THE publishers of a book that accuses British intelligence of murdering Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS in Nazi Germany, say they will not withdraw the work even though its claims are based on forged documents.
Himmler’s Secret War, by Martin Allen, is not only still on sale in bookshops but until last Friday was advertised on the website of Chrysalis Books as a “staff recommendation” to readers.
A month ago The Daily Telegraph revealed that the papers on which Mr Allen relied were not written in 1945, as he claimed, but were recent forgeries smuggled into the National Archives by unknown hands.
In the face of all this, Chrysalis’s website says that, among the “numerous explosive revelations” in the book, the “most dramatic of all is previously unseen evidence that sheds new light on the circumstances of Himmler’s death”.
Mr Allen did not reply to a written question from the Telegraph last week asking him about withdrawal of the book.
Not only the claim about the murder but also the central thesis of the book — that Himmler held secret peace talks with Britain — have been undermined by relying on forgeries.
The archives have confirmed as forged two letters allegedly written by Brendan Bracken, the wartime information minister, setting the scene for the alleged talks via Britain’s embassy in Sweden.
Andrew Roberts, a biographer of Winston Churchill and a leading historian of the period, said: “The behaviour of the publishers seems to me to be shameful.”
