by emad » Tue Jul 05, 2005 12:37 pm
Historian in Himmler dispute was in earlier forgery furore: The SUNDAY TIMES: <br>July 03, 2005 <br>Historian in Himmler dispute was in earlier forgery furore<br>David Leppard<br><br>A BRITISH historian whose new book on Heinrich Himmler appears to be based on forged documents was involved in a earlier forgery row over a book he published five years ago. <br><br>The National Archives has launched an investigation after it emerged that apparently forged papers used for the book on Hitler’s henchman by Martin Allen may have been planted among genuine documents at its office in Kew, southwest London. Allen denies any knowledge of the forgery. <br><br>The documents in Allen’s book, Himmler’s Secret War, published in May, claimed that British intelligence agents murdered Himmler. It contradicted accepted accounts that Himmler killed himself. <br><br>Audrey Giles, a prominent forensic specialist, said yesterday that letterheads on correspondence supposedly written in 1945 were created on a high-resolution laser printer, technology not developed until at least 50 years later. <br><br>Signatures purporting to be those of Brendan Bracken, the head of the Political Warfare Executive, were found to be written over pencil tracings. <br><br>It has now emerged that Allen was involved in an earlier forgery row over a book he published in May 2000 about the purported role of the Duke of Windsor in helping Nazi war plans. The book, Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies, accused the duke of treason. It said he had passed secrets of French defences to Hitler, easing the way for the invasion of France in May 1940. <br><br>The book was partly based on what appeared to be an incriminating handwritten letter from the former Edward VIII to Hitler in November 1939. <br><br>Written in German, it makes veiled references to a tour of the French front line that the duke had just made. The duke asks Hitler to pay close attention to information that an intermediary bringing the letter to the dictator has memorised. <br><br>The letter appeared to suggest that the duke, who abdicated as king in 1936 because he wanted to marry an American divorcée, was willing to resume the British throne once Britain had been bullied into a peace settlement. <br><br>However, as with the Himmler documents, some scientific experts cast doubt on the letter’s authenticity. <br><br>Allen had been advised that there was no reason to doubt the genuine nature of the document but Robert Radley and Leslie Dick, both chemists and forensic document examiners, conducted their own checks for The Sunday Times. Radley found “many discrepancies” between known samples of the duke’s handwriting and the handwriting in the letter that made him “highly suspicious”. Dick concluded that the letter was “most probably the result of a skilled attempt at forgery”. <br><br>Radley found at least 50 unnatural “pen lifts” — a sign, in his view, of an individual attempting to copy another person’s handwriting. <br><br>A third expert, Peter Bower, studied the paper used for the letter. He found that it appeared to have been “baked” to make it look older than it was. “This document should be viewed with grave suspicion,” he said. <br><br>Challenged at the time about the doubts over the Duke of Windsor letter, Allen said he was “shocked” to learn that it could be forged. <br><br>He said he had found the letter among papers belonging to his late father, also a second world war historian. He said his father had told him that he had got it from Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and munitions minister at the end of the war. <br><br>Yesterday Allen said he was shocked when told that his latest book might also be based on faked documents. “I think I have been set up. But I do not even know by whom. I am devastated,” he said. He denied having anything to do with the creation of the document.<br> <br> <!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-1678583,00.html">www.timesonline.co.uk/new...83,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>-------------------------------------------------------<br>The TELEGRAPH:<br>Files on Himmler 'murder' exposed as fake<br>By Ben Fenton<br><br><br>Documents from the National Archives used to substantiate claims that British intelligence agents murdered Heinrich Himmler in 1945 are forgeries, The Daily Telegraph can reveal today.<br><br>It seems certain that the bogus documents were somehow planted among genuine papers to pervert the course of historical study.<br> <br>Himmler: Forgeries implicated Churchill in his 'murder' <br>The results of investigations by forensic document experts on behalf of this newspaper have shocked historians and caused tremors at the Archives, the home of millions of historical documents, which has previously been thought immune to distortion or contamination.<br><br>The allegation that the SS leader was murdered, with the knowledge of Churchill and War Cabinet ministers, appeared in Himmler's Secret War, published in May.