« Go Gay This Spring!..And Your Home Will Stay Gay | Main | Hitler In Advertising »

Hitler's Diary & Hermann Goering's Yacht





GoeringsYacht-thumbnail.jpg
CARIN II
News this week of the German reporter, Gerd Heidemann - who claimed to have discovered Hitler's Diaries - is now 76, living alone and on welfare.

The former Stern magazine journalist is living in poverty in Hamburg. He has debts exceeding €700,000 and exists on a pension.

His debts includes €150,000 in shipyard bills dating back to when he owned Hermann Goering's yacht, Carin II.231239-1530225-thumbnail.jpg
Heidemann with CARIN II

The yacht was a gift to Hermann Goering, supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, from the German motor industry in 1937 to mark Goering’s marriage to his second wife, Emmy, but was named after his first spouse, Carin, who died of TB six years earlier.

The 90ft-long (27.5 Metres) 70 ton Carin II was described by one contemporary newspaper as "a symbol of German shipbuilding supremacy, a floating embassy for the state". The construction and presentation attracted great public interest as it was the first vessel of its type and size to be built. For a private vessel it had an astronomical price tag - 1.3 Million Reichsmarks.

Hitler was a frequent visitor, as was Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and his security police leader, Reinhard Heydrich.

Goering stored the finest wines and cognac aboard, hosted lavish dinners and shot ducks from a specially constructed platform on the bow.

231239-1522686-thumbnail.jpg
"Where's my boat?"
During the summer of 1940 Goering would sit on the green leather sofa in the boat’s splendid wood panelled salon and study Battle of Britain operational maps on the burr walnut table.

The Carin II survived the collapse of the Third Reich virtually unscathed and was found, moored off Hamburg, by Field Marshal Montgomery who requisitioned it as Nazi treasure for George VI and his family as a spoil of war.

The boat was first renamed the Royal Albert and then Prince Charles and for 15 years it provided a holiday home for the Royal Family.

But eventually the Royals decided it wasn't a good look to be cavorting on Goering's old luxury yacht in a period of post-war austerity and it was handed over to the Goering family in 1960.

The family sold the yacht to a Bonn printer, who renamed it Theresia and kept the boat for 12 years before selling it to Heidemann.

231239-1523384-thumbnail.jpg
Goering on Carin II, Denmark
Heidemann restored the name Carin II and entertained Goering's daughter Edda and numerous prominent Nazis on board. Including Karl Wolff, former head of the SS in Italy and Himmler’s liaison officer with Hitler, and SS General Wilhelm Mohnke, the last commander of the garrison defending the Reich Chancellery in 1945.

As the yacht became increasingly expensive to maintain, Heidmann needed to sell the boat. In 1980 he visited the Stuttgart home of Fritz Steifel, a wealthy collector of Nazi memorabilia, hoping to persuade him to buy the Carin II. Steifel wasn’t interested, but while Heidemann was there, Steifel showed him an unusual and very rare item he had recently acquired. It was a single, black-bound volume of Hitler’s diary, covering the period from January to June, 1935.

Heidemann persuaded his employers, Stern magazine, to advance him cash to acquire instalments of more than 50 volumes. And then went on spending sprees buying first-class cruises, new cars, apartments, and large amounts of Nazi memorabilia (most of it fake). At one point he even inquired about the possibility of buying Hitler’s childhood home.

231239-1531329-thumbnail.jpg
Heidemann aboard Carin II
Turned out all the diaries were forgeries, but ones which managed to fool both the Sunday Times and the British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. The diaries were bound in black, and about 1.5 centimeters thick. Konrad Kujau, the forger, scuffed them up and stained them with tea to give them an old, battered appearance.

He glued initials on to the front cover of each diary. Kujau thought that the initials, which were in a gothic script, were the letters “AH” for “Adolf Hitler.” In fact, they were “FH”. No one noticed this mistake.

Eventually, chemical analysis indicated the diaries were fake.

