Robert Harris - Selling Hitler

‘What has happened to the Sunday Times ?’ asked an article in the New York Times , commenting on this front page statement. ‘Rupert Murdoch has, for one thing, with his talent for turning what he touches into dross.’ Murdoch himself has been quoted as making three comments on the affair:

‘Nothing ventured, nothing gained.’

‘After all, we are in the entertainment business.’

‘Circulation went up and it stayed up. We didn’t lose money or anything like that.’

The last statement is certainly true. Stern returned to News International all the money it paid for the diaries, and the Sunday Times retained 20,000 of the 60,000 new readers it acquired when it began publishing the scoop.

When he had first heard that the diaries were forgeries, Gerd Heidemann had managed to cope with the news relatively calmly. The finality of the verdict had not sunk in. He still clung to the hope that the Bundesarchiv might be wrong. But by Sunday he was suffering from a bad case of delayed shock. His confidence had been shattered by his rough treatment overnight in the Stern building. And that, he realized, was only the beginning. Now that his three-year-old dream of bringing Hitler’s testament to the world was in ruins, it would simply be a matter of time before questions began to be asked about what had happened to the money.

He later testified that his depression was such that he had considered shooting himself: he did, after all, have Hitler’s so-called ‘suicide weapon’ and five bullets with which to do it. For part of the weekend he lay, in a state of collapse, in the lower of the family’s two apartments, refusing to move. Barbara Dickmann telephoned from Rome to find out what was happening and was shocked by Heidemann’s emotional state: ‘He was crying, emphasizing again and again that it would become clear that most of the diaries were genuine, that I had to trust him, that he hadn’t landed me in it.’

On Sunday morning, having not heard a word from Heidemann for more than twenty-four hours, Thomas Walde, Leo Pesch and Michael Seufert set out to try to find him. ‘We were worried that he might be suicidal,’ recalled Walde. They tried telephoning him, but there was no answer. They drove over to Carin II; the yacht was deserted. At about midday, they turned up outside the Heidemanns’ Elbchaussee home. ‘We rang the bell,’ said Pesch later. ‘His elder daughter appeared at the window. After much toing and froing, the door was finally opened and we were let into the flat by Frau Heidemann.’ The three men told her they needed to speak to her husband. Gina said that he was staying with friends somewhere in Hamburg; she would fetch him. The Stern reporters were left alone while she went downstairs, apparently to try to persuade her husband to come out of his hiding place in the apartment below. Ten minutes later, the doorbell rang.

‘I looked through the spyhole,’ related Pesch, ‘and I saw Heidemann, in his shirt sleeves, lying crumpled up on the floor by the steps. He was groaning, “Open up, open up.” His wife was next to him and was trying to get him to his feet. I opened the door and Heidemann – who didn’t seem able to stand – staggered to a chair and dropped into it. He was crying and choking. It was about ten minutes before he could speak.’

Heidemann presented a wretched spectacle, but his colleagues’ visit was not principally motivated by concern for his health. Stern had been working flat out since dawn on Saturday to piece together the story of the hoax. Using information and the telephone number supplied by Heidemann, the magazine’s reporters had located ‘Fischer’s’ home and shop and found them shuttered and deserted; neighbours said that Conny and Edith had gone away. Stern had soon established that ‘Fischer’s’ real name was Kujau and that his highly placed East German relatives – the museum keeper and the general – were, respectively, a municipal caretaker and a railway porter. Walde, Pesch and Seufert were under instructions to obtain more information and once Heidemann had regained his composure, they began asking him the same old questions all over again.

Seufert produced a photograph of Kujau which the magazine had already obtained from his family in East Germany. Was this ‘Fischer’? Heidemann replied immediately that it was. Seufert told him that the man’s real name was Kujau. According to Pesch: ‘Heidemann assured us – and I believed him – that this was the first time he’d heard the name Kujau.’ The questioning went on until seven o’clock in the evening and resumed again at midday on Monday.

In the interim, Heidemann received a telephone call from Kujau. The forger told him he was calling from a telephone box in Czechoslovakia where he was still trying to locate the score of Die Meistersinger. Heidemann taped the call. He was desperate. He told Kujau that the diaries were fakes. ‘Who could have forged so much?’ he demanded.

‘Oh my God,’ wailed Kujau, ‘oh my God.’

Heidemann told him that they would both probably end up in prison.

‘Shit,’ exclaimed Kujau. ‘You mean we’ve already been connected?’

‘ Stern ’s going to file charges against me for sure,’ said Heidemann. ‘The papers are saying that I did it.’

‘That’s impossible.’

‘Come on,’ pleaded Heidemann. ‘Where did you get the books from?’

‘They’re from East Germany, man.’

Heidemann confronted him with Stern ’s revelation that he had lied about his relatives in East Germany.

Kujau admitted it, but said that it hadn’t been his idea: ‘they’ had made him do it.

Heidemann later replayed this conversation with Kujau to Leo Pesch during his interrogation on Monday. ‘It wasn’t at all clear who “they” were supposed to be,’ Pesch recalled, ‘and Heidemann didn’t press him…. During the telephone conversation, Heidemann kept referring to the Wagner opera score. He still seemed to believe that Kujau had delivered him some genuine material.’

Reporters and photographers had been lurking around the Heidemanns’ home for several days. By Tuesday Heidemann had recovered sufficiently to invite them in for an impromptu press conference. Dozens of journalists jammed into his study, pinning Heidemann against a bookcase full of works on the Third Reich. Accompanied by his lawyer, he was described as looking ‘drained’ and ‘subdued’. He was asked why he was still refusing publicly to identify the diaries’ supplier. ‘Because this man was probably also deceived,’ replied Heidemann. ‘He is trying on his own to clear up where they came from and if they are forgeries. While he is investigating the affair for me and while I still have some faith in him, I cannot betray his name to the public.’ He would not comment on rumours that the man’s name was Fischer.

That same day, Stern announced that Heidemann had been ‘summarily fired’ and Henri Nannen disclosed that the company would be pressing charges with the Hamburg State Prosecutor for fraud. Nannen said that, in his opinion, Heidemann had always believed in the diaries, but had been blinded by ‘dollar signs in his eyes’ and had stolen at least some of the magazine’s money. ‘Heidemann has not just been deceived,’ he told reporters, ‘he too is a deceiver.’ Nannen also revealed that Stern had paid more than 9 million marks for the diaries.

A few hours later, the West German television programme Panorama , presented by Stefan Aust, scooped Stern by two days and named Heidemann’s source as Konrad Fischer, alias Konrad Kujau.

Needless to say, Kujau had not been in Czechoslovakia hunting for the score of Die Meistersinger when he rang Heidemann on Monday. He was in the Austrian industrial town of Dornbirn, close to the Bavarian border, holed up in the home of Maria Modritsch’s parents. Conditions were cramped and the atmosphere was understandably tense. ‘Conny and Edith slept together,’ said Maria, ‘and I slept in the living room.’