<br><br>What made the claim stand out from other allegations over the years was that it referred to specific documents in the National Archives at Kew - usually an absolute guarantee of validity.<br><br>But after The Daily Telegraph, like other newspapers, was approached to publicise the book, the documents began to raise suspicions.<br><br>The improbability of allegations that flatly contradict the accepted fact that Himmler killed himself and the use of language in documents that read more like excerpts from a spy thriller than dry civil service memos prompted this newspaper to raise concerns with the National Archives.<br><br>Officials gave permission for documents to be taken to the laboratories in Amersham, Bucks, of Dr Audrey Giles, one of the foremost forensic document specialists.<br><br>She discovered that letterheads on correspondence supposedly written in 1945 were created on a high-resolution laser printer, technology not developed until at least 50 years later.<br><br>Signatures supposed to be those of Brendan Bracken, the minister of information and head of the Political Warfare Executive, which aimed to subvert the German war effort, were found to be written over pencil tracings.<br><br>Dr Giles also found that it was almost certain that letters from two different government departments were written on the same, authentically contemporary, typewriter.<br><br>She concluded that at least four of the five suspect documents were forgeries and probably the fifth.<br><br>The findings were communicated to the National Archives this week, where a spokesman said: "We are very concerned and have commissioned an official forensic examination of these papers."<br><br>Asked if there would be a police investigation, he said: "We are taking this one step at a time, but we are taking it very seriously."<br><br>There is no suggestion that the Archives could have prevented papers being smuggled in.<br><br>The forged documents suggest that Himmler was killed by a PWE agent called Leonard Ingrams, the father of Richard Ingrams, the former editor of Private Eye.<br><br>The assassination was the supposed idea of two senior Foreign Office men, John Wheeler-Bennett and Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart.<br><br>But it was allegedly supported by Bracken and the Earl of Selborne, the head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the sabotage organisation set up by Churchill with the order to "set Europe ablaze".<br><br>Prof M R D Foot, the SOE official historian, said: "This story was twisting history and it will not do.<br><br>"It was obviously bogus, but I am very grateful that it has been proved to be so."<br><br>The findings of Dr Giles's examination were put yesterday to Martin Allen, the book's author. There is no suggestion that he was anything but a fall guy for the forgers.<br><br>"I think I have been set up," he said. "But I do not even know by whom. I am absolutely devastated."<br><br>He denied having anything to do with the creation of the documents.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=0YYXBWA4AALQ1QFIQMGCM5OAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler02.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=69366">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...stid=69366</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>-------------------------------------------------------<br><br>The TELEGRAPH:<br>'You expect everything in PRO to be real. It's a disaster'<br>By Ben Fenton<br>(Filed: 02/07/2005)<br><br>"Crikey," Martin Allen said when he was told that the documents on which he based the climax of his book were forgeries.<br> <br>"Bloody hell, how could that have had happened?"<br><br>The historian, who lives in Gillingham, Dorset, denied absolutely any previous knowledge that the papers he had discovered in the autumn of 2003 were bogus.<br><br>"It never occurred to me that anything in the PRO wouldn't be real. You go to the PRO and expect to find kosher documents.<br><br>"It undermines the whole process of National Archives."<br><br>Mr Allen, whose other two books focused on the flight of Hitler's deputy Rudolph Hess to Scotland in 1941 and the alleged pro-German activities of the Duke of Windsor, offered to help the investigation in any way.<br><br>He would also be contacting his publisher, Robson Books, to discuss whether or not the book should be withdrawn.<br><br>"I think I will ring my publisher and say that we have got something of a disaster here. <br><br>"Something strange has happened indeed. I really don't understand, I really don't.<br><br>"It's not within my skill to do something like this or in my interest because I'm a bona fide historian with several books behind me. I do my research. I spend a lot of money doing it and I didn't expect this. I am absolutely devastated.<br><br>"You read an awful lot of documents without finding anything at all and then when suddenly, at the end of the day, at 4 o'clock on a wet winter evening you find something like this.