The Forger Who Made the Nazis Look Like Idiots (And Almost Got Away With It)

Han van Meegeren sold a fake Vermeer to Hermann Göring, then had to prove he was a fraud to avoid being executed as a Nazi collaborator — which meant forging another masterpiece in front of a live courtroom audience. It's a story about ego, revenge, the art market's catastrophic gullibility, and what it actually means to authenticate genius when the experts can't tell the difference.