[Extracts from diaries and telephone logs]

June 7, 1980

8:30 pm Telephone conversation with Peter Stahl in San Jose. I telephoned to ask if he would be in tomorrow evening and he said he would be. I asked if has yet obtained the Tyler Kent document and he said he is still dealing with the source in Switzerland who owns them. He amplified that there were three sets of documents, the English original, the Italian translation and the German translation which were handled by an Italian agent called either Weil or Emil. He said that the man wanted some of his Hitler-Befehle in exchange. Stahl then phantasized a bit about remarks that Mrs. Agnes Peterson (of Hoover Archives) is supposed to have made about me, and suggested that the Hoover Library now has the diary [of] Mohnke and that it is locked away, and that when they know that I am coming they take half their cards out of their index so that I won't find the stuff. I said that I find that hard to believe

June 16, 1980
(Abilene, Ks.)

10:10 pm Telephoned Peter Stahl at his telephone number, (408) 923 3364, in San Jose, California, to inquire about the letter from Himmler to Pohl. He has not sent it to me yet, it is buried under a lot of stuff, he says. He is going to New York next week. I gave him my number here and that of Max Becker in New York. He says he will look out that letter straight away. He also touched on the Mohnke diary (which he says Oppenheim can obtain for me from Hoover Library's secret collection) and on the Walter Frentz colour photographs which he is interested in publishing, and on the Eva Braun letters: I gave him the address of Robert E. Gutierrez from memory in Albuquerque and stressed my continuing interest in the Tyler Kent papers.

11:15 pm Peter Stahl telephoned back unexpectedly from San Jose. He had immediately gone and looked out the Himmler letter and dictated it to me, and invited me to take it down on my tape recorder:

REICHSFÜHRER SS
1 Berlin SW 11                                   den 20. Oktober 1943.
Prinz Albrecht Straße 8
Feldkommandostelle

SS Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen SS Oswald Pohl,
SS Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt
Berlin Lichterfelde-West
Unter den Eichen 126-135.

Sehr geehrter Herr Obergruppenführer,

Der Reichsleiter Bormann hat mehrmals im letzten Monat eine besondere Interesse an der Degussa-Aktion und Ihr Verhältnis mit dem KZ-System. Wie Sie wissen, eine solche Interesse seinerseits völlig überheblich ist und gefährliche Folgerungen haben können.

Bis jetzt habe ich eine direkte Gegenüberstellung mit dem Reichsleiter vermieden, aber der gebraucht natürlich sein je näheres Verhältnis mit dem Führer um diese Einmischung in KZ-Gelegenheiten zu verlangen. Er hat dem Führer eingeredet, daß er erlernte Arbeiter von KZ-Insassen herausholen kann, und hat sogar den Reichsminister Dr. Speer wenigstens teilweise überzeugt von seine Fähigkeit eine solche Aufgabe durchzusetzen.

Der Führer hat mich gebeten in dieser Sache den Reichsleiter zu assistieren. Ich bin informiert worden, daß eine Kommission von fünf Männern der Bormann-Staffel wird in zwei Wochen das KZ Buchenwald besuchen. Zu dieser Zeit habe ich keine Liste ihrer Namen bekommen; ich habe gehört, daß ein Buchhalter unter ihnen sein wird.

Natürlich kann ich nicht gegen des Führers Wunsches die Erlaubnis für eine Untersuchung verweigern, aber unter keinen Umständen dürfen diese Einmischer die Akten der Degussa-Aktion nachprüfen.

Weiter muß die äußerste Sorgfältigkeit gebt werden, daß irgendeine Nachricht über unsere Methoden in der Endlösung der Judenfrage den Ohren des Reichsleiters nicht gelangt. Als der Führer keine Ahnung dieser Endlösung hat und glaubt, die Juden arbeiten in Übersiedlungsgebieten im Osten, es wäre höchst unratbar, ihn zu dieser Zeit zu informieren, besonders nicht mittels des Reichsleiters, der keinen Anlaß hat, uns sonst zu lieben.

