As Blomberg spoke, Goebbels had his spotlights and movie cameras grinding away, first at the stage, then at the box where the Leader sat. After the “service” he usual military parade, but I had had enough and was hungry and went off to Habel’s excellent little wine shop down the Linden and had lunch washed down by some Deidesheimer.
LATER.—Dosch-Fleurot had an interesting story tonight from the Rhineland, where he’s been watching the German occupation. He reports that Catholic priests met the German troops at the Rhine bridges and conferred blessings on them. In Cologne Cathedral Cardinal Schulte, he says, praised Hitler for “sending back our army.” Quickly forgotten is the Nazi persecution of the church. Dosch says the Rhine wine is flowing freely down there tonight.
And the French are appealing to Geneva! I called our London office to see what the British are going to do. They laughed, and read me a few extracts from the Sunday press. Garvin’s Sunday Observer and Rother-mere’s Sunday Dispatch are delighted at Hitler’s move. The British are now busy restraining the French! The Foreign Office here, which kept open tonight to watch the reaction from Paris and London, is in high spirits. No wonder!
KARLSRUHE, March 13
Here, within artillery range of the Maginot Line, Hitler made his first “election” speech tonight. Special trains poured in all day from surrounding towns, bringing the faithful and those ordered to come. The meeting was held in a huge tent and the atmosphere was so suffocating that I left before Hitler arrived, returning to my hotel, where over a good dinner and a bottle of wine, with most of the other correspondents, I listened to the speech by radio. Nothing new in it, though he drummed away nicely about his desire for friendship with France. Certainly these Rhinelanders don’t want another war with France, but this reoccupation by German troops has inculcated them with the Nazi bug. They’re as hysterical as the rest of the Germans. Later went out to a Kneipe with a taxi-driver who had driven me around during the day and had a few Schnaps. He turned out to be a Communist, waxed bitter about the Nazis, and predicted their early collapse. It was a relief to find one German here against the regime. He said there are a lot of others, but I sometimes wonder.
March 29
A fine early spring day for the “election” and according to Goebbels’s figures ninety-five per cent of the German people have approved the reoccupation of the Rhineland. Some of the correspondents who visited the polling-booths today reported irregularities. But there’s no doubt, I think, that a substantial majority of the people applaud the Rhineland coup regardless of whether they’re Nazis or not. It’s also true that few dare to vote against Hitler for fear of being found out. Learned tonight that in Neukölln and Wedding, former Communist strongholds in Berlin, the “No” vote ran as high as twenty per cent and that the people there are going to catch it in the next few days.
The new Zeppelin—to be called the Hindenburg—soared gracefully over our office yesterday. I was down to Friedrichshafen the other day to inspect it and it’s a marvel of German engineering genius. Yesterday it was doing “election” propaganda, dropping leaflets exhorting the populace to vote “Ja.” Dr. Hugo Eckener, who is getting it ready for its maiden flight to Brazil, strenuously objected to putting it in the air this week-end on the ground it was not yet fully tested, but Dr. Goebbels insisted. Eckener, no friend of the regime, refused to take it up himself, though he allowed Captain Lehmann to. The Doktor is reported howling mad and determined to get Eckener.
BERLIN, April (undated)
An amusing lunch today at the Dodds’. Eckener, who is off to America soon to ask Roosevelt personally for enough helium to fill his new balloon (there seems to be some opposition to this at home), was the guest of honour. He told one joke after another on Goebbels, for whom he has nothing but contempt. Someone asked him about the balloting on the Hindenburg, which was taken while it was still aloft. “Goebbels hung up a new record,” he fired back. “There were forty persons on the Hindenburg. Forty-two Ja votes were counted.” Goebbels has forbidden the press to mention Eckener’s name.
BERLIN, May 2
The Italians entered Addis Ababa today. The Negus has fled. Mussolini has triumphed—largely with mustard gas. That’s how he’s beaten the Ethiopians. He’s also triumphed over the League, by bluff. That’s how he kept off oil sanctions, which might have stopped him. We picked up a broadcast of him shouting from the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. Much boloney about thirty centuries of history, Roman civilization, and triumph over barbarism. Whose barbarism?
