Selling Hitler

by Robert Harris

  It was after midnight. Schulte-Hillen was unwell and Henri Nannen was beginning to fall asleep. The four senior Stern men decided to get some rest and Heidemann was taken downstairs to Felix Schmidt’s office to face a fresh set of examiners: Thomas Walde, Wolfe Thieme and another Stern journalist, Michael Seufert. This session lasted until dawn.

  Meanwhile, in another office, Gina Heidemann was also being subjected to some detailed questioning. Heidemann had once described driving her car over to East Germany to carry out one of the dramatic exchanges of money for diaries on the Berlin autobahn; had she been with him? Gina said she had, an answer which did not help Heidemann’s credibility as at that moment he was denying that his wife had ever accompanied him. At 2.45 a.m., Gina telephoned Gitta Sereny at the Four Seasons Hotel. Sereny had flown over to cover the story of the forgery for the Sunday Times. ‘They’ve got Gerd upstairs,’ whispered Gina. ‘They are putting him through the mangle.’ By the time she emerged from the Stern building shortly after 3 a.m. she was in a pitiful state. She went to Sereny’s hotel. ‘Her hair’, wrote the reporter, ‘usually neat and attractive, was tangled, and she looked as if she was in an advanced state of shock. She was trembling and crying.’ Did she now believe the diaries were fakes? ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she replied. ‘Gerd always believed and swore they were genuine.’ Who was the supplier? ‘That’s what they want to know. That’s what they are asking him up there.’

  As light began to break over Hamburg, Heidemann’s defiance at last started to wilt. He was forced to accept that journalists from rival organizations would soon be swarming over Stuttgart. ‘We simply cannot cling to the principle of protecting our informants any longer,’ said Walde. At 5 a.m., Heidemann handed over ‘Herr Fischer’s’ home telephone number. ‘He used to live in Ditzingen,’ said Heidemann, but he’d moved a year ago. ‘I said to him: “Give me your new address”, but he refused to give it to me so we always spoke on the telephone.’ This was the break Stern needed. At 5 a.m., Seufert called the head of the magazine’s Frankfurt office and told him to try to trace the owner of the number.

  Was it possible, someone asked, that ‘Herr Fischer’ had forged everything?

  ‘He can’t have forged it,’ replied Heidemann. ‘He’s far too primitive.’

  THIRTY

  STERN WAS GIVEN a predictable savaging in the West German press the following day. One paper denounced the magazine for its ‘megalomania’ in claiming it would rewrite the history of the Nazi era, ‘as if this history had not already been written by the sixty million victims of the Second World War’. Another called the scoop ‘a stinking bubble from the brown swamp’. An editorial in Die Welt summed up what seemed to be the mood of the entire country:

  Two days before the thirty-eighth anniversary of the Nazi defeat on 8 May 1945, one thing is certain: the history books on Hitler and the Third Reich will not be rewritten. Hitler’s diaries, which Stern presented to the world at enormous cost in money and wordage, are a forgery…. Mr Zimmermann is to be thanked for the fact that this upsurge of sensationalism, involving a massive attempt to falsify history, has been stopped in its tracks. Fortunately, the matter has been clarified before irreparable damage was done to the consciousness of the German people and the world.

  It was clear that some heads from within Stern would have to be offered up to appease public opinion; the only question was – whose heads should they be?

  Early on Saturday morning, Schulte-Hillen telephoned Reinhard Mohn and submitted his resignation. Mohn refused it. ‘You do not carry the main responsibility,’ he told him. Throughout the morning, members of the boards of Gruner and Jahr and Bertelsmann telephoned Schulte-Hillen to pledge their support. By lunchtime there was a clear consensus that the editors rather than management should face the consequences of the disaster. Koch arrived back from New York to find Nannen, Schulte-Hillen, Gillhausen and Schmidt locked in conference in Nannen’s office, passing the poisoned chalice from one to another. Schulte-Hillen had the backing of Mohn, therefore he was excused. Nannen was already in semi-retirement. Gillhausen was responsible only for the design of the magazine…. Koch quickly realized that it was he and Schmidt who were expected to drink. At z p.m., a lawyer was called in to represent them, as the meeting turned from a general discussion into a specific negotiation over severance pay.

  It seems grossly unfair that Koch and Schmidt – who had never trusted Heidemann and who might, indeed, have dismissed him in 1981 – were made to carry the responsibility for the collapse of what had always been the management’s scoop. Certainly, the two editors felt this to be the case, and their threats to take the issue to an industrial tribunal brought each of them enormous financial compensation: 3.5 million marks (more than $1 million) each, pre-tax, according to the Stern Report, conditional on a pledge of secrecy that they would not reveal the story of how the diaries affair had been handled within the company.

