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'I was there': Hitler diaries hoax, 1983

5 live Daily looks back at an historic moment through the eyes of those who were there.

A sensational scoop that was too good to be true

In April 1983 the German magazine Stern made a stunning announcement.

It had obtained more than 60 volumes of diaries written by Adolf Hitler and would be publishing them.

In the UK, the Sunday Times bought the rights to serialise the diaries.

On 24th April the paper's front page read: "The Secrets of Hitler's War", but historians had their doubts.

The handwriting expert who could see something was up

Kenneth Rendell is an American handwriting expert who was hired by Newsweek magazine to examine the diaries.

Kenneth Rendell: "They were comparing them to examples written by the same forger. They were right, it was all the same person, but it wasn't Adolf Hitler."

"It was so clear - it didn't even remotely look like Hitler's handwriting," he told Peter Allen on 5 live Daily.

He said executives were obsessing about whether Hitler could have written the diaries, and failing to do proper forensic checks.

"All of these people were dealing with getting market share and the order in which they would run the stories."

"I was trying to tell them the train shouldn't even be leaving the station, while they were all trying to decide which track it should take."

The Sunday Times paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to print the diaries

Brian MacArthur was deputy editor of the Sunday Times in 1983 and was heavily involved with the decision to run the story.

Brian MacArthur (centre) its he got carried away on hearing about the diaries

He met the editor of Stern in : "He was totally self-confident that he had a wonderful scoop that had been thoroughly checked and authenticated."

"I was caught up in the thought of 'Wow, a world scoop!'"

"I saying to Rupert Murdoch that we needed to get authentication and he said 'I hope you're not trying to ruin this story Brian!'"

There was a scramble to get the story out

Magnus Linklater was given the job of writing the exclusive story for the Sunday Times.

The forgeries were not particularly convincing

"We spent one of the worst nights of my life going through these diaries. They were awful and banal - we couldn't find a story in them."

He phoned Hugh Trevor-Roper, the respected historian who had checked the diaries for the newspaper, to ask if he certain they were genuine.

"He said 'Absolutely, 100 percent,' then he paused and said 'let's say 99 percent'. Ever since then I’ve regarded 99 percent with deep suspicion."

Jobs and reputations were lost when the truth came out

Sir Richard Evans is one of the country's leading historians and has written several books about Nazi .

Sir Richard Evans: "The problem with journalism is that a scoop gets everyone excited and you don't want it to be skewered."

Speaking to Peter Allen on 5 live Daily, he said it was unlikely that Hitler would ever have kept a diary: "He was man of extremely irregular habits. He got up very late, he wasn't a systematic worker, he stayed up until the early hours watching old movies.”

He said Hugh Trevor-Roper fell for the back story: "Police will tell you the key to a successful forgery is not the content or the way it's done, but the story behind its provenance."

The editors of Newsweek, Stern and the Sunday Times all left their jobs following the discovery of the hoax.

You can listen to a short clip here...

Journalists Brian MacArthur and Magnus Linklater discuss their part in the ill-fated story.

If you have a few more minutes...