All three volumes contained traces of polyamid 6, a synthetic textile invented in 1938 but not manufactured in bulk until 1943. The whitener and fibers in the paper were found to be of postwar manufacture. The labels, supposedly spanning thirteen years, had all been typed on the same machine. Tests showed that the supposed wartime diaries were less than two years old. The ink came from an ordinary artist’s shop. And at least one set of the initials glued on the front of the diaries was made of plastic.

The content of the journals had also been sexed up. The entries contained historical inaccuracies and many of them had been plagiarized from Domarus’s Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations and showed the same typos and grammatical mistakes.

The announcement that the Hitler Diaries were fake made front-page news around the world. Heidemann spilled the beans but insisted he had believed the diaries were real. Kujau fled to Austria. But when he learned that Stern had paid nine million marks for the diaries but Heidemann had paid him only two million he spat the dummy and gave himself up - just to spite Heidemann. To prove his guilt, he wrote out part of his confession in Hitler’s handwriting. He also claimed that Heidemann had known all along that the diaries were fake.

In August 1984 Heidemann and Kujau were put on trial. Heidemann was accused of stealing 1.7 million marks from Stern, and Kujau of receiving 1.5 million for the diaries. This left over five million marks unaccounted for. Both men were convicted of fraud and sentenced to over four years in prison each.

After being released from prison in 1988, Kujau opened a gallery in Stuttgart where he sold “authentic fakes". Authentic fakes - don't you love it? These included not only forgeries of Hitler’s paintings, but also reproductions of Dalis, Monets, Rembrandts, and Van Goghs. He signed each painting with both his own name and that of the original artist. Many of these “authentic fakes” sold for tens of thousands of marks. In fact, his work became so popular that other forgers began to create forged copies of Kujau’s forgeries. Ha ha.

It gets better. When Kujau died in 2000, his great-niece, Petra Kujau, was subsequently charged with selling hundreds of fakes of his fakes. She would buy oil paintings from Asia for as little as 10 euros apiece, write Kujau’s signature on them, and flog them off for up to 3,500 euros!

Goerings old yacht Carin II was put up for auction, eventually being sold to Egyptian-born Mostafa Karim and his wife, Sandra Simpson attracting more controversy when it was once impounded by Libya's Colonel Gaddafi.
Sandra Simpson, an American citizen, and her husband, Dr. Mostafa Karim, a permanent American citizen of Egyptian birth, were on board the Carin II, a private yacht, sailing in the Mediterranean in February 1987. A sudden storm forced the ship off its course. Libyan harbor authorities responded to the Carin II’s distress signal and permitted it to dock in Benghazi. After the Carin docked, Libyan officials boarded the yacht, made the passengers disembark, and threatened to shoot them if they tried to leave. After holding them for three months, the Libyan authorities permitted Ms. Simpson to flee to Zurich. They continued holding Dr. Karim in solitary confinement and unsanitary conditions without proper food or medical equipment until November 1987.

Postscript: Did you know Goering was shot in the groin during the Beer Hall Putsch with Herr Hitler and ended up with a raging morphine addiction? He was certified a dangerous drug addict and placed in a straitjacket in the violent ward of a Swedish asylum on 1 September 1925.
The psychiatrist's reports claimed -

Göring is weak of character, an hysteric, an unstable personality, sentimental yet callous, violent when afraid and a person who deployed bravado to hide a basic lack of moral courage.

CARIN II Lying in the Red Sea 2003

I found these pics on a Russian photo site. But they are from Rex Features and were taken by Michael Dunlea. The old girl's in a pretty sad state. God only knows what she looks like now. Anyone recognise the engines? Update: she's powered by Mercedes-Benz diesels that were fitted in the early eighties.


231239-1528551-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528556-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528563-thumbnail.jpg
"Kingstown"?
231239-1528565-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528568-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528570-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528573-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528577-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528581-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528586-thumbnail.jpg231239-1528590-thumbnail.jpg
"Admiral" Goering & mates
231239-1528594-thumbnail.jpg
Italians & Germans

Posted on Saturday, April 26, 2008 at 09:36PM by Registered CommenterMalcolm Lambe | CommentsPost a Comment

PrintView Printer Friendly Version

EmailEmail Article to Friend

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
All HTML will be escaped. Hyperlinks will be created for URLs automatically.