IS IT POSSIBLE to falsify historical documents held in a national archive? Yes, it seems that it is. It has just happened in London as the national archives has acknowledged much to its embarrassment.
The public records office, following a detailed investigation of the deception, found that 29 faked documents had been planted in various files over a five-year period in what was an apparent attempt to rewrite the history of the second World War. The forged documents had suggested British collaboration with the Nazis, including claims that the Duke of Windsor had passed secret information to Hitler, and an allegation that British secret agents had murdered SS chief Heinrich Himmler on Winston Churchill's instructions. The accepted historical view is that Himmler committed suicide.
The forgeries, which have been cited as source material in some contemporary history books on the period, were smuggled into the archives where the false documents were included among genuine files. The fraud was detected after doubts were raised about the veracity of the material. A subsequent police investigation found signatures in some documents had been forged, that in others letterheads (supposedly from the 1940s) had been created using laser printers and that some names and titles used in correspondence were incorrect. Historian Martin Allen, who has made extensive use of the forged material to challenge the accepted historical version of events in various books, has denied any involvement in the forgeries. The Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute, citing the historian's poor health as a factor in its decision.
The reluctance of the British authorities to prosecute is puzzling. One historian of the period, Sir Max Hastings, has commented: "It is hard to imagine actions more damaging to the cause of preserving the nation's heritage than wilfully forging documents designed to alter our historical record". In the absence of a judicial process, eight of Britain's best-known historians have called for an official inquiry into these forgeries as the only way of serving the public interest by discovering who was responsible.
What appears to have been a crude and amateurish attempt to rewrite history has important lessons for the public record offices in other countries. What happened so easily in London could occur elsewhere, including the National Archives, unless adequate security procedures are in place to ensure the integrity and veracity of the public records that it holds.