Extracts from David Irving's diaries

June 8, 1983
London

10:00 pm Telephoned Johannes Göhler in Stuttgart. I said I am resuming the search for the Eva Braun/Hitler papers missing since 1946, after abandoning it temporarily in December 1973. I told him of the CIC Interrogations of Konrad, Spacil and Haufler found in Washington. He is very interested, and asked what the description of the contents of the Tropenkiste is! I read out Kornad's handwritten description, and Göhler said that was how he knew it.

He made the following points.

• (a) his former wife Ursula is still alive (she believed in 1973 she was dying of cancer);
• (b) he does not think she will help me, but he now knows that all the time he was in Internierungslager 1945--, Ursula was [working] with the CIC Special Agent Robert A. Gutierrez. . . .
• (c) significantly, he was telephoned three weeks ago by somebody from USA, not named, asking for information on this Haufler history. He declined to assist. I asked him not to mention that Gutierrez is still alive, and he said that he would not help anybody else.
• (d) on Walter Hirschfeld, he said they always believed he was "einer von uns." I said Hirschfeld is identified as "SS Lt." in the files. He confirmed that Konrad was hanged by the Poles. I said to find the [rest of entry is missing]

June 11, 1983
London

Telephoned Robert Gutierrez in New Mexico for the first time since 1974. He says a Stern journalist visited him a month or two ago. Extraordinary!

June 11, 1983
Muhr-Ansbach-Stuttgart-London.

Caught 8:30 train to Stuttgart via Ansbach. . . Afterwards at 3 pm to see Frau Ursula Göhler, (see Interview Note) who was weepy and uncooperative and on two issues flatly lied to me. Which I am rather glad about, as she now maintains she (a) never saw the Hitler letters to Eva and (b) never saw Gutierrez steal them. This contradicts what she told me in November 1973. She is bloated by cortisone but otherwise seemingly in good health, despite having cancer these last ten years. Taxi to the town afterwards and at 5:15 pm met Johannes Göhler at station who took me to the airport. Interviewed him too (see Note). He confirms that it would be wrong to underestimate his ex-wife's intelligence.

June 27, 1983
London

9:15 pm Phoned Gutierrez in New Mexico. Out until tomorrow.

July 1, 1983
London

00:50 am Phoned Robert A. Gutierrez in New Mexico. He says Bill Conner is in Federal Employment last he heard of him. Says I should call him "when I come over to the States." He will find "the man who knows how to locate Conner then." I asked what kind of government employment. He: not sure. I: Out at Mclean? He: (non committal). Had calls from him a couple of times after that (i.e., after 1946.)

August 25, 1983
London

2:30 am Telephoned Robert Gutierrez in New Mexico. He: does not want now to see me. Sounds wary and weary. Did not correspondent with Bill Conner since ca February 1946, he says, when he, Gutierrez, left Germany. Has not bothered to look for Conner's address therefore. I reminded him that he himself had suggested on my last call that I should plan a visit to Albuquerque into my next ititnerary. This did not move him.

July 20, 1988
Washington DC.

Dealt with mail backlog. Sent this letter to Ben Swearingen [one of the foremost American WWII researchers, now dead]:

Dear Ben,

Thank you so much for your letter of May 29. I apologise most humbly for the delay in replying, but I was out of the country for the first months of this year and today I am off again, for four more months which will however take me back to Houston some time late in September, I think.

You ask for news on Göring. It is this: the book was published in Germany last August (1987), where it was a great success. In Britain, Macmillan Ltd., and in the USA William Morrow Ltd., will be publishing the book this coming spring (1989); the delay has been caused by extensive trimming and rewriting requested by the Americans. Needless to say I have given you credit for the [Jack] Wheelis discovery. I applied incidentally for access to W.'s 201 personnel file, but I suppose many years will pass before I finally see it.

Now to your queries. Sadly, while there are good lists of all Göring's birthday and Christmas presents, I know of none for Hitler's; on the other hand, there are lists of all those who sent Hitler Christmas cards. If you want authentication of the cigarette box, you might send a snapshot of it to Gutierrez, who would probably have been the owner of it until our German friend [Willi Korte] took the EB [Eva Braun] collection off him two years ago. Incidentally, as regards the missing EB/Hitler correspondence, I found the enclosed November (1945?) press clipping which clearly shows that the Americans did get these items. I wonder if Sibert kept them? I do not know how we are ever going to "break" Guterierrez. Did you get any closer to that 1916 Göring diary? I would be interested to hear. I will give you a call in a few weeks' time.

January 6, 1990 (Saturday)
(Key West)

This reply to Mr [Kenneth] Alford, a document collector interested in the missing Eva Braun papers:

Your letter was most interesting. I wonder if it is the same Franz Konrad: it is a very common name. I am not surprised that Bob Wolfe [at the US National Archives] jumped at it. Let me know the outcome, please! The Fort Meade file on Konrad (which is part of the "Adolf Hitler" file now in John Taylor's hands at NARS) certainly stated Konrad had been executed, and I believe Johannes Göhler told me the same.
   Göhler is still alive, as was his ex-wife (although she was always in a very poor state of health with cancer.) You are correct in the first part of your question about her, and it was not until I interviewed her and Gutierrez, who remained in correspondence with her until 1947, and then again more recently (she showed me the letters) that Johannes G. knew about it. He was not pleased. I should be interested to add Leonard's interrogation of Göring to my collection, except I may have it already. Was it in Jun, or Dec 1945? I have passed a note about your document collection to the Ribbentrop family. Yours sincerely, [etc.]

