(2 of 3)
In the U.S., Newsweek was raked by Columnist Anthony Lewis of the New York Times and by Ombudsman Robert McCloskey at Newsweek's sister publication, the Washington Post. Lewis said Newsweek had been either "gullible" or "shameless." He wrote: "The cover story raised the possibility of fraud. But it went on for pages about the historical significance of it all. And it said: 'Genuine or not, it almost doesn't matter in the end.' It matters a lot." McCloskey argued: "The impression created [by Newsweek] with the aid of provocative newspaper and television advertising was that the entire story was authentic." He accused Newsweek, in its second U.S. cover story on the subject, of a "disingenuous" attempt to claim credit for uncovering the hoax, and said of the reporting in last week's issue: "Nowhere is there any acknowledgment that the weight of previous coverage could have misled readers." Newsweek Editor in Chief William Broyles defended the stories: "I am very proud of what appeared in the magazine. I have no regrets."
Perhaps most chastening for all the publications was evidence that the forgeries were almost certainly perpetrated not by a cunning political conspiracy of Nazis or East German Communists but by a pedestrian crook. From the outset Stern editors insisted they had simply trusted a reporter who had been on the staff for 31 years. But as soon as historians and document experts started to question the authenticity of the diaries at a press conference on April 25, the Stern reporter, Gerd Heidemann, 51, dropped temporarily from sight. He was grilled privately by Stern editors, and last week he defended himself, saying that he was nothing more than a dutiful if gullible employee, not a wrongdoer.
After telling contradictory stories about how he got the diaries, Heidemann admitted that his supplier was Konrad Fischer, 44, a shadowy documents dealer and calligrapher and an emigre from East Germany, who also used the alias Konrad Kujau. Heidemann said that over a period of two years he exchanged suitcases of cash totaling 9 million marks ($3.7 million) for packets of volumes. When reporters went to check on Fischer, his Stuttgart office and suburban home were apparently abandoned.
Fischer, who hired lawyers and yielded voluntarily to an arrest warrant at week's end, denied that he had forged the diaries. He called the charge "absurd," adding: "I can neither read the Gothic handwriting [used by Hitler] nor write it." That was an odd claim for one who deals in documents of the Nazi period. Fischer insisted that the volumes actually were written by the Führer.
Still, there was circumstantial evidence that Fischer had penned the diaries. A companion, Edith Lieblang, had complained to friends that he was working "day and night" on a book about Hitler for Stern. In recent years, friends had noticed Fischer on a spending spree, buying, among other items, a house for 700,000 marks ($287,000) in cash.
Heidemann denied allegations by Stern that he had "possibly enriched himself" through fraud. Said he: "I was hoodwinked." Nonetheless, he belatedly admitted that for his role the magazine had paid him 1.5 million marks ($600,000).