I am posting this in response to a well known blogger, a philosophiae doctor, who has undertaken to write an apologia for Adolf Hitler in response to one section of Anders Breivik’s “Manifesto.” In so doing he has ventured into a field that seems to be my focus much more than his. He seems to be unaware of the minefield of questionable sources in this subject-area and has unfortunately stepped onto one of them, the so-called Hitler-Bormann Documents.
This information comes from David Irving and is dated 2 December 1983:
… [M]ay I warn modern historians against this source? These “bunker conversations” alleged to be by Martin Bormann are as spurious as the Hitler Diaries*.
Several years ago their Swiss owner [the late François Genoud] gave me a complete copy and they turned out to be largely in his handwriting, amplifying, he told me, the rather thin typescript which existed only in French!
Bormann’s own diary published by the Soviet author Lev Bezymenski establishes that he was not even present on some of the evenings concerned.
Hardly a serious source for historians.
This “political testament,” a collection of fictitious conversations, is not to be confused with Hitler’s last will and testament, dictated to Traudl Junge on 29 April 1945.
The forger of the Hitler-Bormann Documents, François Genoud, was also the promulgator of Hitler’s Table Talk (Hitlers Tischgespräche), which seems to be genuine, although I understand that there are some distortions in the French and English translations, particularly where Hitler expresses views on Christianity.**
____________________
* David Irving’s most famous exploit was the debunking of an alleged set of diaries written by Adolf Hitler.
** If anybody would be so generous as to supply me with a German edition of Hitlers Tischgespräche, it would be most helpful!