Cold Open

It’s the early morning of April 21st, 1945 at the tail end of World War Two, just north of Berlin, Germany.

A transport plane idles at a makeshift airfield as 20-year-old Wilhelm Arndt hurries to load cargo on board. The metal chests he is heaving. Wilhelm doesn’t know exactly what’s inside, but it must be important, they were given to Wilhelm by Adolf Hitler himself.

Wilhelm is Hitler’s valet and one of 80 personnel who have just been ordered to evacuate Berlin. With the Soviets closing in on the city, Hitler aims to establish a new command center in the mountains of southern Germany, and he wants his most prized possessions moved to safety.

A distant boom shakes the earth. But Wilhelm barely flinches. He’s used to the constant air-raids by now.

And when the last metal chest is safely stowed away, Wilhelm climbs into the plane, squeezing into a seat alongside 15 other passengers.

The doors are sealed, and the engine roars. The plane lurches forward, bouncing along the grass runway before finally lifting into the dark sky.

From the air, Wilhelm can see the orange glow of fires stretching for miles in every direction below. The heart of the Third Reich is being reduced to ash and ruin.

But Wilhelm breathes a sigh of relief. They have made it out, and Adolf Hitler’s possessions are safe.

The transport plane carrying Wilhelm Arndt and fifteen other passengers will never reach its destination. It will go down in a forest a hundred miles south of Berlin, killing almost everyone on board, including Wilhelm. The metal chests the plane carried will also be lost. And when Adolf Hitler hears the news, he will exclaim: “In that plane were all my private archives. It is a catastrophe!”

But within two weeks of the crash, Hitler will be dead, and the Nazis will surrender. Still, almost forty years later, Hitler’s lament will have unexpected consequences, becoming part of an elaborate fraud that will only finally unravel on May 6th, 1983.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is May 6th, 1983: The Hitler Diaries Hoax.

Act One

It’s 1975 in a small town near Stuttgart, West Germany, thirty years after a plane crash destroying Adolf Hitler’s personal archives.

47-year-old Fritz Stiefel eases his car slowly down a street and peers through the windshield, looking out for a particular store.

Fritz is the owner of a successful engineering company. But his real passion is searching for Nazi artifacts. And recently, he thinks he’s found a fresh source of wartime collectibles.

There’s a new antique store in town, and its windows are crammed with fascinating military memorabilia. But each time Fritz has passed, the lights have been off, and no one has answered the door when he’s knocked. But today, as he nears the store, he’s delighted to see a small man outside, cleaning the windows.

Fritz pulls over. Getting out of the car, he asks the man if he’s the shopkeeper. The man puts down the wet rag, dries his hands on his pants, and cheerfully introduces himself.

Konrad Fischer is a round-faced man with a balding head and mustache. He happily shows Fritz inside, and it’s soon clear to Fritz that Konrad must be well-connected with collectors and antiques dealers—the store’s shelves are full of military uniforms and weapons dating back centuries. But Fritz is only interested in one period in German history. He has to be cautious though—the public display of Nazi memorabilia is illegal in West Germany. So, he carefully asks if Konrad has anything from more recent years.

Taking the hint, Konrad shows him into a back room. There, behind glass is a vast collection of Nazi artifacts. It includes uniforms, flags, mugs and weapons—and even personal items that belonged to some of the most powerful men in the Third Reich.

Fritz is overwhelmed with excitement. He buys one small trinket on the spot but assures Konrad that he’ll be back for more.

Fritz is true to his word. In fact, he soon becomes Konrad’s best customer. Over several years, he buys hundreds of items. Among them are paintings and documents attributed to the hand of Hitler himself, including what Konrad tells him is the original manuscript of Mein Kampf.

But, unfortunately for Fritz, his growing collection is worthless.

Konrad Fischer has been lying to him from the second he opened his mouth. His last name is not Fischer, it’s Kujau. And he’s not a well-connected Nazi collector, he’s a prolific forger—almost everything in his store is fake. Something that Konrad has never been able to sniff out, which thrills Fritz.

So, Fritz decides to undertake an even more ambitious forgery. In the cellar of his home, Konrad turns a cheap notebook into Adolf Hitler’s personal diary. He fills the pages with mundane musings, vague reflections, and sanitized accounts of wartime events.

