Curse of the Goebbels Diaries

For weeks after V-E Day, Berlin was, in the words of an American eyewitness, “one great junkyard.” Among the junk was seven thousand pages of loose paper found in the courtyard of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, which was under Soviet occupation. The paper was removed by an amateur junk dealer, who later recognized something peculiar about it: not only its superior quality, but the oversize typescript. By word of mouth, the existence of this unusual haul came to the attention of Lieutenant Colonel William Heimlich, a civilian American intelligence officer attached to the American occupation force who identified the author of the text as the late Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Heimlich gave the junk dealer two cartons of cigarettes in exchange for this treasure.

Read the rest of the Hoover Institution article by Bertrand M. Patenaude here.