1983 SHUTTERSTOCK
was – pause for laughter – an ‘independent” director of Murdoch’s Times. Webb’s message was highly confidential: Stern magazine had acquired the handwritten diaries of Hitler and was selling the rights but Murdoch needed an expert to vouch they were kosher. Trevor-Roper was the witchfinder-general for
notorious Nazis. Initially dubious, he was shown specimen pages of the diaries in a Swiss bank vault by overconfident Stern executives who exaggerated, to put it mildly, some of their provenance. He phoned Times editor Charles Douglas-Home to say, “I think they’re genuine.” Months later, he wrote he should have added one word: “superficially. What I should have done was insist on waiting for a transcript.” The text was written in an archaic
Germanic script that few could decipher, let alone Trevor-Roper, whose German wasn’t much cop anyway. But his hurried verdict was good enough for Murdoch, who was champing at the bit to start bidding for the rights from Stern. “I was the Times correspondent in Berlin,” recalls Michael Binyon, today a Times leader writer, “when the news editor rang to say, please would I go to Hamburg – and please don’t tell the foreign desk.” At the Four Seasons Hotel, he met the chairman of Murdoch’s Australian operation, who said: “I suppose you know what all this is about.” Secrecy had
Police officers search the store of Konrad Kujau, filled with artifacts from WW II, in Stuttgart, West Germany
But, as Binyon now explains, “The second paragraph was actually tosh. This is what Stern told Murdoch. In fact, no tests had been done on them at all.” Meanwhile, over at The Sunday Times, “We
were appalled that we had to run it without researching it,” says Linklater. “We were assured that the eminent historian Hugh Trevor-Roper was going to check the story. We were landed with the stuff on, I think, the Friday. It was full of tittletattle. Myself and [eminent journalist] Hugo Young went to [editor] Frank Giles, and said, ‘We have to research this stuff.’ He said, ‘There is no need to do that: Rupert Murdoch has given me his personal assurance that Trevor-Roper has certified the diaries.’ “He literally put his hands
over his ears – this was symbolic,” continues Linklater. “At one stage I said, ‘The only honourable thing is to resign,’ but we were too craven. “The front page designed by the art editor Michael Rand was a magnificent piece of work. As dawn broke on Saturday morning I said, ‘I must speak to Trevor- Roper,’ and I rang him at 8 in the morning and said, ‘I have to hear that you are entirely confident.’ He said, ‘I’m 100% confident. Well, 99%’.” In the early evening, the top team gathered as usual in the
been so tight
that Binyon had no idea: “I thought they’d got a Russian spy or something.” Murdoch arrived the next day and won a ferocious bidding war with Newsweek over the syndication rights. “The key issue was: how do we know they are authentic?” Stern’s answer was: “When you sign the contract, we will give the proof.” Binyon wrote the splash for that Saturday’s
Times: “Hitler’s secret diaries to be published: sixty volumes of hitherto unknown diaries kept by Adolf Hitler throughout his 12-year dictatorship have been discovered after lying for almost 35 years concealed in an undisclosed location in East Germany.” The story went on: “The documents are of momentous historical significance. They are now in a Swiss bank vault and have been painstakingly tested and analysed by experts.”
editor’s office to leap on the first copies of the paper, only to hear Frank Giles gasping on the phone to Trevor-Roper, “Don’t tell me you’ve begun to harbour doubts…” “We didn’t immediately realise that the game
was up,” relates Linklater.” But it was. As an epilogue to this hoax, it must be said
that Binyon wrote a piece rather different to his earlier one on the Diaries, explaining how the two papers had been hoodwinked. He adds: “They arrested Konrad a year later and he was put on trial in Hamburg. I went up to him and said, ‘I’m from The Times.’ He said, ‘You should have told me you were here. I would have written something special for you’.” Looking back 40 years, can’t we say that surely
it was, as it were, a victimless crime? Linklater retorts: “I feel a victim! I know that when and if my obituary is written, the Hitler Diaries will be in the first paragraph. I’m not sure that’s the greatest of legacies…”
theJournalist | 19
Looking back to:
1983
SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Magnus Linklater
Konrad Kujau – at work
ULLSTEIN BILD - LENGEMANN/WELT
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