Morbid fascination with Adolf Hitler

Press, 28 May 1983, Page 15

Morbid fascination with Adolf Hitler

By

PAUL TAYLOR,

Reuters

from Bonn

The publication by “Stern” magazine of Adolf Hitler’s purported diaries, now proved to be fakes, has brought to light a flourishing market in Hitler memorabilia for which nostalgic collectors seem ready to pay large sums.

However, the reaction to the “Hitler diaries” saga suggests that, 50 years after the Nazis took power, Hitler exerts more of a morbid fascination on Britain and the United States these days than on West Germany. Most West Germans seem bored by the whole subject and are learning to laugh about Hitler in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. The “grey market” abounds in supposed Hitler paintings, Hitler love letters, Hitler medals, and in the words of one historian, “enough Hitler suicide guns to fill a suitcase.” .

Almost all historians who have written on the darkest era in German history report having been offered such material.

Among the Nazi relics reported to be in circulation are the purported diaries of Heinrich Himmler, chief of the elite S.S. troops; poems and love letters supposed to have been sent by Hitler to his mistress, Eva Braun, and Braun’s own diaries, said to be hidden by a private collector in New Mexico. “The market abounds in forgeries. Most of us have been caught out by one document or another in our research,” says Joachim Fest, author of a standard German biography of Hitler. Like the Stuttgart professor, Eberhard Jaeckel, Fest was offered purported Hitler documents by Konrad Fischer, alias Kujau, the dealer named by “Stern” as the source of its “diaries.” Jaeckel told Reuters he acquired

several documents from the dealer, including a poem said to have been written by Hitler, and published them in a collection called “Hitler’s entire writings 1905-24.” “I later had to admit in a scholarly publication that I had been duped and the papers were fakes,” Jaeckel adds. Kujau was not the only dealer to have a back room stuffed with Third Reich memorabilia. David Irving, a controversial Right-wing British writer on the Nazi era, says his research has shown that some of the biggest collections are held by private enthusiasts in the United States. The Munich home of the former Nazi party archivist, August Priesack, is cluttered with documents and paintings allegedly by the Fuehrer. Priesack, who calls himself a historian, is at present fighting a court battle against the Bavarian state government’s seizure of a picture-book he edited on the Nazi Party Nuremberg rallies in the 19305. He recently published another book entitled “Adolf Hitler as a painter and graphic artist.” Priesack’s friend Fritz Stiefel, a Stuttgart businessman, collects autographs and medals from the Nazi era. He, too, says he was offered diaries and documents by Kujau. The debate over the diaries made more headlines in the British and North American press than in West Germany, and typical comments by ordinary Germans on the contents of the “Stern” documents included “So what?” and “Who cares?” West German newspapers ridiculed the purported diaries with some biting cartoons.

One depicted Hitler saying: “I loved children, animals, and Eva Braun, wanted peace with England, despised (airforce chief) Goering and (propaganda chief) Goebbels, and mistrusted Himmler. In fact I was really a victim of fascism.” The weekly magazine “Der Spiegel” printed a reader’s letter in Hitler’s handwriting, dated November, 1933, which joked: “I hereby confirm to ‘Stern’ that my diaries are genuine, Adolf Hitler.” The Liberal weekly Die Zeit ran a trick photograph showing Hitler, in a leather motoring cap, sitting at the wheel of his car reading “Stern’s” cover on the discovery of his diaries. Some West German historians are worried that the general public is not yet politically mature enough to be shown Nazi documents without having expert guidance. Professor Andreas Hillgruber of Cologne University, for example, said in a televised discussion on the “Hitler diaries” that even if the documents were genuine, it was irresponsible for “Stern” to publish them. His view was echoed by other academics who said the public should be exposed to Nazi propaganda only if accompanied by scholarly analysis on the evils of Nazism. Yet the public reaction to the socalled “Hitler diaires” suggests the historians are being over-protec-tive. Most West Germans seem to have been bored to tears by this year’s spate of documentaries Perhaps a hearty laugh at the Fuehrer’s expense is a healthier response than the grim soul-search-ing that marked the 50th anniversary of his rise to power.