Hitler's Second Book

Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5

In 1981, Gerd Heidemann, a war correspondent and reporter with the German magazine Stern, makes what he believes is the literary and historical scoop of the century: the personal diaries of Adolf Hitler. Over the next two years, Heidemann and the senior management figures at STERN secretly pay 10 million German marks to a mysterious 'Dr Fischer' for the sixty volumes of 'Hitler's diaries', plus a "special volume" about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. Some of the money is made as payment to 'Dr Fischer', but the larger proportion goes into Heidemann's own pocket, to finance his extravagant lifestyle and collection of World War II memorabilia, including the yacht of Hermann Goering. However, to the dismay of all, including eminent historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper who verified the diaries as authentic, it is discovered after the publication of first extract that the diaries are crude forgeries, faked by Stuttgart criminal Konrad Kujau.

Listen to the audiobook here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

 

When I heard about "Hitler's Second Book" I was reminded of what was perhaps the greatest publishing hoax ever, the selling of Hitler's diaries, in the early 80s. Robert Harris wrote a book about it, "Selling Hitler", which reads like a thriller and was made into the above doco.

"Hitler's Second Book is the real McCoy, written by the real and now long-dead Hitler, and is the unpublished sequel to his "Mein Kampf".

 

 

Perhaps it ought to, like its author, never have seen the light of day but now that it has, and has been translated into English, it provides some valuable insights into the development of ideas that were to shape that madman’s foreign policy after 1933 until the bitter end in 1945.

Mercifully, the book is a mere 340 pages long compared to the over thousand pages of "Mein Kampf" which means I might dip into it, one tortured page at a time - online, mind you, because I won't waste my money on something that I wouldn't care to keep in my library.

In the meantime, you may want to watch the YouTube clips about the diaries scam. It's a rollicking good yarn turned into a fascinating doco.

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