Hitler Diaries hoax

DATE: Planned publication announced in April 1983

THE EVENT: A major German newsmagazine’s announcement that it was about to publish voluminous and previously unknown diaries written by Nazi chancellor Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) stunned the world. Several distinguished historians initially endorsed the authenticity of the diaries, but the documents were soon shown to be fakes, and the credibility of German journalism was badly shaken.

SIGNIFICANCE: The Hitler diaries constituted perhaps the most significant forgery fraud ever perpetrated. The forensic techniques used to prove they were fakes involved several tests that have become standard methods of authenticating historical documents.

According to the backstory invented by Konrad Paul Kujau, the East German man who faked them, the diaries were among other Hitler documents being flown out of Berlin in early 1945 in a plane that was shot down over Bornersdorf, near Dresden. After being rescued from the crashed plane, the diaries remained hidden for many years and were later smuggled into West Germany, where collecting Nazi-era memorabilia was illegal. The story had a certain plausibility because it was known that a plane carrying Hitler’s papers did indeed leave Berlin and crash in Bornersdorf. The fact that collecting Nazi memorabilia was illegal made it easier for Kujau to sell his forgeries without attracting public attention.

Born in 1938, Kujau grew up in communist-ruled East Germany, where he later held a series of low-paying jobs, committed petty crimes, and pulled off a series of small forgeries. He also developed an interest in outlawed Nazi-era collectibles and began selling some genuine pieces along with forged items that he manufactured. His forgeries included a handwritten copy of Hitler’s manifesto, Mein Kampf (1925), as well as poems and paintings that he attributed to Hitler. After succeeding with these forgeries during the late 1970s, Kujau undertook a much more ambitious forgery: completely fabricated diaries supposedly written in Hitler’s own hand. To account for their existence, he invented the story about their being saved from the Bornersdorf plane crash in 1945.

Kujau’s initially secret scheme started to come to light when one of his customers, a collector of Nazi memorabilia named Fritz Stiefel, bought one of the forged diary volumes, thinking it was authentic. In 1979, Stiefel showed his collection to Gerd Heidemann, another collector who was also a reporter for the popular West German magazine Der Stern. Amazed by Stiefel’s collection, Heidemann spent a great deal of time trying to verify the story of the crashed plane and the diaries.

In April 1983, Der Stern publicly announced that it had purchased sixty-two volumes of Hitler’s diaries, covering the years 1932–1945—a period encompassing the years when Hitler was Germany’s chancellor. The magazine’s purchase price was equivalent to about 4.5 million US dollars—a huge sum at the time. Initially, both historians and collectors of war memorabilia were excited by Der Stern’s announcement. The diaries were considered an amazing discovery because Hitler had not been known to have written much about himself. The diaries were thus expected to fill important gaps in the historical record about both Hitler’s life and World War II.

A prominent British scholar of Hitler, Hugh Trevor-Roper, initially stated that the diaries were authentic but backed away from that judgment as the murky circumstances surrounding the diaries’ recovery and purchase came to light. After the diaries were subjected to the professional scrutiny that is standard in the of historical documents, it became obvious that they were fakes.

The Application of

To establish the authenticity of the Hitler diaries, experts examined the documents from several perspectives. Three primary kinds of tests were made. First, the content of the diaries was checked for consistency with what was already known about Hitler’s life and the historical events in which he was involved. Historians familiar with Hitler and World War II were able to establish with great certainty that the diaries were faked because they contained many significant historical inaccuracies.

The second kind of testing was done by document analysts, who examined the physical paper and ink used in the diaries to determine if they were consistent with the writing materials available to Hitler at the time he supposedly wrote the diaries. Chemical tests found that both the paper and the ink used in the diaries were of post-World War II manufacture. Those tests alone proved that the diaries could not be authentic.

Finally, the handwriting in the documents was examined to determine if it matched authenticated samples of Hitler’s writing. Handwriting experts concluded that it did not. They noted, for example, that strokes in the diaries’ words were not as boldly written as those in Hitler’s known writings and that the ends of sentences in the diaries did not fall off as they did in Hitler’s authenticated writings.

After the diaries were proven to be fakes, Heidemann, Kujau, and Kujau’s wife, Edith Lieblang, were prosecuted for fraud. Their trial centered less on the question of whether the diaries were fakes—it was a given that they were—than on the issue of who was responsible for perpetrating the fraud. At trial, Kujau never denied that he had forged the diaries. He did, however, deny that he acted alone in defrauding Der Stern. He maintained that the magazine’s reporter, Heidemann, had been aware that the diaries were forgeries from the beginning. In the end, all three defendants were found guilty. Kujau and Heidemann were sentenced to four years in prison; Lieblang was sentenced to probation. Meanwhile, the credibility of Der Stern and German journalism generally was badly damaged, and an air of greater skepticism would greet future discoveries of sensational manuscripts.

Bibliography

Brayer, Ruth. Detecting Forgery in Fraud Investigations: The Insider’s Guide. New York: ASIS International, 2000.

Hamilton, Charles. The Hitler Diaries: Fakes That Fooled the World. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1991.

Harris, Robert. Selling Hitler. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.

Innes, Brian. Fakes and Forgeries: The True Crime Stories of History’s Greatest Deceptions—The Criminals, the Scams, and the Victims. Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association, 2005.

Kelsey-Sugg, Anna. "How Forged Hitler Diaries Became One of the Greatest Journalistic Scandals of the 20th Century." Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 23 May 2023, www.abc.net.au/news/2023-05-26/fake-hitler-diaries-published-by-stern-in-1983-media-scandal/102367442. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.

Nickell, Joe. Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents. 1996. Reprint. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005.

Wünsch, Silke. "How a German Magazine Fell for Fake Hitler Diaries." DW, 24 Apr. 2023, www.dw.com/en/how-a-german-magazine-fell-for-fake-hitler-diaries/a-65399517. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.