Hitler Diaries - Discovery of The Forgery

Discovery of The Forgery

Many doubted the diaries' genuineness. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt told a group "I just can't believe it's true". Skeptics thought that no one person could have forged 60 volumes, and believed that the East German and Soviet governments had faked the diaries to divide West Germany from its allies, or to earn Western hard currency.

Doubts quickly emerged. A press conference held to launch publication on 25 April 1983 was a fiasco for Stern. Both Trevor-Roper and Weinberg qualified their previous endorsements, and writer David Irving held up photocopies of a fake Hitler diary that he said was from the same source as Stern's material. Within two weeks, the West German Bundesarchiv revealed that the Hitler Diaries were "grotesquely superficial fakes" made on modern paper using modern ink and full of historical inaccuracies. Content had been largely copied from a book of Hitler's speeches, with additional "personal" comments. Much of the "archive" that had impressed Trevor-Roper in Switzerland was also discovered to have been forged.

Dr Julius Grant in London confirmed the forensic analysis. The autograph expert Kenneth W. Rendell concluded the Diaries were not particularly good fakes, calling them "bad forgeries but a great hoax" and stating that "with the exception of imitating Hitler's habit of slanting his writing diagonally as he wrote across the page, the forger failed to observe or to imitate the most fundamental characteristics of his handwriting." Stern editors Peter Koch and Felix Schmidt resigned from the magazine; Frank Giles stood down as editor of The Sunday Times; and William Broyles resigned from Newsweek. The episode was much ridiculed in the UK media (particularly by the Sunday Times' rival newspapers), and Trevor-Roper's reputation was seriously damaged.

On 25 April 2012, Rupert Murdoch acknowledged his role in publishing the diaries during the Leveson inquiry.

The diaries were actually written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Heidemann went to trial in 1984 and were each sentenced to 42 months in prison (for forgery and embezzlement).

It was never determined where the missing money went. Kujau certainly received a portion of it, but it is likely that Heidemann pocketed a majority. At the time the fraud was being investigated, authorities learned that Heidemann purchased two villas in Spain, two luxury sports cars, expensive jewelry, rare WWII memorabilia for his collection, and extravagant vacations, amongst other things. All of the items, totaling well over 1.5 million marks, were allegedly paid for out of Heidemann's monthly salary of 5,400 Marks.

After release from prison, Kujau was able to use his new fame as a forger to open a studio and sell "original Kujau forgeries".