When Stern magazine unveiled the secret diaries of Adolf Hitler in April 1983, the cheap plastic initials glued to the covers read FH instead of AH, and for a remarkably long time nobody noticed. This episode traces the life of forger Konrad Kujau from his birth in 1938 to Nazi-party shoemaker parents, his flight from East Germany over a stolen microphone, a string of petty thefts and a jail stint for forged luncheon vouchers, to the moment he realized banned Nazi memorabilia hidden in East German attics could be smuggled west and sold to collectors.

From a helmet with a handwritten note claiming Hitler wore it at Ypres, Kujau graduated to tea-stained letters, fake paintings and finally sixty volumes of diaries copied from a reference book and padded with trivia about bad breath and Eva Braun’s puppies. The conversation follows Stern reporter Gerd Heidemann, drowning in debt from a yacht once owned by Hermann Goering, who funded the operation while skimming the payments, the historians fooled by sheer volume, the chaotic press conference, and the forensic tests on polyester thread, paper whiteners and ink chloride that ended the fraud in days.

• How petty theft and failed businesses led a compulsive liar into memorabilia smuggling
• Rub-on lettering, brewed tea and diluted ink: the astonishingly amateur methods
• Why a debt-ridden bloodhound journalist ignored every red flag
• The con within a con: Heidemann skimming millions from his own magazine
• Kujau’s spite-fueled confession, the circus trial and his later gallery of genuine forgeries