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Selling Hitler

Selling Hitler
Selling Hitler DVD cover (2010)
Selling Hitler DVD cover (2010)
Genre Drama-documentary miniseries
Based on Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries by Robert Harris
Written by Howard Schuman
Directed by Alastair Reid
Starring Jonathan Pryce
Alexei Sayle
Tom Baker
Alan Bennett
Roger Lloyd-Pack
Richard Wilson
Composer(s) John E. Keane
Tim Souster
Country of origin United Kingdom
Original language(s) English
No. of series 1
No. of episodes 5
Production
Executive producer(s) Lavinia Warner
John Hambley
Producer(s) Andrew Brown
Production company(s) Euston Films
Thames Television in association with Warner Sisters Productions
Distributor FremantleMedia
Release
Original network ITV
Picture format 4:3
Audio format Stereo
Original release 11 June (1991-06-11) – 9 July 1991 (1991-07-09)

Selling Hitler is a 1991 ITV television drama-documentary mini-series about the Hitler Diaries hoax and was based on Robert Harris's 1986 book Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries.

In 1981, Gerd Heidemann (Jonathan Pryce), a war correspondent and reporter with the German magazine Stern, makes what he believes is the literary and historical scoop of the century: the diary of Adolf Hitler. Over the next two years, Heidemann and the senior management figures at Stern secretly pay DM 9 million to a mysterious "Dr Fischer" (Alexei Sayle) for the sixty volumes of 'Hitler's diaries', covering the period from 1932 to 1945, plus a special volume about the flight of Rudolf Hess to the United Kingdom. Some of the money is made as payment to "Dr Fischer" but the larger proportion goes into Heidemann's pocket, to finance his extravagant life and collection of World War II memorabilia, including the yacht of Hermann Göring. To the dismay of all, including eminent historians such as Hugh Trevor-Roper (Alan Bennett), who verified the diaries as authentic, it is discovered after the publication of the first extract that the diaries are crude fabrications by Stuttgart criminal Konrad Kujau.

The five-part series was directed by Alastair Reid and starred:


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