Selling Hitler

by Robert Harris

  ‘If I had rung him,’ lamented Trevor-Roper afterwards, ‘he would have told me of his experience. He would have warned me.’

  But it was not until Trevor-Roper was back in his hotel that he remembered the pledge of secrecy he had signed at the bank. He did not dare break it. He decided not to call Jaeckel.

  The telephone rang. Trevor-Roper answered it, and a voice announced: ‘Rupert Murdoch’s office. I have Mr Douglas-Home on the line for you.’ Trevor-Roper realized at once that the editor of The Times must have gone straight from speaking to him to see the proprietor.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Rupert,’ said Douglas-Home. ‘We’re both coming out to Zurich tomorrow.’

  Trevor-Roper said that he was in a hurry to get back to Britain. He wanted to resume his holiday in Scotland. What flight were they coming on?

  Douglas-Home told him not to worry. They were coming in a private plane.

  Months later, the historian looked back and saw this as the decisive moment in the developing disaster:

  What I should have done was insist on waiting for a transcript before giving my verdict. I should have said that in my view the diaries were superficially genuine. I should not have been so enthusiastic on the telephone.

  If I’d refused to commit myself and reserved my position, then I’m quite sure Murdoch would have insisted on an answer. But I would have stood my ground. As it was. I lost the initiative. And I never regained it.

  There was no liking between Murdoch and Trevor-Roper. The Australian tycoon regarded the Master of Peterhouse as a typical English establishment waxwork of the type he had been forced to acknowledge in order to purchase The Times. He was also ‘too clever by half’: Harold Evans described the historian at board meetings of Times Newspapers, sitting with ‘eyes screwed up behind pebble glasses… permanently sniffing the air for non sequiturs’. For his part, Trevor-Roper thought Murdoch ‘an awful cad’.

  When the millionaire bought The Times and Sunday Times in 1981, he had been obliged to sign an agreement designed to safeguard the integrity of the papers. The undertakings subsequently proved a feeble restraint, but at the time they had seemed to promise a curb on Murdoch’s legendary ruthlessness. According to Evans, Trevor-Roper had boasted that ‘we have Leviathan by the nose’. He was about to discover, as scores of others had done before him, that Leviathan was not so easily restrained.

  TWENTY-THREE

  ON FRIDAY NIGHT, the Stern team took Trevor-Roper out for a meal in one of Zurich’s most expensive restaurants. The following morning, he flew back to Britain.

  As Trevor-Roper left Switzerland, Murdoch arrived. With him on board his private jet he brought his tough Australian lawyer and business adviser, Richard Searby, along with Sir Edward Pickering and Charles Douglas-Home. Gerald Long, the former chief executive of Reuters and deputy chairman of News International, flew in to join them on a separate flight from Paris. Peter Wickman met them in the lobby of the Baur au Lac and took them through to a private dining room for lunch.

  Around the table, there was an unmistakable feeling of anticipation. Murdoch sat next to the senior Stern negotiator, Jan Hensmann. Wickman sat beside Douglas-Home. Koch talked with Maynard Parker and William Broyles who had flown in from New York to make an offer on behalf of Newsweek.

  Murdoch seemed particularly excited. In the spring of 1983, his corporation News International controlled more than thirty newspapers and magazines, four book publishers, three television companies and a variety of firms specializing in transport, energy and leisure. He ruled his empire in a manner not dissimilar to that which Hitler employed to run the Third Reich. His theory of management was Darwinian. His subordinates were left alone to run their various outposts of the company. Ruthlessness and drive were encouraged, slackness and inefficiency punished. Occasionally, Murdoch would swoop in to tackle a problem or exploit an opportunity; then he would disappear. He was, depending on your standing at any given moment, inspiring, friendly, disinterested or terrifying. He never tired of expansion, of pushing out the frontiers of his operation. ‘Fundamentally,’ Richard Searby, his closest adviser, was fond of remarking, ‘Rupert’s a fidget.’

