Selling Hitler: 40th Anniversary Special Edition

This is a great book! It read like a detective story combined with farce. Harris who later became a succesful novelist has done a terrific job of investigative reporting in uncovering this ridiculous scandal which should never have happened. And there's plenty of blame to go around. We meet gullible Nazi wannabes, greedy businessmen, & pompous academics. the story is so entertaining but also contains important lessons in human nature. Beware of what you want to believe!

Robert Harris's non-fiction work "Selling Hitler," the tale of petty swindle and media corruption in the 1980s, is Europe's answer to "Bonfire of the Vanities," and, like Wolfe's novel, it has an absurd mix of characters. Leading the pack is the amazing forger and con-artist who forged the diaries, closely followed by the gullible German reporter whose willing ignorance led to their publication. On the other side of the channel, British academics, newspapaper editors and press barons were all drawn into the controversy, as the Sunday Times decided the Diaries were fit to print. A comedy of errors on a grand scale.

A terrific expose of the greatest journalistic hoax of the 20th century, the "unearthing" of the long-lost Hitler Diaries. Harris turns the case inside out and presents us with a series of well-drawn character profiles. It's impossible to decide what's most appalling, the shabbiness of the hoaxers (the soon-to-be-legendary forger Konrad Kujau, aided by a deeply-closet-fascist German journalist), the gullibility of the British academics or journalists who accepted them at face value, or the cynicism of those who should have known better, i.e. the Sunday Times' publisher as well as the professional controversialists who kept the diaries in the headlines. Farcical and deeply disturbing at the same time.

It's a tragedy this book is out of print, as it's as gripping a read as you can find. Although a work of journalism, it reads like an Eric Ambler novel, populated by lowlifes, forgers, and SS generals who escaped the noose. More importantly, it's a great inside look at modern publishers, who know little about history other than that swastikas sell! Outside the WWII context, it's the best book about The Big Con that I've ever read.

Hilarious. It's also badly in need of a new edition in light of the upsurge in neo-Nazoid activity in the decade since it was published. Helmut Dietl, the brillian filmmaker whose hilarious 'SHTONK!' was based on this scandal, once said that the only way to deal with these people was to laugh at them. Harris briliantly describes the collection of con artists, duped ex-Nazis, and assorted crackpots who fooled most of the journalistic world with pathetic forgeries. More ominously, he points out that this ridiculous stunt came very close to rewriting history, since people really wanted to believe in them before there was positive proof of their authenticity. This is one of the best journalism/history books I have ever read.