Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

In America, Leslie Hinton, the associate editor of Rupert Murdoch’s Boston Globe, confirmed that the paper had been on the point of running extracts from the Hitler diaries. ‘We have suspended our plans to publish,’ he said in a statement to UPI, ‘in view of what the German archivists said today.’

David Irving was in Düsseldorf on another speaking tour for the DVU when he heard the news from his secretary in London. It was a disastrous turn of events. He hastily dictated a statement for the press accepting the Bundesarchiv’s ruling but drawing attention to the fact that he was the first person to declare the diaries fakes. (‘Yes,’ said a reporter from The Times when this was read out to him, ‘and the last person to declare them authentic.’) NBC sent a television crew to interview him after his speech to an audience of right-wing extremists in the nearby town of Neuss. ‘They questioned whom I was speaking to,’ Irving recorded in his diary, ‘but I ducked the issue. As I was sitting down for the interview the whole audience streamed past behind the cameraman, several of the nuttier of them wearing the uniform and badges of the Vikinger Jugend [a fanatical sect of young neo-Nazis]. Fortunately NBC did not observe them .’

For Konrad Kujau, the newsflash announcing that the diaries were forgeries was the signal to pack up and leave Stuttgart as quickly as possible. Things had already started becoming uncomfortable for him. Stefan Aust, the editor of Panorama , West German television’s leading current affairs programme, had managed to reconstruct the trail back from David Irving through August Priesack to Fritz Stiefel. Working from a clue dropped by Priesack that the supplier of the diaries was apparently a dealer in militaria named Fischer, Aust had begun trailing round every antiques shop in Stuttgart until someone remembered a Herr Fischer who had kept a shop in Aspergstrasse. Neighbours there told Aust that Fischer had moved to Schreiberstrasse. Aust had arrived on Thursday to find the shop deserted. He had driven straight round to see Fritz Stiefel to confront him with this information, and whilst there had actually spoken to Kujau on the telephone. ‘Tell me where you are,’ insisted Aust, ‘and I’ll come over.’ Kujau had managed to stall him. But now that the diaries had been exposed, it was obviously going to be only a matter of time before a dozen other journalists followed Aust’s path to Stuttgart.

According to Maria Modritsch, her lover turned up on her doorstep at 7 p.m. on Friday, accompanied by Edith Lieblang. ‘There was a conversation between us,’ recalled Maria. ‘Conny told Edith that I was cleaning for him.’ Kujau insisted that all three of them leave Stuttgart immediately. Both women knew too much for him to be able to leave them behind. ‘Conny wanted to go to the Black Forest,’ said Maria, ‘but then he took up my suggestion that we go to Austria.’

Shortly afterwards, the forger, his common-law wife and his mistress all clambered into a car, and this bizarre ménage à trois headed off to the Austrian border.

Gerd Heidemann had been incommunicado all day, driving around the countryside between Berchtesgaden and Munich trying to find evidence to shore up his crumbling scoop. The Stern executives were itching to get their hands on him. So too was Gina, who was having to field telephone calls from their apartment in the Elbchaussee. She refused to believe what the Bundesarchiv was saying. ‘I am not surprised,’ she told Gitta Sereny. ‘We expected something like this.’ Was she saying the diaries were genuine? ‘Yes.’ Those who said the diaries were fakes, she insisted to a reporter from the New York Times, were trying to ‘suppress the truth’. ‘It’s terrible, but no matter what happens, we will always believe in the diaries…. It would have been a joy to tell the world about the Führer. We have received letters and telegrams above all from young people who are overjoyed finally to learn the truth.’ Between conversations with journalists, Gina managed to reach the couple’s friend, Heinrich Hoffmann, the son of Hitler’s photographer, who was also in Bavaria, undergoing treatment in a private clinic. Did he know where her husband was? Hoffmann said he did not. It was an emergency, said Gina, Gerd must ring her immediately. ‘Shortly afterwards,’ recalled Hoffmann, ‘Heidemann rang.’

He told me he was in the neighbourhood, but had no time to drop by. He asked how I was. I told him that his wife had rung and that he was being looked for. He said: ‘Yes, that’s the reason I’m in a rush – to get the last plane from Munich to Hamburg….’ I then rang Frau Heidemann and said: ‘You can relax. Gerd’s all right and he’s on his way back home.’

According to Heidemann’s own account, he had heard the news of Zimmermann’s announcement towards the end of the day on the car radio. He was ‘completely shattered’. At 8 p.m. he rang the Stern office, and was briskly informed that they had been trying to find him all day and that a private plane was waiting on the tarmac at Munich to bring him straight to Hamburg.

The plane touched down shortly after 11 p.m. A Stern representative was waiting for Heidemann at the airport with a car to take him to the office. Gina was also there. At first she had been told by Stern to keep away, but she was determined to meet her husband. Stern had relented, but its official had instructions to make sure the couple did not try to rehearse a story together. ‘All Gerd could say to me in the car’, recalled Gina, ‘was: “I know they are genuine. I know.” He looked shaken to the core.’

Heidemann faced a grim reception committee in the managing director’s office: Henri Nannen, Felix Schmidt, Rolf Gillhausen and Gerd Schulte-Hillen had been waiting for him all evening. ‘We are going to uncover the full story of this forgery and lay it before our readers,’ Nannen had promised in an interview on West German television that night. ‘We have reason to be ashamed.’ No one was in any mood to listen to excuses. ‘What do you have to say?’ demanded Schulte-Hillen.

Heidemann said he was sure that most of the diaries were genuine. He needed more time. He wanted to meet a contact in East Berlin.

Schmidt interrupted him. ‘Stop playing around. I’m sick of this performance. Let’s get down to the real issues.’

Very well, said Heidemann. He opened his briefcase and placed a cassette recorder on the table. He switched it on and played his interrogators a recording of a fifteen-minute telephone conversation he had had from Munich with Medard Klapper. Klapper promised the reporter that Martin Bormann was now willing to fly over from South America to authenticate the diaries – he was an old man, he no longer feared prosecution, he would come and help Heidemann out of his predicament. Heidemann switched off the tape. The four Stern officials looked at one another. After a while, Schulte-Hillen spoke. ‘How is Bormann proposing to get here?’ he inquired.

‘In a Lear jet,’ said Heidemann.

There were angry and frustrated shouts from around the table. Felix Schmidt pointed out that a Lear jet did not have the range to cross the Atlantic: it would fall into the sea in mid-flight.

The atmosphere became progressively more unpleasant as Heidemann still refused to name his source. ‘Lives are in danger,’ he insisted. ‘Nonsense,’ said Schmidt. ‘ We’re the ones in danger.’ Heidemann replied that his supplier had returned to East Germany to try to obtain the original score of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger , one of Adolf Hitler’s most treasured possessions which had also been on the Boernersdorf plane.