It was supposed to be one of the greatest finds in modern history, but instead it ended up as one of the most notorious forgery and publishing scandals of the 20th century.
In 1983, the German newsweekly Stern reported on the existence of 62 handwritten diaries kept by Adolf Hitler. A staff reporter for Stern, Gerd Heidemann, obtained the diaries for a cool $3.8 million.
As the story goes, an enigmatic Doctor Fischer hid the documents away for years in East Germany, after recovering from an aircraft crash at the end of the war in 1945 in Dresden. After their purchase, the diaries passed three handwriting tests. The Times of London and Newsweek magazine hired two historians, Hugh Trevor-Roper and Gerhard Weinberg, to examine the texts. Trevor-Roper deemed the diaries authentic.
However, within two weeks after the diaries were published, the West German Bundesarchiv (The German Federal Archives) revealed that they were "grotesquely superficial fakes" after discovering that they had many historical inaccuracies and were made on modern paper. It was later discovered that the diaries were the work of a master forger from Stuttgart, Konrad Kujau. Both Kujau and Heidemann were put on trial and given a 42-month sentence each for forgery and embezzlement.
The fallout caused editors and employees of the Times of London, Newsweek and Stern to resign or stand down.
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