The last lies of Hitler

Timothy Garton Ash

Hamburg Such a success for Adolf Hitler. How

pleased he would be to read his 'diaries', even before their authenticity is proved. How he would laugh at the journalists com - i

mg to blows under the television lights in the Stern canteen, which looks like a Sadler's Wells set for Hell. Would they get so excited for any of his victims? There are three important questions about the 'Hitler diaries'. Are they authen- tic? Are the jounalistic methods used to discover and present them legal, legitimate or desirable? If they are authentic, what is their historical significance? Aided and abetted by Lord Dacre of Glanton, Mon- day's dramatic press conference left a Scot- tish verdict of 'not proven' on the question of authenticity. Trevor-Roper beat a dignified retreat from his confident asser- tion in last Saturday's Times, 'I am now satisfied they are authentic'. Now he is not satisfied that they are authentic. He has removed his head from the block and his reputation from the stake. Poor old Times! 'I regret,' he told us, 'that normal methods of historical verification were to some ex- tent sacrificed to the requirements of the Journalistic scoop.' Here the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper is presumably criticis- ing the Director of Times Newspapers, Lord Dacre, who took just one afternoon in Zurich to satisfy himself of the diaries' authenticity and apparently believed everything Stern journalists told him. Stern's case rests, first, on the evidence of three handwriting experts and chemical tests of paper from two volumes. Secondly, it rests on the testimony of two historians, Trevor-Roper and a sharp-eyed Gerhard Weinberg, who each spent half a day in that Swiss bank examining the journals. Thirdly and perhaps most powerfully it rests on the seeming impossibility of a perfect forgery on such a scale. Werner Maser, one of the less reputable of West German Hitler ex- perts, claims they come from an East Ger- man 'forgery factory', the Potsdam military academy. The existence of some forgeries from this source is well attested. But these have all been printed or typewrit- ten documents of at most a few pages, with the clear purpose of discrediting some leading figure in West German public life. The Potsdam 'factory' is not known ever to have attempted a forgery in Hitler's hand- writing, let alone in 60 volumes. There is moreover no clear motive for the East Ger- man regime. It there were any devastating revelations about leading West German Cint politicians or businessmen in the diaries, we an. be certain that Stern would at least have hinted at them. The hard currency which East Germany might have won is surely in-

significant compared with the effort, and the risk of exposure, in an area where Honecker's regime is understandably sen- sitive about its world reputation.

The case against rests first on the fact that no one, not Hitler himself, nor any of his associates, ever once mentioned a private diary. One witness, Hitler's per- sonal pilot, Hans Baur, reports the Ftihrer's cry of despair on learning that a plane car- rying some of his belongings had crashed in April 1945. I have now seen two German versions of that reported remark. In neither does Hitler refer explicitly to private archives (as quoted in the Times), let alone to private diaries.

We have only the word of the Stern reporter, Gerd Heidemann, for the fact that the papers which were lost in that plane crash were those which Stern will now present to the world. Trevor-Roper understood in Zurich that the link 'between the aircraft and the archive' consisted of one Wehr- macht officer who recovered the metal cases from the plane in April 1945, hid them 'in a hayloft' and sold them to Herr Heidemann some 35 years later. 'Only later,' Trevor-Roper said, 'I found that I had been ... er, er ... that I misunder- stood the information given me there.' To fill in the missing space: 'I had been misin- formed.' To add to the confusion, Heidernann had given two different ver- sions of his story. In one 'a German officer'

secured the cases in 1945. In the other, 'the Russians' secured them. A not insignificant difference!

For Trevor-Roper, it was the 'many other documents' in the archives which 'convinc- ed me of the authenticity of the diaries'. ... the archives,' he wrote in Saturday's Times, 'contained not only the diaries but whole books by Hitler — books on Jesus Christ, on Frederick the Great, on himself ... — and a third volume of Mein Kampf.' Had he then seen these books? I asked him. Was he equally convinced or non-convinced of their authenticity? No, he had not seen them. Herr Heidemann had told him about them.

Enter David Irving pursued by TV cameras. He waved a batch of photocopied documents. Several are obvious forgeries, including a poem apparently dated 1918 in Hitler's hand, but in fact copied from a book published after the first world war, according to Irving. Now whatever your opinion of David Irving, there could be lit- tle doubt that he has good contacts in the twilight world of collectors of Nazi memorabilia. He claims these forged documents come from a collection which also contains Hitler diaries and — mirabile dictu — a few draft pages for volume III of Mein Kampf. Professor Eberhard Jackel, a highly respected Hitler scholar, cor- roborates this story. He was offered pages of the diary and Mein Kampf volume III before the day when Gerd Heidemann claims to have found the diaries. Now of course it is possible that there are two Hitler diaries: the forged and the genuine! That the forger should have hit upon the idea of including a few draft pages of Mein Kampf volume III which the miraculously appear in the genuine article, however, strains my powers of belief.

In a German television discussion on Tuesday evening, Trevor-Roper revealed that he had seen documents in Heidemann's flat which were said to come from the crashed plane, but which 'I regard as forgeries'. When he felt he 'had been misled', he had insisted on seeing the volume devoted to Hess, and 'I am con- vinced that the essential documents are forgeries'. 'These documents', Trevor- Roper concluded, 'must be regarded as forgeries unless they are proved genuine'.

Then there is the medical evidence. How could Hitler have written an account of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt when his right arm was maimed by the bomb blast? These reservations 'are easily overcome', the Sunday Times airily informed us, in the early editions of its authoritative World Ex- clusive. 'The diary entry is made four days after the bombing and the injury was to Hitler's left hand, not his right.' This claim was repeated by the Chief Editor of Stern at the beginning of the press conference. Then they showed us a little Stern film (World Exclusive, of course), which included the well-known newsreel of Hitler receiving Mussolini a few days after the bomb at- tempt. There the Fiihrer stood, pumping the Duce's hand with his left hand, while

his right arm hung limply at his side.