On the cover, he sticks imitation metal initials bought from a department store. And like most of his forgeries, it’s sloppy work—Konrad is even confused by an old gothic font, and he accidentally uses “FH” instead of “AH.” But it makes no difference.

When Konrad shows Fritz the diary on his next visit, Fritz is in awe. He asks if he can have it on loan, and Konrad agrees.

Fritz devours the diary’s contents, clueless to its inauthenticity. And when he finishes, he places it in his safe with the rest of his fake Hitler collectibles.

But at this point, his trove is so large that Fritz decides it’s time to get an expert’s opinion. So he contacts Nazi archivist August Priesack and schedules an evaluation, inviting Konrad.

This meeting puts the forger on edge. Not long ago, Konrad signed a contract with Fritz that guaranteed every item he’d sold was authentic. So, if August realizes anything is fake, Konrad will owe Fritz a large refund.

On the day of the evaluation, Konrad stands stiffly beside Fritz as August begins his examination. Konrad braces for disaster. As far as he can tell, August is the real deal. Back in the 1930s, August worked as an art appraiser for the Nazi Party, picking out genuine Hitler paintings from the hundreds of fakes that polluted the German art market at the time. Now, August’s judgment could make or break Konrad’s business.

But after a careful examination of the items, August declares the collection to be of “great historical significance.” He even singles out one watercolor he claims to remember seeing back in 1936.

Konrad stifles a laugh. He finished that painting only ten days ago.

And not only does August fail to spot the fakes, he’s so taken with the collection that he urges a local history professor to come see it too. This professor also claims to be a Hitler expert, but he doesn’t notice the obvious red flags either, even when he flips through the pages of Hitler’s supposed diary.

Instead, he’s eager to learn more about where such rare items came from. The two experts pepper Konrad with questions. But the forger only gives vague answers, claiming he must maintain secrecy to protect his contacts.

Having feared that outside opinions would destroy his business, Konrad is now delighted that they’ve had the opposite effect — they’ve legitimized it. With two respected experts now vouching for his work, Konrad will soon feel invincible. But a chance conversation will soon make his forged work into an international sensation, and it’ll lead Konrad into the heart of a media frenzy.

Act Two

It’s the evening of October 20th, 1979 in Stuttgart, West Germany, a month after Fritz Stiefel’s collection of Nazi artifacts was examined by experts.

Inside Fritz’s home, a small dinner party is underway. Konrad Kujau empties his glass of wine as he leans toward Jakob Tiefenthaeler, the former SS officer seated beside him.

Though their paths have crossed before, Konrad and Jakob have never been more than casual acquaintances. Tonight, though, alcohol has loosened Konrad’s tongue, and he starts bragging about his Nazi memorabilia business, casually mentioning the diary he claims belonged to Adolf Hitler.

Hearing this, Jakob’s interest sharpens. Curious, he presses Konrad for more details, and Konrad boasts that he doesn’t have just one journal— he has access to 27 different volumes. When asked where they came from, Konrad claims that the diaries were among Hitler’s personal papers that were on board a plane that crashed near the end of the war. According to Konrad, these documents have been kept hidden by his secret contacts ever since.

As a fellow collector of Nazi memorabilia, and a former Nazi himself, the story fascinates Jakob. He goes to view the prized diary the next day and shortly after, he tells journalist Gerd Heidemann about the find.

Soon, Gerd comes to see the diary for himself, and he is just as stunned. As he flips through the pages, he’s convinced that he’s looking at the greatest scoop of his career.

So over the next year, Gerd pieces together the diary’s alleged provenance. He researches the plane crash and discovers that there really were documents from Hitler’s bunker on board when it went down. This is proof enough for Gerd, and he decides it’s time to take the story to print. All he still needs now, is images of the journals themselves.

So, Gerd approaches Konrad with a tempting offer. In exchange for photocopies of the complete set of Hitler’s diaries, Gerd’s employer, Stern magazine, will pay Konrad 2 million marks — the equivalent of over three million dollars today. Gerd assures Konrad that the magazine will treat the matter with the utmost secrecy, and that Konrad’s anonymity will be protected.

Faced with this amount of money, Konrad can’t pass up the deal, but he also can’t forge all 27 volumes of the diary at once. So, he tells Gerd that the other volumes are still on the other side of the border in East Germany. He can only smuggle one volume out at a time, every month or two, to avoid arousing suspicion. So, for the next two years, Konrad spends his days researching Hitler’s life, writing fake diary entries, and passing them to Gerd in batches. To dress up the notebooks, he sticks on red wax seals in the shape of a German eagle with a label declaring them to be Hitler’s personal property. And to age them, he sprinkles tea over the pages and bashes them against his desk.

