The Case of Kujau, who forged the handwriting of Hitler

Below is a case that exemplifies the use of science and Graphology to solve a Crime involving forgery by a crook, who earned big bucks thanks to his talent of copying handwriting, however with the use of graphology and science the case was solved.

A German publishing company, Gruner and Jahr, was persuaded in the early 1980s that a collection of 60 hand-written notebooks comprised the diaries of Adolph Hitler, and they paid a sum of $2.3 million for the lot. They also bought a heretofore undiscovered third volume of his two-volume book, Mein Kampf. The most shocking revelation found in all of this material was that Hitler seemed to have been oblivious to "the final solution" that was used to exterminate millions of people. Apparently he had wanted the Jews to be resettled in the East. That meant that history books would have to be dramatically revised.

The story was passed around that the papers had been taken out of Berlin toward the end of WWII on board an airplane that had crashed. They were found by farmers and eventually came into the hands of a Nazi document collector, Konrad Kujau, via an unnamed general in East Germany. Kujau had taken them to a journalist, Gerd Heidemann, who was on the staff of Stern, a newspaper owned by Gruner and Jahr. Then Stern quickly began serializing the diaries, and sold publication rights to Newsweek in America and to The London Times.

It was the owner of the Times, after having serious doubts, who insisted that tests be performed to establish the authenticity of the diaries, but the experts were divided.

There were samples of handwriting available that were known to be Hitler's, and three experts compared these with the documents. Max Frei-Sultzer was the former head of the forensic science department for the police in Zurich, Switzerland, and Ordway Hilton was a specialist in document verification. The third man worked with the German police. All of them agreed that all of the texts had been written by the same person, and that person's handwriting was the same as that in the comparison sample. Astonishingly enough, the Hitler diaries appeared to be authentic.
However, forensics tests on the paper and ink showed otherwise.



SAMPLE OF THE HANDWRITING OF HITLER

Paper is generally classified according to the materials in its composition. They differ according to additives, the presence or absence of watermarks, and the surface treatments used, such as heat or resins. Specialists can determine the date when a particular type of paper was introduced.

Modern ink can be one of four basic types:
1. Iron salts in a suspension of gallic acid, with dyes
2. Carbon particles suspended in gum Arabic
3. Synthetic dyes with a range of polymers and acids
4. Synthetic dyes or pigments in a range of solvents and additives

The ink under question is tested with microspectrophotometry to determine the absorption spectrum or thin-layer chromatography to reveal the exact composition, and is then compared to the data base of over 3,000 ink profiles at the U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

The West German police put the paper under ultraviolet light and found that it contained an additive that had only been put into paper since 1954. The threads attaching the seals contained material manufactured after the war, and the type of ink used had not been available at the time the diaries were purportedly written. Then a test was used on the ink that involved the evaporation of chloride, and this proved that the documents had been written within the past year.

In addition, an analysis of the contents revealed a host of historical inaccuracies, apparently overlooked in the magazine's attempt to keep the scoop a secret until publication. One distinguished historian of Hitler's regime, Hugh Trevor-Roper, had actually vouched for their authenticity.

That meant they were on the lookout for a forger and swindler.

Yet how were the handwriting experts fooled? They'd had an actual sample of Hitler's handwriting, and all three had confirmed the striking similarities.

They ought to have looked into Kujau's background. As a child he'd sold the forged autographs of famous politicians for pocket change. Later he manufactured so-called Nazi mementos, including an introduction to a sequel to Mein Kampf and poems by Adolph Hitler. As it turned out, the clever forger had actually managed to forge the sample that the experts had put out to display.

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