Selling_Hitler Knowpia

*Selling Hitler*
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
Composers	John E. Keane; Tim Souster
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	1
No. of episodes	5
Production
Executive producers	Lavinia Warner; John Hambley
Producer	Andrew Brown
Production company	Euston Films for Thames Television in association with Warner Sisters Productions
Original release
Network	ITV
Release	11 June –; 9 July 1991

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

Plot edit

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 9.3 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 lifestyle 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 had verified the diaries as authentic, it is discovered after the publication of the first extract that the diaries are crude forgeries by Stuttgart criminal Konrad Kujau.