<br><br>You think: 'Yippee, I've found something. That gives me the lead on to something else'. But if you think the archive was seeded in such a way by the time you get the information - that's devastating, absolutely devastating."<br><br>The implications for historians in general are profound.<br><br>"Documents I find in the archives I tend to treat as gospel," Nigel West, the intelligence expert and historian of the SOE, said.<br><br>The sort of fabrication uncovered in the Himmler affair was unprecedented in Britain, said Prof Richard Aldrich of the University of Nottingham.<br><br>"It has happened with the UFO lobby in America and we have to face the fact that we are going to have to be more sceptical where the subjects are ones that people obsess about: UFOs, royalty, the Kennedy assassination, or in this case the Nazis.<br><br>"The second worrying thing is that we know the SOE had plans to bump off Hitler and there are documents showing - although perhaps I ought to say that appear to show - that we were planning the same for Mussolini and his deputy.<br><br>"So they are something we could almost believe before we see them."<br> <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler402.xml">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ler402.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>-------------------------------------------------------<br>UK Nazi denier DAVID IRVING rejoiced when Himmler book was published:<br><br>'Revelations' that cheered the Right<br><br><br>Since Himmler's Secret War was published, there are people who have been gladdened by the information apparently revealed by Martin Allen.<br> <br>Internet forums that discuss Nazi history have welcomed a new subject.<br><br>On the website of David Irving, the British historian who was branded by a High Court judge as a Holocaust denier, there was a sense of triumph.<br><br>On June 3 on the website, which has a banner reading The International Campaign for Real History, Mr Irving welcomes the discovery, which he does not attribute to Mr Allen, but to a British researcher, Steve Kippax.<br><br>Mr Irving writes: "Real historians have long doubted the conformist version of how Himmler died, namely that he obligingly swallowed poison when he realised the game was up."<br><br>It adds: "What is truly extraordinary is not so much that the conformists have willingly overlooked the inconsistencies for over 60 years but that those involved in, or aware of, the murder - who included Prime Minister Churchill himself - had kept quiet about it." Further down his article, Mr Irving says: "Brendan Bracken, Churchill's obnoxious red-headed confidant … was also in on the action - a war crime, despite Heinrich Himmler's dark record, as he was a prisoner of war who had surrendered to British custody."<br><br>Commenting on Bracken's supposed remark, on one of the forged documents, that any link between British officials and the death of Himmler would be very damaging to the nation's reputation, Mr Irving, who is based in America, said: "Quite so.<br><br>"Britain's secret agents had secretly and criminally liquidated one of the most wanted men in history, for whose proper public trial and punishment the blood of millions of his victims cried out: and for no other visible reason than to conceal that for a few days toward the end of the war, Churchill had negotiated with him on peace terms."<br><br>Mr Irving does not seem to question the veracity of the documents.<br><br>There is no suggestion at this point that Mr Irving or any of his associates or correspondents were aware of the forgeries or had any part in them.<br> <br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler602.xml">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ler602.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>-------------------------------------------------------<br><br>See also:<br>Faking our history:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/07/02/dl0203.xml">www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...dl0203.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>How Himmler's death was turned into a British murder plot:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler202.xml">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ler202.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Forgeries exposed by a hunch and by science:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler302.xml">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ler302.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br> <br>How was archive security breached?:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler502.xml">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ler502.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>Who's Who:<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/02/nhimmler702.xml">www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ler702.xml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br> <br> <br> <br><br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br><br><br><br><br><br> <br> <br><br><br> <br> <br> <br> <p></p><i></i>