Ich verlasse ganz und gar auf Sie für die Sicherheit dieser Sache und erwarte von Ihnen einen vollen Bericht alsbald die Kommission abreist.

Herzliche Grüsse und Heil Hitler
H. Himmler
Reichsführer

Of course, this text has errors: these errors cause me many doubts: they may result from the document's lack of authenticity, or from Peter Stahl's ignorance of the German language he is dictating to me over the telephone, or from my having heard wrongly or dictated wrongly. Alternatively, Himmler may have had cause to type the letter himself rather than use a secretary, and he may himself have made the errors. Receipt of the facsimile may clear up these doubts.

IRVING: "And you have the original of that?" (Yes). "Well of course it is an extremely important document... There are one or two words in the German which are slightly odd. Maybe your eyesight is not quite good. The final word 'Als" does not look right... But the general sense does fit in with the October 1943 period. You know Himmler made a number of speeches in that month. ... 'Als der Führer' or something like that. Could it be 'auch' or 'da'?... Here again I would have to see the document." (Stahl explained that the document had been folded and clipped.) "What colour is the paper? White?" (Off white.) "What is its origin? Where did you get it from?... From the same people as you got the Göring letters and the Führerbefehl and the things like that, yes. [I.e., hinting at the Berlin Document Center]. So there is no reason to doubt its authenticity, particularly because no propagandistic use has been made of it by anyone. And does the document show obvious signs of age? Obviously what I would ideally like you to do is to trust me with the document for one or two weeks and I would not damage it or harm it in any way and I would get it authenticated by probably the Institute in Munich, who deal with this... They are slightly oppositional, just like the Hoover Institution, and not rub their noses in it but just to them very politely, 'would you please authenticate this document as genuine in your opinion. ... A colour transparency" (suggested by Stahl) "would also be acceptable but ideally the original, because you know you get the feel by looking at an original straight away whether it is an authentic one or not. If you supply only a transparency then people will get suspicious and say, 'Aha, why won't they trust us with the original!' (Stahl became reluctant, said he would be happy to let me have the original free, but would not trust the mails and would send me first a photocopy.) "I would be very grateful for something like that. Start off with an ordinary Xerox copy if you can, let me have that waiting for me in London and then we can carry this through, and it is really going to make a big noise I think. Mr Stahl, I would be very happy to have a copy of that document, and I have complete faith in you that the document is authentic, but we must be in a position that later on we can say if necessary, the original document is available and open to inspection by any reliable and trustworthy authority." (He said he would send me the copy by mail to Duke Street.) "As long as you get the address right, '81'." (He touched on the possibility of talking to Max Becker, about his desire to publish the Frentz photographs, and I suggested he hand the document to Becker in New York. Stahl explained he would not be in New York long enough, as it was a one day round trip.) "He could meet you anywhere you are in New York, there's no problem." (Stahl said the man he was meeting in New York was bringing him documents of Gauleiter Giesler. He also mentioned papers of Karl Kriebel, Hitler's friend.) I ended: "I am very very pleased indeed that you have found it. Goodbye.")