RAGUSA, YUGOSLAVIA, June 18
Having a glorious Dalmatian holiday. This place has everything: sea, sun, mountains, flowers, good wine, good food, pleasant people. The Knickerbockers, back from Addis Ababa, vacationing with us. Agnes to have a baby in a few months. Knick full of weird tales of how the correspondents scrapped and fought each other in Addis; of how poor Bill Barbour of the Chicago Tribune died and was buried there; of the bombing of Dessye; of a nightmarish disorderly house full of lepers in Jibouti, and so on. We loaf and swim and chatter and read all day, going down to the café in the old port in the evening for drink, food, and dancing. Finished Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, a tremendous novel; and a book of Chekov’s plays, which I much liked, as I do his short stories.
RAGUSA, June 20
A bad scare today. While Knick, Agnes, and I were still eating breakfast on the terrace of the hotel, which is a half-mile or so up the coast from town, Tess went off to town to snap some photographs. A couple of army bombers suddenly appeared and started to do acrobatics over Ragusa, a curious thing because they were much too cumbersome for stunting. Then one went into a long dive right over the centre of town. Agnes looked away. It failed to come out of it entirely, or rather seemed to fall apart in the air, as it was coming out, just over the house-tops. Then there was an explosion and flames. I thought of Tess. The flames were leaping up from just next to the Cathedral. That’s where she mentioned she wanted some “shots.” I had on only shorts and a shirt and beach shoes. I must have got away automatically. I sprinted up the road to town. Something told me she was in it. Several houses were on fire when I got to the little square in front of the cathedral. Police were carrying away blanketed forms on stretchers. I started to look under the blankets, then held myself back. I darted in and around the jam of people in the streets. No sign of Tess. Hysterical I became. I started asking for the mayor, the governor, anyone who could tell me. In the end there was a nudge. “Get out of my way, I want to get that.” Tess was squinting through her Leica. She had been a hundred yards distant, she said after she finished her photographing, when the plane crashed.
LATER.—It seems that the two pilots met a pair of dazzling girls in town last night and to further their romantic adventure told them to be on their balconies at eight this morning, promising them something “exciting.” The death-roll ten, including the pilot and observer.
RAGUSA, June 22
Took a steamer to a little town fifteen miles up the coast today to see a chapel which Mestrovich designed and in which he has placed some of the most exciting sculptured works I’ve ever seen. It’s a magnificent thing, the architecture, the reliefs, the figures, blending in a beautiful harmony. Since the day I set eyes on El Greco in the Prado in Madrid I haven’t seen a work of art which has stirred me so.
BERLIN, July 15
Have started, God help me, a novel. The scene: India. I was there twice, in 1930 and 1931, during Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience movement, and I cannot get India out of my system.
BERLIN, July 18
Trouble in Spain. A right-wing revolt. Fighting in Madrid, Barcelona, and other places.
BERLIN, July 23
The Lindberghs are here, and the Nazis, led by Göring, are making a great play for them. Today at a luncheon given him by the Air Ministry he spoke out somewhat, warning that the airplane had become such a deadly instrument of destruction that unless those “who are in aviation” face their heavy responsibilities and achieve a “new securit
y founded on intelligence,” the world and especially Europe are in for irreparable damage. It was a well-timed little thrust, for Göring is undoubtedly building up the deadliest air force in Europe. The DNB was moved to remark this afternoon that Lindbergh’s remarks “created a strong impression,” though I doubt it. “Annoyance” would be a more accurate word.
This afternoon the Lufthansa company invited some of us correspondents to a tea-party at Tempelhof for the Lindberghs, apparently not informing them that we would be there, for fear they would object, their phobia about the press being what it is. It was the first time I had seen him since 1927 when I covered his arrival at Le Bourget. Surprised how little he had changed, except that he seemed more self-confident. Later we went for a ride in Germany’s largest land plane, the Field-Marshal von Hindenburg. Somewhere over Wannsee Lindbergh took the controls himself and treated us to some very steep banks, considering the size of the plane, and other little manœuvres, which terrified most of the passengers. The talk is that the Lindberghs have been favourably impressed by what the Nazis have shown them. He has shown no enthusiasm for meeting the foreign correspondents, who have a perverse liking for enlightening visitors on the Third Reich, as they see it, and we have not pressed for an interview.
BERLIN, July 27
The Spanish government seems to be getting the upper hand. Has quelled the revolt in Barcelona and Madrid, Spain’s two most important cities. But it’s a much more serious affair than it seemed a week ago. The Nazis are against the Spanish government, and party circles are beginning to talk of help for the rebels. Tragic land! And just when there seemed such hope for the Republic. But interest here is concentrated on the Olympic Games opening next week, with the Nazis outdoing themselves to create a favourable impression on foreign visitors. They’ve built a magnificent sport-field, with a stadium for a hundred thousand, a swimming stadium for ten thousand, and so forth. Gallico here, and a pleasant dinner with him and Eleanor Holm Jarrett, an American swimming phenomenon with a very pretty face, who, it seems, is being thrown off the team for alleged imbibing of champagne on the boat coming over.
