The long lost diary of the high-ranking and influential Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg has been discovered and transferred to the United States Holocaust Museum. John Morton, one of the federal agents responsible for the diary's recovery, has called the case "one of the great detective stories of our time."

Although Rosenberg was hanged after the Nuremburg Trials, his diary went missing, likely smuggled out of Germany by US prosecutor Robert Kempner. Seventy years later, an anonymous tip led federal investigators to Lewiston, New York, a small suburb of Buffalo. There, in the home of Herbert Richardson, they found and siezed the diary.

Herbert Richardson is no stranger to controversy or legal wrangling. He is the publisher of Edwin Mellen Press, a small academic publishing house that prints a wide range of scholarly titles. Earlier this year, Richarson made waves when he sued former University of Utah librarian and blogger Dale Askey for libel after Askey criticized the quality of Mellen's titles in a blog post -- a measure that most in the academic community have condemned as gross overreach.

Richardson has also courted scrutiny by founding and operating Edwin Mellen University, an institution accredited in the Turks and Caicos islands. The University did not offer classes, instead conferred Ph.D.s on the basis of written dissertations and life experience. Edwin Mellen University operated for over a decade but has since closed. Richardson's University was part of the reason he was eventually fired from his last teaching post; that firing is itself remarkable given that he was dismissed in spite of having tenure.

Now he's back in the news for illegally hiding Rosenberg's Nazi diary. News reports have yet to identify how Richardson came into possession of the diary, but after a lengthy legal process, he has lost his claim to the book.

Rosenberg and his diary are of historical interest because of the role Rosenberg played in the rise and administration of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg began his career as a radical right wing journalist and later became the head of the Nazi Party's foreign affairs department. He also played an important role in organizing Nazi looting of cultural artifacts and developed the idea of a racial "ladder" that heirarchically ranked different races.

The Holocaust Museum has now put selections from the diary online for public view. The diary entries show in-party bickering and jealousy among top Nazi officials and reflect Rosenberg's frustration with his position among Hitler's top aides. However, this negativity and doubt is never directed at Nazism per se. The diaries reveal Rosenberg as an unrepentent true believer who never wavered from his deep anti-semitism.