Latest Himmler murder documents / forged?

[Hannover]

This is a breaking story and I'm sure more is to come; but this raises some interesting questions.
For starters see:
http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/05/06/Himml ... 20705.html

The Daily Telegraph
London, Saturday, July 2, 2005

Files on Himmler 'murder' exposed as fake

By Ben Fenton

DOCUMENTS from the National Archives used to substantiate claims that British intelligence agents murdered Heinrich Himmler in 1945 are forgeries, The Daily Telegraph can reveal today.

It seems certain that the bogus documents were somehow planted among genuine papers to pervert the course of historical study.

The results of investigations by forensic document experts on behalf of this newspaper have shocked historians and caused tremors at the Archives, the home of millions of historical documents, which has previously been thought immune to distortion or contamination.

The allegation that the SS leader was murdered, with the knowledge of Churchill and War Cabinet ministers, appeared in Himmler's Secret War, published in May [2005].

What made the claim stand out from other allegations over the years was that it referred to specific documents in the National Archives at Kew - [the Public Record Office] usually an absolute guarantee of validity.

But after The Daily Telegraph, like other newspapers, was approached to publicise the book, the documents began to raise suspicions.

The improbability of allegations that flatly contradict the accepted fact that Himmler killed himself and the use of language in documents that read more like excerpts from a spy thriller than dry civil service memos prompted this newspaper to raise concerns with the National Archives.

Officials gave permission for documents to be taken to the laboratories in Amersham, Bucks, of Dr Audrey Giles, one of the foremost forensic document specialists.

She discovered that letterheads on correspondence supposedly written in 1945 were created on a high-resolution laser printer, technology not developed until at least 50 years later.

Signatures supposed to be those of Brendan Bracken, the minister of information and head of the Political Warfare Executive, which aimed to subvert the German war effort, were found to be written over pencil tracings.

Dr Giles also found that it was almost certain that letters from two different government departments were written on the same, authentically contemporary, typewriter.

She concluded that at least four of the five suspect documents were forgeries and probably the fifth.

The findings were communicated to the National Archives this week, where a spokesman said: "We are very concerned and have commissioned an official forensic examination of these papers."

Asked if there would be a police investigation, he said: "We are taking this one step at a time, but we are taking it very seriously."

There is no suggestion that the Archives could have prevented papers being smuggled in.

The forged documents suggest that Himmler was killed by a PWE agent called Leonard Ingrams, the father of Richard Ingrams, the former editor of Private Eye.

The assassination was the supposed idea of two senior Foreign Office men, John Wheeler-Bennett and Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart.

But it was allegedly supported by Bracken and the Earl of Selborne, the head of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the sabotage organisation set up by Churchill with the order to "set Europe ablaze".

Prof M R D Foot, the SOE official historian, said: "This story was twisting history and it will not do.

"It was obviously bogus, but I am very grateful that it has been proved to be so."

The findings of Dr Giles's examination were put yesterday to Martin Allen, the book's author. There is no suggestion that he was anything but a fall guy for the forgers.

"I think I have been set up," he said. "But I do not even know by whom. I am absolutely devastated."

He denied having anything to do with the creation of the documents.

Irving comments:

I HAVE never, ever, come across a case of fake documents being planted in a Public Record Office file before. I would have thought it virtually impossible.
And not just one PRO file, but two or more carrying documents about the Himmler death.
There are moreover further documents in the Foxley files which raise suspicions that other top Nazis were liquidated, including a close friend and adviser of Rudolf Hess, a man whose death was hitherto also thought a suicide.


Bracken letter: a fake?

The "Bracken" typewriter is identical to that used for other Bracken letters I have seen, for instance in the papers of Bernard Baruch at Princeton. That is really pushing the envelope of credibility.
Although at first blush the Bracken letter seems similar to the typewritten letter of "Wheeler Bennett"



in fact they are different: different letters are slightly above the line, and the Wheeler Bennett letter has a 1 and l which both look similar but are in fact different (the L is slightly shorter).

