in the diaries project: Nannen, Gillhausen, Koch, Schmidt, Walde, Heidemann, Pesch, Sorge, Hess and Hensmann. The history department’s flickering hope that the new publication plan might be abandoned was crushed by Schulte-Hillen’s opening words. ‘Gentlemen,’ announced the managing director, ‘the time has come. We intend to publish.’ Nevertheless, Walde, Pesch and Heidemann were determined to make one last stand. The source of the diaries, they warned, would be threatened, and important volumes had yet to be delivered. Walde reported that they had no books from the year 1944: ‘If we did not get hold of those volumes… we would be unable to settle some very important questions about the Third Reich.’ Imagine what Hitler might have written about the German response to D-Day or the July bomb plot. Sorge supported his old schoolfriend. Speaking as a salesman, he would find it much easier to offer the diary archive in its entirety, rather than having to tell customers that part of it had not yet arrived.

Schulte-Hillen was not convinced. He accepted the argument of Nannen and the editors: to start with the Hess story and not to mention the diaries was the wrong way of doing things. If they delayed any longer there was a danger of leaks. They should go ahead and begin printing the story in May.

That settled, the conference went on to take a series of decisions on the timetable for publication. The existence of the diaries would be revealed in eight weeks’ time, in Stern ’s issue of 5 May. To wring the last ounce of sensation and profitability out of the diaries, serialization would be divided into three separate periods, spaced out over a period of eighteen months. In May and June, the magazine would run eight weekly instalments, covering the story of the diaries’ discovery, the Hess flight and the Nazis’ rise to power. There would then be a break over the summer. In the autumn they would relaunch the scoop with a ten-part series based on the pre-war diaries. This would be followed by a second and much longer interruption while the final extracts were prepared. Finally, in the autumn of 1984, Stern would publish another ten extracts based on the diaries from the war years. Heidemann was instructed to deliver the missing volumes by 31 March. Another Stern reporter, Wolf Thieme, was given the task of putting together the story of how the diaries were found – once again, Heidemann was expected to turn over all his information for someone else to write up.

The magazine, concluded Schulte-Hillen, had less than a month to produce the first eight-part series: it would need to be shown to potential foreign customers during syndication negotiations at the beginning of April.

Early the next morning, the peripatetic Sorge was back at Hamburg airport to catch the first flight to London. He had already scheduled meetings with potential British customers before Stern changed its publication strategy. In view of the importance of the British market, it was decided to go ahead with the London sales trip as planned. At Heathrow, Sorge was met by Stern ’s bureau chief in London, Peter Wickman, and the two men drove to their first appointment: with Sir David English of Lord Rothermere’s Associated Newspaper group.

English, editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday , listened to Sorge’s presentation of the Hess story. His immediate worry was the possibility that the Hitler document might be a fake. He had been caught himself, when editor of the Daily Mail, by forged correspondence supposedly originating from Lord Ryder. Another worry was the reputation of the Mail on Sunday, to whom the Hess scoop would be given as ammunition in its circulation battle with the Sunday Express. The Mail on Sunday’s editor, Stewart Steven, was the man who had helped Ladislas Farago track down Martin Bormann for the Daily Express in 1972 only to discover, too late, that ‘Bormann’ was actually an innocent Argentine high school teacher. English told Sorge he was interested in Stern ’s story, but he would require absolute guarantees of authenticity before going any further.