  In London, the two diary volumes handed over to the Sunday Times had quickly been confirmed as forgeries. Dr Julius Grant, the forensic scientist who had established that the Mussolini diaries were forgeries, took only five hours to locate traces of post-war whitener in the paper. Norman Stone, one of Hitler’s most recent biographers and one of the few scholars in Britain who could read the outdated German script, rapidly concluded that the diaries were fakes. There were inconsistencies and misspellings; above all, the diaries were full of trivia and absurd repetitions. On 30 January 1933, the day upon which Hitler assumed power, the diarist had recorded:

  We must at once proceed to build up as fast as possible the power we have won. I must at once proceed to the dissolution of the Reichstag, and so I can build up my power. We will not give up our power, let there come what may.

  ‘This reads almost like a “Charlie Chaplin” Hitler,’ wrote Stone. The Sunday Times itself admitted that nothing ‘had prepared us for such an anticlimax’.

  In Frank Giles’s absence, it fell to his deputy, Brian MacArthur, somehow to frame an explanation for the behaviour of the newspaper, whose front page headlines had changed in two weeks from ‘World Exclusive: The secrets of Hitler’s war’ to ‘The Hitler Diaries: the hunt for the forger’. The statement which eventually appeared probably earned the paper more derision than anything else it had done in the past two weeks. ‘Serious journalism’, it began, ‘is a high-risk enterprise.’ It went on:

  By our own lights we did not act irresponsibly. When major but hazardous stories seem to be appearing, a newspaper can either dismiss them without inquiry or pursue investigations to see if they are true. No one would dispute that the emergence of authentic diaries written by Adolf Hitler would be an event of public interest and historic importance.

  Our mistake was to rely on other people’s evidence….

  The statement ended:

  In a sense we are relieved that the matter has been so conclusively settled. A not-proven verdict would have raised difficult problems about publication.

  This remarkable piece of self-justification masquerading as apology was subsequently attacked by a number of writers. The Hitler diaries affair was not an example of ‘serious journalism’, but of cheque-book journalism, pure and simple. And, as has become clear since, a ‘not-proven verdict’ would probably have led the Sunday Times to continue serialization: Murdoch’s 55–45 formula required the balance of probability to tilt decisively against authenticity. To add to the paper’s embarrassment, its colour supplement had already been distributed containing a twelve-page pictorial guide to Hitler’s career: it was too late to recall it.

  ‘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 wen
t 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.’

  Kujau’s plan had been to stay away from Stuttgart until things cooled off. But it quickly became apparent that this was not going to happen – indeed, things were hotting up. Kujau was sitting watching the Modritschs’ television when his picture was flashed on the screen as the man who had allegedly supplied Heidemann with the Hitler diaries. When it was also announced that Stern had paid out 9 million marks for the material, Kujau shot out of his chair. Nine million marks? He had received only a quarter of that sum. The deceiver had been deceived. The forger was full of moral outrage at Heidemann’s dishonesty. ‘He was bitterly upset,’ recalled Edith. Kujau was certain that the reporter, believing him to be behind the Iron Curtain looking for the Wagner opera, had deliberately betrayed him: once his name was known, he would then never have been able to get back over the border; he would ha
ve conveniently disappeared into the clutches of the secret police, leaving Heidemann to enjoy the millions of marks which should rightfully have been Kujau’s – such, at least, was the forger’s conviction.

  Kujau telephoned his lawyer in Stuttgart and learned that the Hamburg State Prosecutor was looking for him and proposed to raid his home and shop. It was clear that it was all over. On Friday 13 May Dietrich Klein of the Hamburg Prosecutor’s office, accompanied by a group of police, broke into Kujau’s premises and, watched by a crowd of reporters, began removing evidence: ten cartons and two plastic sacks full of books about Hitler, correspondence, newspaper cuttings, a signed copy of Mein Kampf and artists’ materials. There were also Nazi uniforms, military decorations, swastikas and photographs. Screwed to the wall above the entrance to Kujau’s collection was a coat of arms with the motto ‘Fearless and True’.

  Klein was in Kujau’s house, sifting through his property, when the telephone rang. ‘This is Klein speaking,’ said the prosecutor. ‘This is Kujau speaking,’ came the reply. Kujau told the official that he understood he wanted to speak to him. He was willing to come forward voluntarily. He told Klein he would meet him at a border post on the Austrian frontier early the following morning.

  At 8 a.m. on Saturday, Kujau said goodbye to Edith and Maria and made his way to the German border where Klein was waiting with a warrant for his arrest.

  Kujau had agreed to give himself up. He had not agreed to tell the truth. During the long journey north to Hamburg he asked the prosecutor what would happen to him. According to Kujau, Klein told him that if he was not the man who wrote the diaries, he would be free in ten days; if he was: ‘It could take a long time.’