I THINK we need to see an independent expert review the files and documents, not one hired by a pro-Churchill newspaper. recall, it was the Telegraph which serialised the Churchill six-volume memoirs, The Second World War, and the newspaper has been very close to the Churchill family ever since.
Note the unmistakeable hint in the last line that author Martin Allen was somehow behind the alleged forgery ("he denied" is a typical newspaper trick: it plants the seed in a legally safe way; if innocent, I hope he sues the pants off them like George Galloway.)
We are beginning to see why the British press has been silent until now about the documents. Is Ben Fenton's piece the final flourish of an MI6 cover-up of wartime dirty tricks? Were gullible editors warned that the documents would be found to be forged, and ... lo and behold!
The article reveals how very much was at stake if the documents were not found to have been forged. So: a piece of clever damage-control by MI6?
I am keeping a VERY open mind on this. The discrepancies remain: how did Heinrich Himmler kill himself, if he in fact had no cyanide capsule in his possession at that moment, as we know from the records; why was the war diary of the unit holding him tampered with?
Which is the document that, according to The Daily Telegraph, was not forged? How would a forger know that Martin Allen was going to look in those particular files, when writing his book, of all the tens of thousands of files in the PRO? (Assuming that he is blameless).
Interesting that all of these experts, like (the very reliable, if short-sighted -- he made no use of any German documentary basis in his official history The SOE in France) Professor M R D Foot, have kept very mum indeed until now, when they can breath a collective sigh of relief: why not a peep out of them before now?
Within a few days of our posting the first documents on the Internet, we began receiving emails from strangers suggesting they were fake -- prima facie a very implausible explanation at the time.
Fortunately there are ways that the PRO can verify the original contents of the file: most such files will have been microfilmed at some stage, in their original condition; but will the PRO be allowed to come clean? We recall the very dirty role the PRO played in concealing documents from the defence counsel of Count Nikolai Tolstoy until the very day after he was ruined by Lord Aldington's libel action against him (whose counsel was , believe it or not, Richard Rampton QC).
If the documents were forged, however, the PRO also has a computerised digital trail of every single person who has ever withdrawn a file, which would enable them to nail any forger if they can date the forgery (ink-oxidisation analysis will give a good date for the Bracken signature, if it is fake).



FO telegram: another fake?

One slightly odd thing: I notice that the May 24 Bremen telegram does not appear to be typed by a trained typist (which one would expect): the typist has used both l945 and 1945 in writing the three dates.

- I agree, we must get verification that these are indeed forgeries.

- How could someone slip bogus docs. into a file which is certainly indexed, and presumably checked before & after it is given to the requestor?

- If these are fakes, then what does this say about British 'archives'?

- I true, then what else has been planted?

- Who would plant them?

- Whose interest is this in?

Comments welcomed.

related threads:
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=2191
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=2202

- Hannover

[Richard Perle]

I have never visited any archives like these but I have never understood why the idea that files are removed or added is treated as such an impossibility.

Could someone have made false copies of real Himmler documents and smuggled them in, replacing them with the real ones?

[disillusioned]

The importance of this piece is that mainstream historians must admit that documents in the archives are capable of being forged or faked. Any document. Particularly older documents when security was not as tight.

This could indeed be a major step forward for Revisionism.

[Bergmann]

The documents about Himmler’s murder may have left the British Archives as originals, for a review by forensic document specialists, and were then later returned by The Daily Telegraph as forged documents, while the originals went through some ones shredder or were turned to ashes and smoke in some ones fireplace.

In my opinion anything goes if it is for the defense of the Holocaust, the Jewish pseudo religion, the new Wailing Wall, where it is claimed that 6 million Jews were systematically killed, mostly in gas chambers.

Allthough one of the murder weapons, the morgue 1 of Krema II still exists, where allegedly 400,000 Jews were gassed, no material and documentary evidence was ever offered.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Plus, we were talking about this weeks ago. Why was there a news blockout on any mention of it until now, when rest assured, they're supposedly fakes? And as Bergman mentions: it was all figured out in private hands. It reminds me of Ivan Demjanjuk's "Trawniki card" being delivered not by government channels but by Armand Hammer's jet or something like that.

When you have documents that support our position, suddenly the originals are going into private hands and being taken here and there. Yet documents that support their position are always accepted with some sort of gentleman's integrity and honesty vouching for their authenticity. On top of that, you find that dishonest people like Raul Hilberg used to work in the war records department.

It's amazing: we've been talking about this for weeks, via what was on Irving's website, and suddenly all dated on July 2, 2005, there are 4 articles by Ben Fenton on the Telegraph website.

[Turpitz]

It is all extremely intriguing. I have wondered if Irving has been fitted up, because everyone knew he was in the archives researching Himmler for his upcoming book, so have these documents been laid as a trap to try and undermine and debase Irving? This is the sort of underhand tactics that we have all come to expect from this mob, surely?

