Throughout history, there have been some hilarious, controversial, and confusing hoaxes that have been created. Hoaxes are different from urban legends, rumors, pseudoscience, or even jokes since a hoax is a deliberate and intentional attempt to create something that is false but present it as the truth. We will look at ten of the most interesting hoaxes that fooled a lot of people.
6. The Hitler Diaries
In 1983, a German magazine called "Stern" announced that they had Adolf Hitler's diaries. The diaries consisted of 60 volumes that were supposedly the authentic diaries of Hitler from 1932-1945. As the story went, they were in a plane that was shot down in 1945 near Dresden. "Stern" obtained the diaries over a span of 18 months and paid about 9 million Deutchse marks for them.
In order to authenticate the diaries, there was a page from the diaries that was to be evaluated three times, as well as forensic studies were to be conducted. Only basic visual analyses were actually conducted and the forensic studies weren't performed. The visual analyses confirmed that they were indeed Hitler's diaries. Two historians did get to see the sample and both swore by their authenticity.
Once they began to make their way into the public consciousness, many people didn't believe them to be authentic. The most obvious objection was "who could actually forge 60 volumes?" Others thought that it was a ploy by the Russians or the East Germans. Soon, it was revealed that the same source that supplied the diaries had also supplied a forged diary to another group. Forensic studies were finally performed and the findings showed that the ink and paper were too new to have been used in the 1930's-40's. The diaries had actually contained parts of speeches from Hitler as well as carefully created "personal comments". Upon further investigation, there turned out to be historical innacuracies, and autograph experts denounced the diaries as very poor fakes, which nearly destroyed the reputations of those that confirmed the authenticity of the diaries.
Believe it or not, all 60 columes had been forged by a man named Konrad Kujau. He worked with the journalist who'd originally said that he'd found the diaries. Both Kujau and the journalist went to trial in 1984 for forgery and embezzlement. They were sentenced to 42 months in prison. After he was released, Kujau actually opened a studio and sold forgeries to people. So, in a sense, the ordeal boosted his career, but those that said that the diaries were real all had a blow to their reputations, including the magazine.
On a similar note, in 1986 a book was published about the ordeal, called "Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries". In 1991, a docudrama 5-part series aired on British TV which was adapted from the book. If you want to watch it, it was released in the US on dvd in 2010.
Bet you didn't know that!
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