The Fake Hitler Diary

Abstract

In the spring of 1983, I received a phone call from Professor Gordon Craig, a distinguished historian then at Stanford University, who informed me that I would receive a call from a key figure at Newsweek magazine about an alleged Hitler diary that I was under no circumstances to speak about. Professor Craig and I were both rather sceptical, but one can never tell for certain what might turn up. He had recommended Newsweek to contact me, since his expertise was in the earlier period of German history while I had published extensively on recent German history including identifying and publishing a will Hitler had written in 1938 (and which remains the longest known hand-written document of Hitler from the time of his being chancellor); I had also located, identified, and published the second book that Hitler had dictated in 1928, but never published.