It never ceases to amaze me the faith people/morons have in the journaille, time and time again they can lie and deceive, yet like senile sheep the ears or the masses will always swivel to their call (It’s got to do with symbols and emblems). Why should I even contemplate believing this non-entity “Ben Fenton” Who the hell is he anyway? As I speak the journaille are up to their necks in other dirty lies concerning Iraq and these other forged documents from Downing Street, so why should I believe anything they say? Even the American soldiers are starting to realise they have been lied too by the journaille…and that’s saying something, I can tell you!

I cannot really see how the industry can benefit from this, if they are forgeries, then it only highlights that all the documentary evidence is utter crap (I believe this anyway) because it is now obvious that any Tom, Dick or even Harry can enter these archives and piss around with them unhindered. Knowing this, just how much faith do you now hold in some of the other scraps of paper doing the rounds?

Still after all is said and done and the great (forged?) paper chase has died down, you will always be able to show someone a picture of Krema II and ask them “How do you do it?” And they still won’t be able to answer; the practical/physical flaws of the industry are infallible. No scrap of paper or pie-chart will ever be able to change that.

[Malle]

It looks like it is a lot of faked documents around according to this article:

The Sunday Times - Britain

July 03, 2005

Historian in Himmler dispute was in earlier forgery furore
David Leppard

A BRITISH historian whose new book on Heinrich Himmler appears to be based on forged documents was involved in a earlier forgery row over a book he published five years ago.

The National Archives has launched an investigation after it emerged that apparently forged papers used for the book on Hitler’s henchman by Martin Allen may have been planted among genuine documents at its office in Kew, southwest London. Allen denies any knowledge of the forgery.

The documents in Allen’s book, Himmler’s Secret War, published in May, claimed that British intelligence agents murdered Himmler. It contradicted accepted accounts that Himmler killed himself.

Audrey Giles, a prominent forensic specialist, said yesterday that letterheads on correspondence supposedly written in 1945 were created on a high-resolution laser printer, technology not developed until at least 50 years later.

Signatures purporting to be those of Brendan Bracken, the head of the Political Warfare Executive, were found to be written over pencil tracings.

It has now emerged that Allen was involved in an earlier forgery row over a book he published in May 2000 about the purported role of the Duke of Windsor in helping Nazi war plans. The book, Hidden Agenda: How the Duke of Windsor Betrayed the Allies, accused the duke of treason. It said he had passed secrets of French defences to Hitler, easing the way for the invasion of France in May 1940.

The book was partly based on what appeared to be an incriminating handwritten letter from the former Edward VIII to Hitler in November 1939.

Written in German, it makes veiled references to a tour of the French front line that the duke had just made. The duke asks Hitler to pay close attention to information that an intermediary bringing the letter to the dictator has memorised.

The letter appeared to suggest that the duke, who abdicated as king in 1936 because he wanted to marry an American divorcée, was willing to resume the British throne once Britain had been bullied into a peace settlement.

However, as with the Himmler documents, some scientific experts cast doubt on the letter’s authenticity.

Allen had been advised that there was no reason to doubt the genuine nature of the document but Robert Radley and Leslie Dick, both chemists and forensic document examiners, conducted their own checks for The Sunday Times. Radley found “many discrepancies” between known samples of the duke’s handwriting and the handwriting in the letter that made him “highly suspicious”. Dick concluded that the letter was “most probably the result of a skilled attempt at forgery”.

Radley found at least 50 unnatural “pen lifts” — a sign, in his view, of an individual attempting to copy another person’s handwriting.

A third expert, Peter Bower, studied the paper used for the letter. He found that it appeared to have been “baked” to make it look older than it was. “This document should be viewed with grave suspicion,” he said.

Challenged at the time about the doubts over the Duke of Windsor letter, Allen said he was “shocked” to learn that it could be forged.

He said he had found the letter among papers belonging to his late father, also a second world war historian. He said his father had told him that he had got it from Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and munitions minister at the end of the war.

Yesterday Allen said he was shocked when told that his latest book might also be based on faked documents. “I think I have been set up. But I do not even know by whom. I am devastated,” he said. He denied having anything to do with the creation of the document.

Source:

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Who is this Martin Allen? I thought Bellinger was the main player in all of this.

[Hannover]

Historian extraordinaire, Arthur Butz, author of 'Hoax of the 20th Century .... , has this to say about these documents:

http://pubweb.northwestern.edu/~abutz/d ... orgery.htm

Documents on Himmler Murder Forged.

Three weeks ago I reported that David Irving had posted documents proving that Heinrich Himmler was murdered. Now, as a result of investigations commissioned by the London newspaper The Daily Telegraph, it appears these documents were forged.

