Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

Booms told all this to Hagen and Ruppert. They were, he recalled, ‘deeply shocked’ and ‘shattered’: ‘I can still hear their arguments: “Heidemann is certain. He absolutely swears on it. As far as he’s concerned, it’s quite impossible that we could be dealing with a forgery….”’

But there could be no doubt. In addition to the forensic evidence, the Bundesarchiv had discovered a number of textual errors: for example, a law passed on 19 January 1933 was entered in the diary under 19 January 1934. It did not take the archivists long to discover the forger’s main source: the two-volume edition of Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations , compiled by Max Domarus. ‘It became apparent to us’, said Booms later, ‘that if there was nothing in Domarus for a particular day, then Hitler didn’t write anything in his diary that night either. When Domarus did include something, then Hitler wrote it down. And when an occasional mistake crept into Domarus, Hitler repeated the same error.’ One such mistake was an entry by ‘Hitler’ recording that he had received a telegram from General Ritter von Epp congratulating him on the fiftieth anniversary of his joining the army; in reality, the telegram was from Hitler to von Epp. Kujau had copied the error word-for-word into the diary.

Throughout the half-hour conversation, Booms was repeatedly interrupted by telephone calls from Berlin, Wiesbaden and Bonn. Suddenly, Hagen realized what was happening: the two forensic laboratories, both official organizations, were reporting direct to the Federal Government. Booms confirmed that this was the case. But what about the guarantee of confidentiality? That no longer applied, answered Booms. The affair was now ‘a ministerial matter’. There would be a government news conference to announce that the diaries were fakes at noon.

The two Stern lawyers scrambled to a telephone to alert Hamburg to what was about to happen. They reached Jan Hensmann. Hardly anyone seemed to be around. Hensmann rang Schulte-Hillen who left his sick bed immediately to come in. Hensmann tried to find Nannen.

Nannen was at Hamburg airport, preparing to fly to Rome for a ceremony to open Stern ’s new Italian office. A stewardess told him he was wanted urgently on the telephone.

‘It’s all a forgery,’ wailed Hensmann.

Nannen asked how he could be certain. The Bundesarchiv, said Hensmann. They were going to announce it in less than thirty minutes.

The sixty-nine-year-old publisher dropped the telephone, sprinted through the terminal, abandoned his luggage and his car, and jumped into a taxi. At the office, he dictated a statement acknowledging the Bundesarchiv’s findings and promising a full investigation. The message was rushed to a telex machine but it arrived just five minutes too late to beat the official announcement.

The news that the diaries were forgeries had been whispered to the West German Minister of the Interior, Friedrich Zimmermann, during a debate in the Federal parliament. Broad smiles appeared as the news spread along the Government bench. Zimmermann told the Chancellor, Helmut Kohl. ‘Now that is something,’ laughed Kohl. Stern was an old enemy of the Christian Democrats: the discomfiture of Nannen and the rest of ‘the Hamburg set’, as Kohl dismissively called them, was a pleasant prospect to brighten the Government’s day. Zimmermann hurried out of the Chamber to brief the press.

Zimmermann’s determination to announce the news immediately was not motivated solely by party considerations. The legacy of Adolf Hitler was too important to be bandied about as Stern had done. Any West German government would have been sensitive about the diaries; the fact that the scandal had blown up on the fiftieth anniversary of Hitler’s accession to power, at a time of intense interest in the Nazis, made the matter especially delicate. There was no question of the Interior Ministry permitting the Bundesarchiv to suppress the news that the diaries were forged while Stern tried to wriggle off the hook. The whole business was out of hand. It could no longer be left to a collection of scoop-happy journalists.

‘On the basis of an analysis of the contents and after a forensic examination, the Federal Archive is convinced that the documents do not come from Hitler’s hand but were produced after the war,’ Zimmermann told reporters. ‘I regret most deeply that this analysis was not undertaken by Stern before publication.’ A press conference giving more details would be held shortly by the Bundesarchiv.

A few minutes later, the German Press Agency put out a rush statement: ‘HITLER DIARIES ARE POST-WAR.’ It was two weeks, literally to the hour, since the same agency had issued the announcement of Stern ’s scoop.

In the Sunday Times offices in London there had been, according to the paper’s own account, ‘an air of considerable elation’ all morning. Stern had finally agreed to lend the newspaper two volumes of the diaries to enable it to carry out its own forensic tests. A Stern courier had flown in from Hamburg and handed them personally to Rupert Murdoch. Someone suggested to Murdoch that they should have the books photocopied. Murdoch would not allow it. He had given his word, he said, that they would be used only for scientific evaluation.

The atmosphere of self-congratulation was punctured abruptly at noon. Peter Hess, the publishing director of Gruner and Jahr, rang through from Germany with the news that the diaries were forgeries. ‘It’s staggering, shattering,’ he said, stammering out his apologies. ‘We still just can’t believe it.’

Murdoch told his journalists to photocopy the diaries.

Arthur Brittenden issued a statement to Associated Press: ‘The Sunday Times accepts the report of the German archivists that the volumes they have examined contain materials that demonstrate the diaries are not authentic. In view of this, the Sunday Times will not go ahead with publication.’ News International announced it would be seeking an immediate repayment of the $200,000 it had paid as a first instalment for the diaries.

In Hamburg a debate was underway as to what Stern should do next. Astonishingly, Henri Nannen thought the magazine should cut out all the references drawn from the Hitler diaries and continue with its series about Rudolf Hess: it was still an interesting piece of journalism in his opinion. The others were horrified. The magazine would be torn apart by its critics if it tried to carry on as if nothing had happened. Nannen was forced to back down.

At the Itzehoe printing works, thirty miles north-east of Hamburg, the third issue of Stern to be built around the Hitler diaries was already being printed. By the time the arguments on the editorial floor had ended and the order had been given to stop the presses, 160,000 copies of the inside pages and 260,000 covers had already been printed. An additional 70,000 magazines were actually finished and in lorries on their way to the distributors; they were recalled only after frantic telephone calls. Every trace of the issue was pulped, losing Stern a quarter of a million marks in the process. The cover picture of Rudolf Hess was replaced by a photograph of a new-born baby.

At 2.30 p.m. Felix Schmidt addressed a hastily convened editorial conference. Everyone had to set to work to remake the next issue, he told them. He refused to answer detailed questions. Confused and angry, the Stern departmental chiefs drifted away. At 5 p.m. the entire staff held a meeting and elected a committee to negotiate a new code of conduct with the management.

In Cambridge, Hugh Trevor-Roper’s telephone was once again ringing incessantly. ‘I just don’t want to say anything about it,’ he told one reporter. ‘I think I should only comment to Times Newspapers.’