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Description
Now for the first time, the complete expose of the most daring and successful forgery of all time. For seven days in April 1983, the sensational discovery of Hitler's sixty-two volumes of secret diaries dominated the news headlines of the world. Scholars hailed the diaries as the greatest find of the century, a historical bonanza that would entirely alter our views of Hitler and the Third Reich. Shocked readers followed daily installments showing that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust. Then, in an abrupt reversal, the diaries were proved to be bogus!
"One of the postwar period's most flamboyant historical scandals was the forgery of the so-called "Hitler Diaries." The acceptance of these fakes as genuine by prominent journalists and historians, the publicity surrounding their publication in news magazines in West Germany and the United States, and the unraveling of the fraud perpetrated by their author, a sleazy dealer in pseudo-Nazi relics, rocked West Germany in the mid-1980s and resounded in journalistic and historical establishments elsewhere."—Library Journal
"A lively chronicle of the 1983 sensation in which historians and the media, and their credulous public, were tricked by a petty German thief into temporarily rewriting the history of the Third Reich. Handwriting expert Hamilton details his role in exposing the hoax, and recounts the circus-like trial."—Book News
Publication Date
1991
Publisher
The University Press of Kentucky
Place of Publication
Lexington, KY
ISBN
9780813193083
eISBN
9780813150543
Keywords
Adolf Hitler, Hitler diaries, Forgeries
Disciplines
European History
Recommended Citation
Hamilton, Charles, "The Hitler Diaries: Fakes that Fooled the World" (1991). European History. 11.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_european_history/11
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