Selling Hitler
Selling Hitler is a 1991 ITV television comedy-drama mini-series about the Hitler Diaries hoax and was based on Robert Harris's 1986 book "Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries". Plot. In 1981, Gerd Heidemann (Jonathan Pryce), a war correspondent and reporter with the German magazine "Stern", makes what he believes is the literary and historical scoop of the century: the diary of Adolf Hitler. Over the next two years, Heidemann and the senior management figures at "Stern" secretly pay DM 9 million to a mysterious "Dr Fischer" (Alexei Sayle) for the sixty volumes of  'Hitler's diaries', covering the period from 1932 to 1945, plus a "special volume" about the flight of Rudolf Hess to the United Kingdom. Some of the money is made as payment to "Dr Fischer" but the larger proportion goes into Heidemann's pocket, to finance his extravagant life and collection of World War II memorabilia, including the yacht of Hermann Göring. To the dismay of all, including eminent historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper (Alan Bennett), who verified the diaries as authentic, it is discovered after the publication of the first extract that the diaries are crude fabrications by  Stuttgart criminal Konrad Kujau. Cast. The five-part series was directed by Alastair Reid and starred: The series, which "The Guardian" described as "a rollicking comedy with black edges", was released on Region 1 DVD in July 2010.