  The sudden decision to buy the Hitler diaries was a perfect example of Murdoch in action. He loved the concept of The Deal – spotting the opening, plotting the strategy, securing the prize. Already, in Zurich, he had his eyes on more than simply the British rights, which were all that Stern had originally offered him. Sure, the diaries could run in The Times or the Sunday Times (he would work out which later). But they could also run in the New York Post and the Boston Herald and The Australian and in one of the outlets of New Zealand’s Independent Newspapers group (of which he owned 22 per cent). He had also recently acquired a 42 per cent stake in the Collins publishing company: he was aiming to buy the book rights to the Hitler diaries as well. It was this ability to spread the cost of his purchases throughout his many holdings which made Murdoch such a formidable force in international publishing. The Hitler diaries deal was exactly what he was looking for: he would publish the book, serialize it in three continents, and – given that he had recently joined forces with Robert Stigwood to produce Associated R & R Films – he might even make the movie which he could eventually show on Channel Ten, his television station in Sydney. The Hitler diaries potentially were a model for the internationally integrated media package.

  After lunch, the Stern men took Murdoch and his entourage over to the bank. Seated around the table in the ground floor conference room, Sorge read out extracts from a typed transcript, Gerald Long provided a simultaneous translation, while Murdoch skimmed through a handful of diaries, nodding intently. He had no doubts that Hitler would help sell his papers. The diaries were sensational. At one point, he asked the Germans if they were sure their security was good enough: in his view it was possible that the Israeli secret service might try to seize the material.

  A couple of hours later, back in Stern’s suite at the Baur au Lac, Murdoch made Hensmann an offer. He told him he wanted to bid for syndication and book rights. Hensmann said he could not discuss a book deal – Bertelsmann was insisting that Bantam retained the first option. Disappointed, Murdoch submitted an opening bid for American, British and Commonwealth serial rights. Hensmann considered it too low. Murdoch and his team retired to confer and to make some telephone calls. Shortly afterwards, they returned. News International, announced Murdoch, was willing to offer $2.5 million for the American rights, plus an additional $750,000 for serialization in Britain and the Commonwealth.

  Three and a quarter of a million dollars. It was a good offer. It would clear Gruner and Jahr’s costs and still leave them European and Asian serial rights and a percentage of the book sales. Hensmann, provisionally, agreed. He said he would give Murdoch a final answer at 5 p.m. on Monday. The two men shook hands and the News International team returned to London.

  Meanwhile, Broyles and Parker were inspecting the books for Newsweek. They too considered the diaries a wonderful story. Serialization would attract tens of thousands of readers and give them a coveted boost in their ceaseless circulation battle with Time: whereas Newsweek sold roughly 3.5 million copies around the world each week, its rival had sales of almost 6 million.

  The Hitler diaries appealed to Broyles in particular. A Texan, a former marine, only thirty-eight years old, he had been appointed editor the previous September. It had been a surprising choice. Broyles’s background had been in glossy magazines – Texas Monthly and California. He had no background in immediate news coverage. Announcing his arrival, Newsweek’s owner, Katherine Graham, had declared: ‘He will add a whole new dimension.’ He had, and Newsweek’s staff did not like it. He appeared to be more interested in features than news. Fashion, show business and social trends seemed to be his priorities. When Time led on the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in the Lebanon, Newsweek’s cover story was the death of Princess Grace of Monaco. Broyles’s editorial standards were attacked, but he tried to keep above the intrig
ue. He saw it as his task to provide long-range direction; he did not bother with the day-to-day running of the magazine. Just as the Hitler diaries suited Murdoch’s style of running his company, so they fitted Broyles’s approach to editing Newsweek.

  Returning from the bank at about 8 p.m., the Americans offered Hensmann $500,000 for serialization rights in the diaries. Hensmann, sitting on Murdoch’s offer of $3.25 million, found this ‘totally unacceptable’. Newsweek doubled its offer to $1 million. Hensmann told them he wanted $3 million for the American rights. He would not take less. Broyles and Parker said they would have to return to New York. They would telephone him on Monday with an answer.