June 20, 1980
Omaha, Nebraska

10:35 pm Telephoned Peter Stahl at San Jose. He was very exhausted having returned from his round trip to New York. He was rather disappointed that the man who had offered him documents of Gauleiter Giesler had only a file of very low level letters written by Gauleiter Giesler thanking him for crates of beer, etc. It was not worth the money, he said. I came onto the subject of the letter from Himmler to Pohl, dated October 20, 1943, and said that I had been thinking it over in the few days since he telephoned me in the middle of the night, to dictate the contents of the letter to me, and I am more than ever convinced that it is genuine, but that I have been thinking in advance of a number of the questions likely to be asked when this particular dynamite is exploded, and that it occurs to me that it would be useful if he could give me an answer to the question: How long has the document been in your possession? He answered, "Oh, at least ten years." Later he said that it was definitely in his possession in 1970, and stated that the Hoover Library's Dr Lassner could confirm this as it was shown to them around then; Lassner is an Austrian who understood German much better than he, Peter Stahl, did. Lassner saw only a photocopy of the document however and went so far as to suggest that Stahl had himself concocted the document. Stahl said that he had looked at the document more closely since we talked, and the word he had read as "als" before was in fact "da." I said this removed one linguistic difficulty. Another which I saw was that it included two or three foreign words like "informiert" and my belief was that the Nazis usually avoided such words. However Peter Stahl said that in his view there was no doubt at all that it was genuine in view of the fact that it had been supplied to him along with a number of other completely genuine letters by a man of proven reliability. Without much prompting he now stated that one problem was that the letter had on it a rubber stamp, reading: "Library of Congress." [Not true: it seems to read L of C.] This startled me and I asked how the stamp came to be on the document. It turned out that there was a large collection of documents at the Library of Congress which according to Peter Stahl consisted of documents that had been withheld from the Nuremberg trials because of their embarrassing nature for the prosecution. This was one such document. Because these documents were in a closed section of the Library of Congress and not available to researchers, an official at the Library of Congress had proved very accessible to offers from document collectors to purchase them from him. Peter Stahl had bought this and the Göring and Hitler documents from the man. I asked if the man is still at the Library of Congress and Peter Stahl said, No, he committed suicide a number of years ago. he did not mention his name. In this connection however Peter Stahl said that I would find that a very large number of documents were still in the hands of document collectors. I said, "Who are you telling that to, Peter!" I explained that over the last four days I had mentally worked out in my mind various plans to ensure that the dynamite was exploded professionally and I had of course extrapolated forwards the subsequent steps in the controversy that might develop. Of course I must have a facsimile first, but I could then predict that people would not be satisfied with a facsimile, because they could easily be faked, and they would insist on seeing the original. It would not be satisfactory from my point of view if I had to explain that it would take or three weeks for the original document to arrive. Peter Stahl repeated several times that he would very happily send me the original document when I wanted it. I said I would happily buy it from him, and he said, No, he would be happy to give it to me (but he still seemed, in retrospect, slightly reluctant to let me have the document in the original, which may be because he fears it will be stolen en route to me, as he said several times, or alternatively it may just possibly be because he himself only has a photocopy and not the original, and talk about having the original was braggadocio. On the other hand he did state that the signature was in green crayon.) He said that I stood the make a lot of money out of the controversy that would arise out of the document and that it would not exactly have a bad effect on the sales of my Hitler books. I quickly replied that the Hitler book is out of print except in England and it would not do much good to that. On the other hand it would do a great deal of good to my prestige to be proved right after all these years! My plan of action now would be that I would hope that he would have a photocopy waiting for me in my postbox on my return to London. I would then submit this to various authorities, including Hugh Trevor Roper, to have it authenticated by them, I would then approach a suitable media agency or television agency to handle the world wide international publication of this dynamite, and then see how things developed. I must of course be prepared for the subsequent steps. He again stated that he had had the document in his hands for ten years, without really realizing the importance of it. he was just a document and souvenir collector. Had I ever heard of Eigruber? I said yes, Gauleiter of Linz. He said had I ever heard of the Eigruber coin collection? He did not expand on this. He then asked me to take a pencil and write down the name of Hans Memmler, and the name of a painting, Man in a Black Cap. Would that mean anything to the experts in Germany? Again he did not expand on this. He touched on the question of how I would explain how I came into possession of the document and he suggested that I might say that an anonymous well wisher sent it to me in the post. I said I could always say that but make it perfectly plain that I did not expect that to be believed, but that I was just concealing the real source. At the end of the conversation I still had the unhappy feeling that he is not being strictly frank about his ability to produce either the facsimile or the original of the document at short notice for me. Against this must be set the fact that he does know the precise text and the layout of the document. He asked finally if he could ask a favor of me. One of his fellow collectors who is very interested in SS items would like to be put in touch with the man who owns the Karin II, Göring's yacht. I said, Oh yes, Gerd Heidemann in Hamburg. He will write to me about this. He mentions that this is the man who will be obtaining for me the Mohnke diary which "is in the Library of Congress." (Postscript:) On this occasion he asked me what I thought of Werner Maser and I said that my feelings were mixed, but that fortunately as his work covered the earlier Hitler period I did not have to come into conflict with him. It is just that I disapprove of some of his publicity methods. (This raises the possibility that Peter Stahl is in fact the mysterious source of some of the "withdrawn" Nuremberg documents which Maser used in his book on Nuremberg. And did not Maser once hint to me, at Kassel, July 1st, 1978, that he knew of the existence of a document which completely justified my stand on Hitler and the Jews? Or is my memory wrong on this?)

