Konrad Kujau - The Hitler Journal That Could Have Re-Written the History of the Third Reich

 

 Konrad Kujau handwrote sixty volumes of journals reportedly to be written by Adolf Hitler. They also included an introduction to Mein Kampf, half an opera and several poems. 

 The diary's existence was discovered by Stern magazine who pubished an article on Konrad and his rare finds and in 1978 he sold the first Hitler diary to a private collector for over $100,000. He then saw a demand open up and convinced Stern to pay for him to "find" more in exchange for an exclusive snoop on himself. He ended up with about 1.6 million for the rest of the diaries. The magazine, however, only gave Konrad less than half of the money and kept the rest themselves. 

 After the successful sell and delivery of the 12 other diaries, Konrad approached Stern magazine and said that his price will be going up as it was growing more and more difficult to smuggle these diaries out of East Germany. 

The magazine after some lengthy pressure from payroll academics decided to bring in a handwriting expert to validate the diaries, but in their haste they ony gave the experts more of Konrad's Hitler work to check it against, and so the texts passed with flying colours and given the all clear. 

 Stern then broke the story of the diaries in April 1983. It said in the text that Hitlers "final solution" was to deport the Jews and not exterminate them. This meant in itself if true, the entire history of the Third Reich would need to be re-written. 

 More historians and academics across the world began to comment on the authenticity of the documents again, so Stern had to bring in more experts to analyse them. This time they werr forced to use a wide range of other material that Hitler had written to check it against and the diaries were eventually discovered to be forgeries. 

 While this process was taking place Konrad who knew the diaries would not hold up to such scrutiny then fled to Austria, but then on learning that Stern magazine had double crossed him out of money he was owed handed himself in, and made out that the magazine knew all along that they were fake and they had employed him to do it in the first place. 

 Heidermen the employee of Stern who made the decision to do an exclusive deal with Konrad was sentenced to four years and six months.

Konrad was incarcerated for much longer but embraced infamy when he was released. He found a market selling copies of famous artists works and actually became a minor television celebrity until he died of cancer in 2000. 

 Heidermen never worked in journalism again and Stern has since been disgraced as a magazine for irresponsible journalism.