It’s Friday, May 6, 1983. During the conference at eleven o’clock, stern editors cautiously express the suspicion that their paper could have been taken in by a forgery. Editor-in-chief Felix Schmidt calls such doubts “denunciation” and thunders: “Anyone who doesn’t understand that is on the wrong page.”
At 1:28 p.m., the German Press Agency reported that the Hitler diaries had been exposed as fake. Schmidt and his editor-in-chief colleague Peter Koch resign. What happens in the next two weeks is as unique in German press history as the super flop. The editors feel ignored, presented, humiliated.
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