June 21, 1980
(New Orleans)

6 pm Telephoned Professor Stephen Ambrose. A man said he will be away until the end of August.

7:25 pm Telephoned Professor Joe Hobbs at Raleigh, North Carolina, and told him about the Peter Stahl document. He was astonished, and full of admiration and congratulations. He compared it with Copernicus and said that the difference was that I was living to see myself vindicated in my lifetime. He added that a few days ago he had seen a picture book on aerial warfare with several pages on the Dresden raids and drew the conclusion that even if I had written only the Dresden book I would have justified my writing activities for my lifetime. he will be in Washington at the end of next week and we will probably meet then.

June 28, 1980
00:30 am (From Virginia.)

Telephoned Peter Stahl in San Jose. The charge was $3.68. I put to him the fact that I have now spent several days here in Washington, investigating the antecedents of his alleged Himmler/Pohl document at the Library of Congress and the National Archives, and that in the National Archives I have caused a number of genuine Himmler/Pohl documents to be photocopied so that I have the possibility of carrying out comparisons. I was still unhappy about the fact that the "ss" is written in the form "ss" and there are no lightning flashes for //, although there are some which use there the SS, though not in this correspondence. He did not appear unduly alarmed by this and said that "Oppenheim" (evidently an official at the Hoover Library) who has now "promised" to let me have the Mohnke diary, said that this was not unusual. (NOTE: The Mohnke Diary has not arrived yet, January 1, 1981)

I then probed the question of what precisely was the source of the document, and was the man who committed suicide an official of the Library of Congress (because the Library has now told me that no such official committed suicide in recent years) and he instantly, before I went any further, said: "Oh no, he was in fact the Director of the Museum at West Point, who 'de-accessioned' a number of documents" to people like Peter Stahl until one day he 'de-accessioned' one document too many, and was caught, said that he wanted to go back to check something in the Museum, and shot himself. Or so Peter Stahl says.

Later in the conversation I then said, "So the route of the document to you was this: from the Library of Congress through the West Point Museum to this official who committed suicide, and then on to you." Stahl confirmed this, although he sounded a shade hesitant about doing so. He again said that he would be happy to "give" me the document, he was asking no money, and asked me incidentally "out of curiosity" what I would do with it when I had finished it. I said I would be inclined to put it on my wall and frame it, if it turned out to be authentic. He again promised to get the document Xeroxed, next week, although he had put it away (?!) and would have to take it out of the files again. He said he would make three Xeroxes and mail them to me separately so that even if one was lost the others would reach me. I suggested that if and when he sends the original it would be sufficient merely to register it. He added two bits of fresh information about the document: first, it has a one inch long line at top left, "LC Doc", in print, not typescript, and also that it is typed not on Din A4 size paper but on a page slightly larger than A5, a size he has also in his Göring correspondence. It is good quality paper, and the words Reichsführer SS are printed in Roman type, not in Gothic. I gave him Gerd Heidemann's address in Hamburg as a quid pro quo.

10:00 am Telephoned David Wigdor, no reply. -- 10:50 am Telephoned Mrs Everett S. Hughes, widow of the general. A nurse came to the telephone and explained that she is too ill to speak; I spoke a few words with Mrs Hughes and this is obviously true.

