Word: stern
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
...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...
Investigators with similar curiosity wondered about the role of Stern's secretive reporter Heidemann. Historian Maser told TIME that Heidemann...
Heidemann, with his wife Gina at his side, was quizzed by Stern executives in one session that ended at 3:15 in the morning. Emerging, she said about the collapse of Stern's publishing plans, "It's terrible. But no matter what happens, we will always believe in the diaries." She charged that the West German officials who had declared the books fraudulent were really trying to "suppress the truth." She and her husband have friends among former Nazi officers. When they were married, two former Nazi generals served as official witnesses. "It would have been a joy to tell...
...ignominy and chagrin suffered by Stern and the other participating publications, they could take some solace from the fact that they are not the first to be burned. In this century alone, there have been at least three comparable publishing sensations, each highly hyped and then discredited amid an international uproar...