Even if the evidence of SS General Mohnke is to be believed against the diary of one of Hitler's charlatan doctors, Morel! (with witnesses like these, who needs perjurers?), the handwriting which we were shown is almost incredibly consistent. I have not seen a single blot or correction on any of the pages so far reproduced. Yet there is a wealth of testimony that Hitler wrote very reluctantly and badly — and in his last month, his right hand shook with palsy. Moreover, the diary has not yet been shown to contain anything which a forger steeped in the history of the period could not have invented. It is plausible that Hitler was ir- ritated with Goebbels's love affairs (in fact we know he was from other sources), fear- ful and contemptuous of Himmler, respect- ful of Chamberlain. Na und?, as the Berliners say — so what? Hitler is quoted as writing, on the day after the Kristallnacht, `the demonstrations against the Jews in the Reich are getting out of hand ... it won't do for our economy to have millions and millions worth destroyed by a few hot- heads, in glass alone'. This seems to me out of character. Was Hitler a man to worry about the cost of broken glass? But it could be a grotesque attempt at self-exculpation for posterity. So far we have seen nothing that Hitler could not have written; or which explains anything that was previously unex- plained. This is perhaps not surprising since we have seen almost nothing.

The fact is that the detective mystery about the diaries is in large part artificial. If a group of specialists had been given the complete archives to examine at their leisure, then, considering all the internal and external evidence, they could almost certainly have come up with a convincing verdict. know there can be such a thing as a perfect forgery,' Trever-Roper told us but surely not on this scale. Why was this not done? Why was no single German historian consulted?

The answer can be given in one word: money. The diaries are a Stern scoop, the magazine invested a lot of money to discover them. The Hamburg air is heavy with `undisclosed sums', but informed rumour puts this one at around £2 million. Its editors were terrified of leaks. Hence the obsessive secrecy. (This still does not quite explain why Trevor-Roper and Weinberg were only given half a day each to examine the documents.) If Stern is lucky, it will make a great deal more money out of them, although the Free State of Bavaria seems poised to claim the copyright. The first thing I heard when I arrived at Heathrow Airport to fly to Hamburg on Sunday even- ing was a voice saying: 'They're asking us $3 million for them'. That voice's news- paper has second bite at the apple now that Newsweek has shrewdly declined the American rights, after pressing out the juice for this week's cover story. Murdoch has bitten: $400,000 for British and Com- monwealth rights. Cynics say the news- paper impresarios have nothing to lose: either the diaries are the greatest find since the Dead Sea Scrolls or they are the greatest forgery since Howard Hughes's autobiography, as the Sunday Times puts it, with characteristic understatement. Three-inch headlines, both ways. But if that were to become editorial principle, then the Times might as well go tabloid. The whole presentation of these diaries has been a grotesque kind of show business. I am reminded of The Producers (in Mel Brooks's splendid satire) with their runaway musical success 'Springtime for Hitler, and Germanee'. The methods employed to find them seem equallY dubious. This Gerd Heidemann, who, We are told by Stern, looked up 'with shining eyes' to the Waffen-SS men who taught him to shoot in 1945, started by buying Goer- ing's yacht. With one of his Nazi guests, former SS General Wolff, he travelled to South America where he interviewed 'verY many prominent SS leaders' . They agreed to see Heidemann, SS General Wolff ex- plained on the Stern film, because they knew `that I would not denounce them How noble. But surely the journalist Herr Heidemann will now reveal what he knovis of the whereabouts of these Nazis, so that they, like Klaus Barbie, may be brought to trial for their crimes against humanity? He will not. Instead, he will insist on the high journalistic principle of `protecting his sources'. How noble! What a fine code of honour! I suppose if he had met Adolf Hitler himself in the jungles of Latin America, Herr Heidemann would he selflessly `protecting his sources' — at least until Stern had rushed out their exclusive. As the Stern editors praised their own great contribution to contemporary historY the stench of hypocrisy spread through the cant If the diaries are genuine, what will be their contribution to our knowledge °f the Third Reich? Stern claims that much of the history of the Nazi period will have t0 be rewritten. On the evidence which theY have presented so far this is pure hyperbole. All the reputable historians I have talked to suggest that the diaries will not compel us t° revise our picture of Nazi Germany in any essentials. It may shed new light on in- dividual incidents, notably Rudolf Hess 5 strange flight to Britain in May 1941. It may somewhat modify and enrich our picture 0 Hitler himself and his court, although that picture is already almost excessively com- plete. As Professor Fritz Fischer comments,: the diary so far reveals no new motives fo Hitler's decisions. There is, moreover, a real danger that it will fuel the often sensa- tionalist personalisation of the history 0._.1 Nazi Germany, which is already apparent much popular West German writing (Ea s._ Germany has many distortions, but not this_ one). It can thus distract attention f_r°,111Q more important questions, such as: w did the old elite support Hitler for so long;e Why did the majority of the German Pe?1,1, believe in him at one time or another? w"' there any effective resistance? Even if they are genuine, we know that consciously

Hitler was writing his diaries

for posterity, either for selective publication or as the basis for a personal history. They will therefore be full of distortions and lies, like that absurd comment on the Kristallnacht. If they are genuine, they should of course be published, for the West German public is mature enough not to cultivate a new Hitler myth on this dung-heap. With a bow to that superb book by Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, which this Stern affair can in no way diminish, the diaries might be called The Last Lies of Hitler.