June 29, 1980
New York

We dined -- Tom [Congdon, my editor], Max Becker and I -- at a restaurant nearby. During the evening we discussed the alleged Himmler/Pohl letter of October 20, 1943, in some detail. Tom Congdon is very apprehensive, and asked me what the probability was that I was being "set up" by for example Jewish elements. I said that this possibility had occurred to me very powerfully and I had accordingly considered the document and the man concerned (Stahl) from every angle. I considered the man to be a genuine document collector, which does not of course mean that he is not being used in this way against me, and I added that the document does present some puzzles. I have spent two days during the last week in Washington examining the problem from every angle: I have obtained photocopies of other Himmler/Pohl correspondence documents, to compare typewriters, typing styles, language, letterheads and so on. I would be approaching all the officials that Stahl had mentioned to me, to ask for verification of what he had told me.

Tom then asked me what I would then do if it all turned out to be genuine, and he hinted that much money might ride on my decision (i.e, he would prefer that I did nothing.) My reputation could easily be harmed.

I said that at present I was thinking of letting The Sunday Times have the exclusive story to launch in England, in view of the fact t [rest missing]

July 1, 1980
London

3:30 pm BBC telephoned, could I persuade Frl Christa Schroeder [Hitler's Secretary] to allow a filmed interview with me on the Röhm Putsch, in September? They are going to Munich next week to carry out initial soundings. I: will phone her and try.

3:50 pm Did so. She is highly amiable, but refuses, "Ich habe zu viel Ärger gehabt." Just recently Frau von Schirach has again put stupid words into her mouth in a book. I say: a television interview is not easily twisted, but she is adamant. She is very friendly, we gossip about my USA trip, the Rolls problems, etc. I mentioned the Peter Stahl document, she is very sceptical: she cannot believe, daß "A.H." nichts wußte.

July 3, 1980
11:10 pm Telephoned Peter Stahl, in California, no reply [see Telephone Log]

July 14, 1980
01:14 am Telephoned Peter Stahl at San Jose. He said:

"Oh, I'm glad you called. I've taken the Himmler document to a photographer to be photographed now, because the signature did not show up on the Xerox." (It was green crayon). "I did not have the really valuable things here." He then explains some further things he has noticed about it. The document was in two parts, it had evidently been in some kind of display book, the address (Pohl's) evidently being separated and clipped to it later, perhaps by the War Crimes people.

And it began, quite clearly, with the words, "Lieber Pohl." I said this pleased me as the previous text he read to me, beginning Sehr geehrter Herr Obergruppenführer, was not a regular mode of address from Himmler to Pohl at all. (But: I cannot understand how he got it wrong the first time! Was he reading it out or not? Bad light?) I then said I was prepared to offer to him, in exchange for the original of the document, after I had first approved the facsimile, my signed Rommel photograph. He said, "Oh, yes, that would be all right, that would put it on a businesslike footing." He will send me the photocopy -- "I'm going to go to another Xerox place and see if they copy it better" -- in fact he'll send me three or four copies, and keep a negative for himself. He will send me the original later. He is reluctant to put it in the post, is there anybody there he can hand it to? I said, pack it well in cardboard like a photograph.

He then discussed the Mohnke diary, Oppenheim had gone to Stanford but they cannot find the Mohnke diary which he saw once in the vault, in the card index.

He then discussed the man in Vancouver who had the Karl Wolff documents. He sold most of them to a man in San Francisco now, but did not have the diaries evidently. He still has some non-swastika'ed handwritten letters.

July 20, 1981

10:00 pm Telephoned Peter Stahl in San Jose, California. I: "Hello, David Irving, London, here." He: "Hello David, did you get the letter?" I: No. He says that on Friday morning he sent to me airmail a Xerox of the first page of the Himmler letter, he had problems with his photographer, the Xerox of the signature is only faint, so he sent only the front page, which omits the last paragraph. I say: "That's a pity because the last paragraph is important!" He says, "No, the important one is the penultimate paragraph." I say: "I will phone you as soon as I get it." He says: "Okay, then I can see about mailing you the rest."