  Back at the bank, Wilfried Sorge supervised as a guard carried the diaries down from the negotiating room to the vault. He watched to make sure the volumes were safely stowed, locked the deposit box, and took a taxi to the airport. He managed to catch the last flight home. It was his fortieth birthday party in Hamburg that night and he had no intention of missing it.

  At his house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Gerhard Weinberg was telephoned by Maynard Parker.

  Weinberg was fifty-five, a neat and bespectacled man, fastidious in his personal and professional habits. His origins were German Jewish. His family had fled the Third Reich when he was twelve and he now spoke in a broad New York accent which gave no hint of his German background. His name was not generally well known like Trevor-Roper’s, but among professional historians he was respected as a careful scholar. In 1952 he had helped compile the US armed forces’ Guide to Captured German Documents. He was the author of a two-volume study of Hitler’s pre-war foreign policy that had taken him more than a decade to complete. He did not like to be hurried and he did not care for journalists – their sloppiness, their deadlines, their assumption that one was willing to drop everything ‘to jump to their tune’.

  Weinberg’s first reaction to the alleged discovery of Hitler’s diaries was the same as Trevor-Roper’s: he thought it was improbable but was reluctant to dismiss it out of hand. It was true that there were no references to diaries in any of the reminiscences of Hitler’s subordinates. It was also well known that Hitler had a strong personal aversion to writing in his own hand. (Weinberg knew this well, having enjoyed a minor historical scoop himself in the 1950s when he discovered the Führer’s private testament of 1938 – the longest passage of Hitler’s handwriting in existence; after drafting the will, Hitler had told his associates that the task had demanded ‘a quite special effort on my part, since for years I’ve had the habit of writing directly on the machine or dictating what I have to say’.) However, Weinberg – professionally cautious – considered that ‘too many things turn up which are not supposed to exist’; if the entries were short enough, the discovery of a diary might not be too far fetched.

  The fact that Murdoch had already had his expert over to Zurich put added pressure on Newsweek. Parker said he wanted Weinberg to fly to Switzerland to look at the diaries. How soon could he go? Weinberg replied that he was going to work as a visiting professor at Bonn University for three months over the summer. He was flying out to Germany on 22 April – what if he was to go early and inspect the diaries then? No use, said Parker: he wanted Weinberg in Zurich next week. The historian protested that he had classes in North Carolina on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Cancel them, said Parker. Weinberg refused. He consulted his diary. ‘I could go after my last class on Monday,’ he said, ‘as long as you can guarantee to get me back in time for my next one on Wednesday. Talk to your travel people.’

  The morning of Monday, 11 April found Sorge back in Zurich, exhausted after having snatched only four hours sleep in the past two days. At the bank he met the television presenter Barbara Dickmann, Heidemann and the Stern film crew who had arrived to shoot the opening sequence of the documentary; Sorge’s attendance was required because he was the only person with keys to the safety deposit box.

  The lights were set up outside the vault, the camera began turning, and Heidemann self-consciously walked into shot. He plodded woodenly over to the deposit box, opened it, pulled out one of the diaries and began reading.

  By mid-afternoon, the filming was finished, and for the second or third time that day Heidemann took the opportunity to slip out to attend to some mysterious ‘business’ in Zurich. Barbara Dickmann asked him what he was doing. Heidemann replied that he was trying to make arrangements to drop in and see Martin Bormann who lived nearby.

  Meanwhile, in Hamburg, London and New York, the negotiations to buy the diaries continued.

  For Newsweek it was clear that to stay in the game they would have to match the News International offer. On Monday, back in the Gruner and Jahr headquarters, Hensmann received a telephone call from the United States informing him that the magazine was now prepared to offer $3 million for the American serialization rights. The deal was conditional on their being satisfied that the diaries were genuine. Broyles and Parker wanted to return to Zurich the following day and show the books to their nominated expert, Gerhard Weinberg. Hensmann agreed. This opened up the enticing prospect for Gruner and Jahr of pushing up the price by playing off Newsweek and News International against one another.

