With a probability bordering on certainty
There can be no doubt that these documents were written by Adolf Hitler personally
Major Friedrich Gundlfinger piloted the last of the 10 planes. Aside from the human passengers, the Junkers Ju 352 transport plane was hauling some the most precious cargo of the group. Ten massive chests filled with documents were being transported under Sergeant Wilhelm Arndt’s watchful eye.
Overseen by private secretary Martin Bormann, Operation Seraglio was another in a long line of undeniable signs that the end was near. Western Allies had taken major cities, while Soviet troops were closing in on Berlin. The planes were loaded up with high ranking officials, destined for Berchtesgaden, Adolf Hitler’s longtime vacation spot in the Alps.
Gundlfinger didn’t make it. The plane crashed in a forest near the Czechoslovakian border. The wreckage exploded an ammunition cache inside, intensifying the fire and killing all but two survivors. “A farmhand named Eduard Grimme, who died in 1979, brought the bodies to the cemetery,” first-hand witness Richard Elbe said of the immediate aftermath. “It was just a bunch of charred bits and pieces lying on that wagon. You could hardly see they were people.”
Locals salvaged pieces of the aircraft for their own use, before the SS finally arrived to rope off the wreckage. Hitler, who had taken up residence in the Führerbunker three months prior, expressed shock at the news. Saddened by the death of his loyal valet, Arndt, he screamed, "I entrusted him with extremely valuable documents which would show posterity the truth of my actions!”
The crash had occurred on the Fuhrer’s 56th birthday. Nine days later, he and Eva Braun were married in a small ceremony conducted by notary Walter Wagner. The following day, they were both dead.
“The Russians stand just 500 meters from my bunker,” Hitler had written in his will, keenly aware of a world closing in on him. “I determine hereby that my wife and I choose, in order to escape the dishonor of prison or surrender, death! It is our will to be burned immediately afterwards in the place where I spent the greater part of my life's work in the 12-year service to my people. Bequeathed to Berlin April 25, 1945."
An apparently prodigious memoirist, Hitler had written 62 diaries in all. Each volume miraculously survived the Operation Seraglio crash, according to Peter Fischer, the first to report their existence. For 30 years, they lay undisturbed in Boernersdorf, a small village 17 miles south of Dresden. Fischer explained that his brother, a military officer, had been received the volumes from a local who had held onto them for decades.
Fischer turned over a 1932 volume to the editor of the West German news weekly, Stern. While increasingly convinced the collection was genuinely, the editors otherwise largely kept the discovery a secret, over fears that word would get out before they were able to break the news themselves. They did, however, enlist a handful of outside parties in a bid to authenticate the document. Third Reich expert and Hitler biographer Werner Maser noted that no previous evidence had emerged confirming that the dictator had ever kept a diary during his life. The paper didn’t follow up with the historian.
Federal Archive officials were among those who gave the work a glowing recommendation, noting, “With a probability bordering on certainty, the manuscripts in question come from Hitler.” A handwriting expert agreed, concluding, “There can be no doubt that these documents were written by Adolf Hitler personally.”
It was the validation Stern needed. The paper published a 32-page story under the headline, “Hitler’s Diaries Discovered,” which detailed the find and highlighted some of the bombshells contained therein. The paper soon approached additional publishers, in hopes of selling international publishing rights for exorbitant sums. Newsweek and Time were eager to participate, while historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, the Baron Dacre of Glanton, offered up his opinion in The Times,
I am now satisfied that the documents are authentic; that the history of their wanderings since 1945 is true; and that the standard accounts of Hitler's writing habits, of his personality, and even, perhaps, of some public events may, in consequence, have to be revised.
It was all the assurance The Times needed, as well. Fifteen years prior, sister publication, The Sunday Times, had been burned by Mussolini diary entries forged by a mother/daughter team, and owner Rupert Murdoch was eager to make up for the error. In addition to their historical significance, the diaries attracted attention for their banal – and even charming – portrait of one history’s most evil men.
“My knowledge of human nature has not let me down,” Hilter wrote in a ‘Personal Notes’ entry. “Von Ribbentrop is the right man. What worries me is the pain in my chest, as my doctors when they are examining me look at each other in a strange way. Had some nice days during the holidays.”
Ahead of syndication, Times editor Frank Giles asked Trevor-Roper to write a follow up, denouncing growing skepticism around the diaries, only to discover the historian had also come to believe them fake. When the paper’s deputy editor rang Murdoch to ask whether the run be corrected before shipping, the mogul answered simply, "Fuck Dacre. Publish."
Things fell apart within weeks. Telltale signs had been there from the start, from incorrect dates and names to the monogram on the cover, which improbably read not “AH,” but “FH.” An examination with ultraviolet light showed the books to be of far more recent vintage. Several of the volumes had been written after the first was turned over to Stern.
It was also soon revealed that there was no Peter Fischer. The name had been created and adopted by forger and Hitler fan, Konrad Kujau, who would later describe the rush of creating the work,
I was sitting at my typewriter and it suddenly struck me that I could write a book, The Life and Times of Adolf Hitler. So I started to type. After fourteen pages I looked it over and said to myself, ‘that is the same tripe you see everywhere.’ Then I got a better idea. In my cellar I dug out some old copybooks that I’d bought to keep a record of my collection. I decided to write a book entirely in Hitler’s handwriting.
He soon found himself absorbed in the Hitler he created, later explaining, “As I delved into Hitler’s handwriting night after night, I began to write with Hitler’s script. My own handwriting changed completely. So much so that I once signed with Adolf Hitler instead of Kujau. That happened in a Stuttgart department store. Fortunately, the salesgirl couldn’t read my writing.”
Kujau, whose enthusiasm for the dictator never waned, was also quick to defend the friendly Fuhrer he created. “In my opinion the picture of Hitler is accurate,” he noted decades later. “I couldn’t write in the diary, ‘Order [valet Heinz Linge] to bring me a bathtub full of blood every morning’ just to convey the impression that he was bloodthirsty when he was not. He was a human being, and he had needs like a human being.”
Kujau served three years in the prison for the fakes, making a name for himself as a television forgery expert in subsequent decades. He founded a business that sold "genuine Kujau fakes,” embracing his forgeries of other artists’ styles. Six years after his death, a woman claiming to be his grandniece was charged with selling art knockoffs bearing forgeries of Konrad Kujau’s signature.
Sources:
The Hitler Diaries by Charles Hamilton
Hoax Hitler diaries sold for £4,000 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/apr/23/sundaytimes.pressandpublishing