And although Konrad’s efforts are simplistic, they’re enough to ensure that these fake diaries don’t arouse suspicion. From the moment Gerd and his colleagues at Stern open Konrad’s first batch of journals, they are transfixed. No one even considers the possibility that they might be forged. The dark allure of something so personal that once belonged to Hitler proves impossible to resist.

So when it comes to authenticating the diaries, the team at Stern do the bare minimum. To preserve its secrecy, only a small sample is sent to handwriting analysts for verification. The reporters supply a few additional documents that Hitler wrote for comparison, but unbeknownst to them, some of those papers have also been forged by Konrad. But based on the assumption that all the comparison documents are genuine, the experts wrongly affirm the authenticity of the fake diaries.

With this settled, the magazine editors move ahead with forensic testing. But their plans are derailed by a leak. Other publications catch wind of the Hitler diaries, and the race to break the story begins. Scrambling to stay ahead, Stern magazine turns to a historian for swift authentication. Pressed for time, unable to decipher much of the handwriting, and doubtful that anyone would bother to forge dozens of diaries, the historian declares them genuine.

Soon thereafter, on April 25th, 1983, Stern magazine will hold a press conference, formally announcing the discovery to the world. Three days later, they will publish the first installment of Hitler’s diaries. But the magazine will not receive the reception they hoped for. The news will be met not with celebration, but with skepticism and even scorn, and what began as a historic scoop will soon unravel into one of the greatest scandals in modern journalism.

Act Three

It’s 11 AM, on May 6th, 1983 at the West German Federal Archives, a week after the publication of Adolf Hitler’s supposed diaries in Stern magazine.

Inside an office, Stern’s legal advisor, Andreas Ruppert, shakes the hand of a government archivist. The official is holding a thick folder—a set of reports that will make or break the reputation of dozens of people.

Since the announcement and publication of Hitler’s diaries, experts and journalists around the world have been dissecting their inconsistencies and errors. While the general consensus is that they are fake, the reporters and editors at Stern have been reluctant to accept this conclusion. To settle the matter once and for all, they have sent the journals to the Federal Archives for forensic testing. Now, Andreas is about to hear the findings.

The archivist begins to relay the results, and it’s immediately clear that what Stern has hailed as the discovery of the century is indeed nothing more than a shoddy forgery. The diaries are made of poor-quality paper containing a chemical whitener that wasn’t invented until the 1950s. The ink was clearly sourced from modern art shops. And the forger couldn’t even manage to replicate Hitler’s signature.

In addition to forensic evidence, the experts at the Federal Archives have found numerous factual errors in the text of the diaries. Analysis of the mistakes show that they all originate from a single source: a book of Hitler’s speeches and proclamations. Almost every entry in the journal has been seemingly lifted from this book, errors and all.

Andreas exhales sharply, the weight of the findings sinking in. But before he can respond, the archivist delivers another blow. The government is going to hold a press conference at noon to officially announce that the diaries are forgeries.

This scandal will deal a devastating blow to Stern’s credibility, forcing the resignation of two top editors. And as more details come to light, forger Konrad Kujau will be arrested, convicted of theft and fraud, and sentenced to four and a half years in prison. But he’s not the only person to get in trouble with the law. Stern reporter Gerd Heidemann will also be jailed after it’s discovered he embezzled some of the magazine’s money that should have been used to pay Konrad.

After serving three years in prison, Konrad will be released and re-emerge as a minor celebrity. And rather than retreat into obscurity, he’ll open a gallery, openly selling forgeries of paintings by Hitler and famous masters, some fetching tens of thousands of dollars. His fakes will become so popular that others will even begin forging the forger — a remarkable turn for a man whose most infamous act of deception was revealed on May 6th, 1983.

Outro

Next on History Daily. May 7th, 1994. Norwegian police corner the criminals behind an audacious heist: the theft of Edvard Munch's most famous painting, The Scream.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Gabriel Gould.

Supervising Sound Designer Matthew Filler.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Alexandra Currie-Buckner.

Edited by Scott Reeves.

Managing producer, Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.