  In London, Rupert Murdoch had already become suspicious that something was going on behind his back. Throughout the day, he made a number of attempts to ring Hensmann, without success. Each time he was told that Hensmann could not be reached. Finally, towards the end of the afternoon, the German rang him.

  The deal was off, said Hensmann. Newsweek had made him a very attractive offer for the American rights. Murdoch could still have serial rights in the diaries in Britain and the Commonwealth for $750,000, but if he wanted the complete package, including United States rights, he would have to pay $3.75 million – $500,000 more than Murdoch had originally offered in Zurich on Saturday.

  Murdoch was furious. He understood that the handshake had clinched the deal. He unleashed a torrent of invective down the telephone which a shaken Hensmann was later to describe as ‘bitter’.

  Wilfried Sorge was at Zurich airport to catch the evening flight to Hamburg when he was paged over the public address system. It was Hensmann. ‘I don’t want you to come back. I want you to stay there,’ said the deputy managing director. ‘Newsweek are coming to see the diaries tomorrow.’

  Wearily, Sorge returned to the Baur au Lac.

  Across the Atlantic, Gerhard Weinberg’s last class at the University of North Carolina – a two-hour seminar on Nazi Germany – was coming to an end. At 4.15 p.m. Weinberg dismissed his students, drove twenty miles to the local airport, Raleigh-Durham, and caught a flight to New York. There was a limousine waiting at La Guardia airport to rush him through the heavy evening traffic to the inter-continental terminal at JFK. Maynard Parker and William Broyles were already there waiting for him. Half an hour later, the three men boarded the overnight Swissair flight to Zurich.

  Settled into their seats in the first-class section, the Newsweek men handed Weinberg the reports of the three handwriting experts. He read them carefully. ‘It looks good,’ he said when he had finished. ‘If these people say the handwriting is correct, that’s fine by me.’ Only one thing puzzled him: nowhere in the report was there any mention of diaries. He told Broyles and Parker that before they bought the books, they ought to have a specific volume checked. He also raised the question of copyright.

  ‘We’ll buy that off Stern,’ replied Parker.

  Weinberg shook his head. ‘Mr Parker, it’s not as easy as that.’

  In the course of his work with original documents, Weinberg had acquired some understanding of the complexities of West German copyright law. As he understood it, literary rights in unpublished papers could not be confiscated. Although the State of Bavaria claimed ownership of Mein Kampf, it had no jurisdiction over Hitler’s private diaries.

  ‘I tell you what will happen,’ warned Weinberg. ‘Hitler’s heirs will wait until you’ve printed millions of copies – and then they’ll sue you.’


  Weinberg, Broyles and Parker landed in Zurich shortly after 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning and went directly to the Handelsbank. They had no time to waste: the professor’s irritating insistence on being back in North Carolina in time to take his next class had forced Newsweek to book him on a 3 p.m. flight to New York out of Amsterdam. At the bank they were met by Sorge and also by Heidemann who had stayed overnight in Zurich after the previous day’s filming. The introductions were friendly. Heidemann especially struck Weinberg as charming and anxious to help.

  The session began with Heidemann reading aloud extracts from the diaries for 1940 and 1945. Sorge then invited the Americans to help themselves to whatever volumes they wanted from the stack in front of them.

  Weinberg had brought with him a copy of the diary of Hitler’s valet, Heinz Linge, covering the second part of 1943. Linge’s daily notes of Hitler’s activities were available for inspection in the National Archives in Washington but had never been published: if the Stern diaries were poor quality fakes, discrepancies with the Linge record would swiftly expose them. Unfortunately, the entries in the Stern diary covering the last three months of 1943 were so sketchy, Weinberg was unable to make an adequate comparison. He then asked to see the volumes covering the battle for Stalingrad. These were no use either. There was no typed transcript available and the handwriting was so bad that Weinberg was unable to decipher it. He pulled out a few other volumes at random. Nothing in them struck him as false. He noted that there was a page missing from the volume devoted to the Hess affair, and a statement witnessed by a notary indicating that it had been sent away for analysis. He looked up the entry for the Munich conference in 1938 and found a startling tribute from Hitler to the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain: