The Hitler Diaries Scandal

Andrew Hunter Murray, podcaster and comedian, uncovers last century’s biggest ever publishing scandal which rocked the world and destroyed reputations.

When Stern magazine in Hamburg announced on 25 April 1983 that they’d found long-lost Hitler diaries, authenticated by the eminent British historian, Hugh Trevor Roper, the world was poised to rewrite history.

Apparently salvaged from the wreckage of a Junkers plane which had crashed escaping Hitler’s Berlin bunker in the dying days of war, the diaries had been hidden in a hayloft in East Germany for 40 years. And remarkably they’d come to light - smuggled across the border into West Germany at the height of the Cold War - at great danger to the source. One journalist, Gerd Heidemann, known as ‘the bloodhound’ at his magazine Stern, tracked them down. It took two years of secret missions and millions of Deutschmarks to amass all volumes.

Andrew Hunter Murray picks up the trail and speaks to those who got caught up in the chaos – from the archivist tasked with authenticating the diaries in Germany, to the TV producer led around old Nazi homes to film a promotional documentary for the scoop, and the Fleet Street editor given 24 hours to spin pages of coverage from dodgy scraps of Hitler diaries. He discovers tapes of conversations wooing Nazis on Goering’s yacht which have never been heard before in Britain.

It’s a tale of greed, obsession and mass delusion. And in our times of AI, fake news and disinformation, are there any lessons we can take from this web of deceit spun by one clever forger from his basement at home in Stuttgart?

Presenter: Andrew Hunter Murray
Producer: Ruth Abrahams
Story Editor: Andrew Dickson
Sound Design: Joel Cox
Mix Engineer: Nigel Appleton
Executive Producers: David Prest and Robert Nicholson
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke

A Whistledown production for BBC Sounds and Radio 4