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On Fleet Street, other editors pounced on Stern and the rival Sunday Times with a vengeance that in this instance seemed justified. "It was the day the thunder of the Times turned into a whimper and the Sunday Times was forced to sniff the stench of self-deceit," crowed the Daily Express. Its story accused "the executives" of Stern and the Sunday Times of having committed "the biggest journalistic blunder for years."
Still, Stern's penalty, beyond its ruined reputation, was also financial: rumors in Bonn's press circles had the magazine paying $4 million for its "discovery." Other insiders considered that figure too low. The discrediting of the diaries enhanced the reputations of some historians and forgery experts who had quickly concluded that the diaries were fraudulent. New York Autograph Dealer Charles Hamilton had taken one long look at photocopies of a few of the diary excerpts and pronounced them too consistent and too smooth to be credible. "Hitler's handwriting was full of power and force," he said. "It was tormented, impetuous, so that when he wanted to make a point, he would dig his pen into the paper and spread the ink, and when he gets to the end of a sentence, it always falls." Hamilton did not find that falling pattern in the diary.
Also vindicated were Marie Bernard and Hitler Historian Werner Maser, both of whom looked at diary photocopies and dismissed them as not being in Hitler's hand. Hitler Biographer Joachim Fest and Stuttgart University Historian Eberhard Jäckel both spotted the alleged diaries as probably part of a cache of bogus Hitler materials they had been offered four years ago.
Clearly damaged were the indecisive Trevor-Roper and British Historian David Irving, the only expert to switch from skeptical to an affirmative assessment of the diaries. Irving had earlier interrupted a Stern press conference about the diaries, calling them "pure fabrications" and shouting for tests on the "ink, ink, ink." But as he read more of the diary notes, he had announced that "I'm becoming more inclined to believe they are authentic." He said the handwriting in the later diaries "sloped down off the rulings," as it should in view of Hitler's illness in those years.
On sound ground but playing an awkward role was Kenneth Rendell, a Newton, Mass., autograph analyst who was paid $8,000 by Newsweek magazine. Also separately advising Stern, he put the two volumes brought to New York by Koch under his microscope, photocopied and enlarged the words, and concluded that the books were forgeries. When he told this to Koch, Rendell says, "he was absolutely devastated." At week's end Rendell said that his sole interest was to pursue his theories about how "this mess," as he called it, had been created. He predicted teasingly and without explanation: "There is potentially a twist to this whole thing that no one can imagine."
Investigators with similar curiosity wondered about the role of Stern's secretive reporter Heidemann. Historian Maser told TIME that Heidemann had a