July 21, 1981 (Tuesday)
San Jose, California

At 6 pm I met Peter Stahl at the Howard Johnsons cafe at San Jose, as recorded.

Evening, spent some time driving around the Los Gatos mountains trying to find Charles Burdick's home. But I took the wrong exit so I missed it. Arrived back at the San Francisco hotel at 9:40pm.

July 22, 1981 (Wednesday)
San Jose, California

Rose 7:30 am, drove down to San Jose 10 am, at 10:20 am met Peter Stahl who handed over to me a number of photocopied documents relating to his theories on the so-called forgeries of Rodin casts, and to his own rather murky past: his past is, as I suspected, that of a counterfeiter, a would-be Van Meegeren.

Drove back to San Francisco airport. 12:30 pm plane to Chicago, at 7 pm the plane was due to take off but as it taxied on the runway a hydraulic fault was found and take off was delayed until 10:30 pm.

July 23, 1981 (Thursday)
San Francisco

Telephoned Peter Stahl around 2 pm but he was just leaving for Vermont and will return July 24th, evening, when he suggested we should meet. I said I am going to Ottawa and I don't know what time I'll get back...

November 23, 1982
Stanford, California

In the evening I telephoned Charles Burdick at Los Gatos and arranged to come out and see him. Spent the evening with Burdick and his wife and we talked about Edward Prchal, the Sikorski pilot, who now has lung cancer from his heavy smoking and Peter Stahl, of whom Burdick knew a great deal: criminal activities, faking and counterfeiting Rodin sculptures, but a man of some intelligence crying out to be recognized. Burdick advised me to make use of the CIC archives at Fort Meade, which are now all computerized. He is working on a biography of General Lanz, I drew his attention to the diaries of Field Marshal Weichs.

May 28, 1984
London

Public Holiday in USA as it turns out: I tried again to phone Berlin Document Center: no reply. That's why. ... Peter Stahl phoned at enormous length from U.S.A. about his "800 RSHA microfilms". I recorded and later transcribed this. [Transcript]

June 22, 1995
Key West (Florida)

As I ring off Soyka phones, is doing a deal with [Gerd] Sudholt on purchase of Heinrich Müller files from a George [Gregory] Douglas, an American. I shriek that this is the old fraud Peter Stahl, and he should at once phone Sudholt to warn him. Ostensibly Douglas has the papers from the CIA, several microfilms, etc. The old story, I exclaim. Also, he should phone Mark Weber and Charles Burdick who can both "vouch" for Douglas.

July 20, 1995 (Monday)
London

14:13 phoned John Costello about Peter Stahl; he says Gregory Douglas in his opinion is that man.

19:45 In the evening lengthy conversations with IHR's Weber about [Ewald] Althans and Stahl/Douglas; Weber's attitude is odd. He is publishing another IHR article under a pen name by somebody. I say: pen names must be out -- if the person is reputable, he should be willing to allow his name to be used -- if not; not.

May 14, 1996 (Tuesday)
London

11 a.m. Andrew Page [solicitor] acting for The Observer phoned; they had found the reader's letter I had sent in, would I be satisfied if they published it? I said that would not answer all my points. -- He says Douglas/Stahl has written them a threatening letter; I said I would do what I could there to help (and duly mailed to him a copy of my entire Peter Stahl file)... He sounded grateful and conciliatory.

September 28, 1996 (Saturday)
Monroeville (Pennsylvania)

Dinner with Ben Swearingen [historian, collector, document authority] He has had a brain tumor removed, but he looks remarkably vital (is 59) and his memory is good. Ribbed me because I could not recall some of the things he had written in his book on Göring's suicide, which I have read. He could not resist asking me what I thought if he now told me that he has been offered a letter that Rudolf Höss wrote to his wife from prison apologizing for "confessing" to the atrocities at Auschwitz, and explaining that he had been tortured into making them. He evidently has not seen it yet; but as usual refused to identify to me the man who had offered it to him, or how much he was asking, but said that he would not offer for it himself as it would be dynamite in anybody's hands. I urged him to let me know, as we could put together a consortium of people who would certainly raise the money to buy it. We both puzzled over which prison it could have been written from, and concluded it must have been an American prison, probably while still at Nuremberg and before his imprisonment by the Poles; otherwise how would the document now be in presumably an American's hands? But perhaps that is wrong. -- Some discussion about Peter Stahl, about whom he is also contemptuous; he knows of his Gregory Douglas forgeries and his prison record.