The documents in question came from the archives of the British "Public Records Office", loosely referred to as the "National Archives". The institution in question does indeed correspond to the U.S. National Archives, and a determination that documents found in either institution are phonies was viewed as highly unlikely to impossible.

The identity of the persons who planted the forged documents, and the date of the deed, are not known at present.

At present (2 July 2005) David Irving seems not convinced forgery has been proved, though Martin Allen, author of the book that started this controversy, Himmler's Secret War, published in May, concedes the forgery. I am willing to entertain another surprise, but at present I accept that the documents are forgeries.

When I reported on these documents here I had no doubt as to their authenticity, just as I would not doubt documents from the U.S. National Archives. However I had one nagging concern. Why would the perpetrators consign their crime to formal government documents? My question reflected astonishment rather than skepticism.

Meanwhile, my conjecture that Himmler was murdered still stands.

2 July 2005

- Hannover

[Radar]

Alright, it should not be beyond the British authorities to discover (1) are these indeed forgeries? Irving raises legitimate questions., (2) if they are, when were they introduced (this will give us a good clue as to the motives of the forgers), and (3) who did it? (surely some record is kept of those having access). Is someone independent and with qualifications looking? It will be interesting to watch that. If there is no serious investigation that will tell us a lot.

As I recall Irving did not claim to have discovered the documents himself although he did at first attest to their reliability, I suspect in part because of his past experience with the deceased Brendan Bracken whom he dislikes.

In any case the question of exactly how Himmler died is still a mystery and the official British story has many leaks. As Irving said this could all be a set up to divert attention from that continuing problem.

I must say that from the beginning I thought it odd that the murderers of Himmler would leave ANY written documentation.

[Turpitz]

I cannot share your optimism on this matter and with all due respect, why on earth would anyone be inclined to suggest the British authorities/establishment would have any inclination of searching for the truth?

I also think that "independent" views are non-existent where the industry is concerned. When I hear Irving who has been feeling the wrath of this democratic lynch mob for nigh on thirty-five years suggesting unbiased opinions and honesty will prevail from the authorities and journaille in this affair, I have to shake my head in disbelief.

[Turpitz]

I think we should also all hold our Horses for a minute. I cannot simply accept they are forgeries just because some lying rag has supposedly carried out some covert test's behind closed doors on them. The trash in the media are to be treated with utter contempt in regards to being purveyors of truth or integrity.

Was it not Rudolph, who after taking his samples from Birkenau to a laboratory for analysis was told by the laboratory in question upon hearing where they came from “If we had known what they for, we would have given a different result” Or something along those lines.

I also find it strange that we should be alarmed that whisky sodden Churchill would authorise such a thing, after all he was behind the assassination of Heydrich amongst others. I too still think Himmler was bumped off, even if “something” has been in the archives meddling.

[Radar]

Turpitz, I am not terribly optimistic that a real investigation will take place. Of course that is what should happen because this is a serious matter which would call for investigation in any normal situation, e.g. tampering with an official government archive to accuse high government officials of complicity in murder. If it does not take place it will be an indication that there was more than the newspaper involved in the case, perhaps the British secret services which certainly do have a motive for covering up the murder, even after all these years, and may well have planted a false story ripe for "exposure" in order to discredit people like Irving.

And knowing the British, I'm not sure I would trust even an "official" investigation. If you think me cynical take a look at the sorry record of "offical investigations" on Northern Ireland matters. I'm hoping that David Irving himself can dig a little deeper.

[Turpitz]

If you think me cynical take a look at the sorry record of "official investigations" on Northern Ireland matters.

I don't think you cynical for thinking in this manner at all; I only wish others would wake up to the utter deceit and treachery that seems to control our destinies.

I have to say the whole episode seems to have an aura of choreography about it, there is something repugnant about the affair in general.

I do not think the rag’s so-called proof is much to shout about. Number one, I would not believe a word they say anyway and number two, is it not possible a different typewriter was used? Were all government personnel obliged to use the exact same typewriter for the duration of the war? Were they obliged to use specific typist’s for the duration of the war? Would a new/different ribbon cause the typewriter to produce different characteristics to the letters?

At the end of the day the only way as Irving suggests is by carbon dating and age authentication, even then who can you trust in our democracies to reveal the truth on such a matter?

[disillusioned]

Turpitz:

There are two possibilities here:

a) The claim that the documents are forgeries is a lie. This becomes evident and draws the holohoax industry into negative light.

b) The claim that the documents are forgeries is true. The implication is that other documents which do support the holohoax claim could be forgeries. Why couldn't they be? If false documents are so easily filed, why isn't it possible that holohoaxers have done the same?

disillusioned