February 13, 1993 (Saturday)
Outeniqua Strand, South Africa

Good query from Bill Honan, cultural editor of The New York Times, about [Robert] Gutierrez.

Replied at length to Honan (7pp). Benté stayed at Ken's, and I went there in the evening and picked her up. They had done some sightseeing, Map of Africa, Wilderness, etc.

September 30, 1994 (Friday)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Quiet evening. Long discussion downstairs with Ben Swearingen [...]

Swearingen acts very knowing about the Robert A Gutierrez episode. Thinks he knows who holds the "double key" (he insists on the word double) to the secret as to where the Eva Braun/Adolf Hitler documents now are.

He, Swearingen, first learned of Göhler's existence in about 1966 or 1967 when his son told him his friend's father was "Hannes Göhler, Hitler's adjutant." The rest fiowed from there. He says Göhler knew all along that the papers had not been destroyed by Konrad. He thinks that the items that Willi Korte got were indeed all that Gutierrez had.

Is astonished that I did not know of, or try to locate, Gutierrez's superior in the CIC, Calhoun(?), although he adds swiftly that Calhoun has not got the items -- somebody else has, Gutierrez knows who, but (surmises Sw.) is anxious not to implicate them. He points out that a close reading of the Fort Meade files would have shown Calhoun's key role: Swearingen learned from those files that Calhoun was a Mormon, so he checked Salt Lake City phone information and got his address.

A priceless collection of stamps plays a part, in Swearingen's view -- also mentioned in the Fort Meade files. Again he is surprised that I overlooked that. He hints that there was a carve-up -- one party got the stamps, another the Eva Braun papers. Swearingen knew independently about how Ursula Göhler had packed the "diaries and bundles of letters" into Gutierrez's suitcase in 1946 -- he finished off the story for me, and he had not got it even indirectly from me, but independently. (I said that Ursula G. subsequently changed her story and denied it; and that Gutierrez wrote her after I first visited him, mad at her for having revealed so much to me.)

Swearingen thinks that the bag will be opened when Gutierrez dies. He, Swearingen, is determined to be the one to get it: he has the funds (says he is a wealthy man with money in the bank). Motives for Gutierrez's tight lips? Anybody's guess.

He never set eyes on Gutierrez. Calls Frank Gish a pathological liar -- the whole of Gish's story was lies.

Other items from Swearingen: he got the Spacil cyanide ampoule from Calhoun or Calhoun's widow; paid $7,000 for it. Got the bloodstained Hitler couch upholstery fragment indirectly from a Russian source, paid $10,000, sold it on for $75,000 to one of his three secret American millionaires who collect these artefacts but stay out of the limelight. These three are connoisseurs, Swearingen emphasizes, not Billy Price types.

Somebody in Australia claims to have the pistol with which Goebbels shot himself (unlikely: the Russians would have taken that).

September 28, 1995 (Thursday)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Set out at 9 A.M. Pittsburgh and arrived 3 P.M.  . . . Dinner with Ben Swearingen . . . Ben says that James Townsend died of a heart attack two weeks ago driving his car: he was only thirty! Townsend's father had phoned Ben about it. I was very shocked. (Only on August 22 I identified him to the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles as being the owner of Himmler's 1939 diary!) More banter about the Gutierrez papers: he again chides me for not chasing down Cahoon, who is now dead; Swearingen says Honan is a key element, and above all why have I not tried to locate William H Prentice, who was G's superior and signed for the other documents and the priceless stamp albums (which have vanished). He has P's address; but does not get replies to his letters. I said: doorstep him. Swearingen: not that kind.

October 30, 2000

The old Gutierrez business surfaces again. [. . . A Danny Parker of [email protected] writes to me:]

Thanks for your note. I was concerned that perhaps you were affronted by my comments. No offense intended. Yes, I can recognize many of Himmler's entourage these days, so send on photostatic copies of images if you like. [Werner] Grothmann is a fixture in many... The episode at Zell Am See concerns a certain Franz Konrad who claimed to have possessed a number of Hitler's personal effects and co-ordinated with Erika Lorenz to burn a few file cabinets of critical files from Himmler's office. The CIC hounded him for weeks and interrogated just about everyone he knew.
   Some witnesses claimed that Konrad had buried the articles around Schloss Fischhorn in early May 1945. Evidently, many SS records -- including personal papers and correspondence of Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler -- were burned in the castle and materials of great historical value may have been hidden or buried.
   I found information on this episode from the National Archives in material recently declassified from the U.S. 307th Counter-Intelligence Center. Of course, you may already be aware of the above. I will be around today and tomorrow, but then out of the office until next Monday. - Danny

I reply:

The CIC detachment was operated by a Col Robert A Gutierrez, who now lives in Albuquerque. I have been applying gentle pressure on him for twenty-five years to come clean about what he got. Others tried other methods; one gentleman visited him with a case with 2m dollars in cash. Gutierrez still will not fess up. Konrad was hanged by the Poles, and deserved it from what I hear.

If you have a dossier on the case I would be most interested. I know a great deal about the whole affair.

Mr Irving's Robert Gutierrez dossier

Album reveals secret life of Eva Braun

What happened to Hitler's letters to Eva Braun and her private diaries?