During the night an anonymous six-page fax came with alleged details about the true background of "Peter Stahl."

February 15, 1997 (Saturday)
London (England)

I send this to Andrew Gray, who writes me a rather naive letter about Peter Stahl alias Gregory Douglas:

Let me warn you for your own good; he is a confidence trickster; steer a wide berth around him, unless to smoke him out.

Just one example: He offered to me in 1977 [1980] a phony letter from Heinrich Himmler to Oswald Pohl, October 23, 1943, proving that Hitler was unaware of the Final Solution. When finally shown to me it was typed on US-Letter size paper, with no SS-runes, errors of hyphenation in German words, German nouns not capitalised, etc; the printed letterhead was unlike any other Himmler letterhead in the archives. His shifting versions of where he got this letter from included, over the months: (a) a Library of Congress official, "de-accessioning" materials (he pointed to a "L of C" circular stamp on it: but the Library advised me they used no such stamps); (b) a West Point official, ditto, who committed suicide when found out (W P commandant General Goodpaster advised me there was such a suicide, but the document was never in their archives); (c) a bundle of 1945/6 Nuremberg Trial materials concealed by the prosecution and sent for destruction to prevent their falling into the hands of the Defence. Tell Willis all this, for his own good.

Don't buy any genuine Rodin castings from him if offered, either!

March 22, 1997
London (England)

[American] Police file on "Peter Stahl" comes from […]: very interesting. A record going back to the 1950s, of arrests, deportations (from Canada), kiting cheques, false identities, fake passport applications. That's our Peter! I write to [the source] as follows:

Thank you for that most interesting police file on the above. So that is his real name -- Birch (or Burch). The reference to "Secret Service" involvement is probably because he was convicted (so he told me) of forging Canadian $2 bills; there is certainly a lot of Canadian involvement in this file; in the USA the Secret Service is responsible for the security of the president and the Treasury currency. The reference to Freiherr von Mollendorf (as an alias) is also interesting for me: a man of that name wrote me a long, long letter about the Forschungs-amt (twenty years ago); that was Göring's wiretap agency. He claimed to have been a senior FA member, but when I put his name (and data) to genuine FA members, they said (a) they'd never heard of him, (b) the data was quite wrong and useless.

April 26, 1998 (Sunday)
Washington, DC

Andrew [Gray] talks to me at length about Gregory Douglas, and his affection for him. He admits that Douglas and Peter Birch (sp?) are one and the same, as Douglas himself says. As police records show, this identifies Douglas also as Peter Stahl. Douglas is also friendly with Willis Carto. That is no great certficate of authenticity either, of course. He says Douglas is now 66 or 67 (which fits the man I knew as Stahl), and lives currently in Freeport, Illinois. He is said to be helping (!) the Swiss authorities in their fight against the Bronfman suits, providing them with documents. (Aaargh!) He says Douglas is also associated with the Hitler Diaries forger, Konrad Kujau. Small world indeed. All my protests that he should have nothing to do with the man evince nothing. Surely there is some element of truth in the files, he suggests? I say: Stahl/Douglas has shown nobody anything original, whatever, whenever. No films, no documents. Just promises upon promises for decades. A true thief and forger.

 

 

Radical's Diary: Peter Stahl sets up a "Gregory Douglas" website

John Young, of New York, delves into "Gregory Douglas"

A phone conversation with "Peter Stahl," July 1980

Data Report on "Peter Stahl", Feb 1999

Extracts from David Irving's diaries about "Peter Stahl"

Mark Weber issues an alert on Peter Stahl April 2002