BERLIN, August 16
The Olympic Games finally came to an end today. I got a kick out of the track and field, the swimming, the rowing, and the basket-ball, but they were a headache to us as a job. Hitler and Göring and the others showed up this afternoon for the finale, which dragged on until after dark. Huss and I had to use our wits to smuggle in Mrs. William Randolph Hearst, a woman friend of hers, and the Adolphe Menjous, who arrived in town last night after all tickets had been sold. We lost Menjou in the scuffle, but he showed up after a few minutes. We had to pack them in our already crowded press cabin, but we finally prevailed on some S.S. guards to let them sit in the seats reserved for diplomats where they could get a good view of Hitler. Afterwards they seemed quite thrilled at the experience.
I’m afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda. First, the Nazis have run the games on a lavish scale never before experienced, and this has appealed to the athletes. Second, the Nazis have put up a very good front for the general visitors, especially the big businessmen. Ralph Barnes and I were asked in to meet some of the American ones a few years ago. They said frankly they were favourably impressed by the Nazi “set-up.” They had talked with Göring, they said, and he had told them that we American correspondents were unfair to the Nazis.
“Did he tell you about Nazi suppression, say, of the churches?” I asked.
“He did,” one of the men spoke up, “and he assured us there was no truth in what you fellows write about persecution of religion here.”
Whereupon, I’m afraid, Ralph and I unduly flared up. But I don’t think we convinced them.
BERLIN, August 25
Press now quite open in its attacks on the Spanish government. And I learn from a dependable source that the first German airplanes have already been dispatched to the rebels. Same source says the Italians are also shooting planes. Seems to me if the French had any sense they could send in a few troops, disguised as volunteers, and some arms, and squelch the rébellion for Madrid. But Blum, though a Socialist, seems to be taking a non-intervention line out of fear of what Germany and Italy may do.
BERLIN, September 4
Got out of covering the party congress at Nuremberg beginning next week. After the Olympic crowds, don’t think I could have survived it.
BERLIN, September (undated)
Lunched with Tom Wolfe. Martha Dodd suggested we meet, as I’d often expressed enthusiasm about his work. We found a quiet corner table at Habel’s. An immense fellow physically, boiling with energy, he developed a Gargantuan appetite, ordering a second main dish of meat and vegetables, and more bottles of Pfälzer wine than were good for us—or at least for me. I liked him immediately and we had much good talk—about American writing and why most American writers—Lewis and Dreiser and Anderson, for example—either stopped writing or fell off from their best work just at the prime of their lives—a time when the Europeans usually produce their greatest novels and plays. A subject I’d often pondered about and discussed once with Lewis in Vienna. Wolfe is somewhat conscious of not being politically minded at a time when most writers are and indeed, we agreed, should be. He admitted the deficiency, but said he was learning. “I’m supporting Roosevelt for re-election,” he said. Curious thing: Wolfe translates excellently into German and Look Homeward, Angel has had a big success here, I believe. We parted, promising to meet in New York. A very genuine person and more promising, if he can integrate himself, than any other young novelist we have.
BERLIN, September 9
Hitler at Nuremberg announces a Four-Year Plan to make Germany self-sufficient in raw materials. Göring to be in charge. Obviously a war plan, but of course the Germans deny it. Party rally mostly concerned this year with attacking Bolshevism and the Soviets. There is talk of a break in diplomatic relations.
LONDON, October
A pleasant week, seeing old friends, blowing myself to two new suits in Savile Row, and, best of all, five days at Salcombe in Devonshire with Squire Gallico, who has bought a place there. We had some fantastic fishing (Tess’s first experience, and she outfished both Paul and me), superb walks along the wind-blown cliffs, and much good talk. Paul’s gamble has been well worth while. He’s written and sold three short stories and got a handsome movie royalty from one of them. Funny: he’s scared stiff of his butler, who looks as though he had just stepped off the stage and completely runs the place.
Returning to Berlin tomorrow. Pleasant visits with the Newell Rogerses, the Strausses, Jennie Lee, who is very Scotch, very pretty, very witty, and really should be back in Parliament, from which she was ousted in the last elections, her husband, Aneurin Bevan, M.P. from a Wales mining district, himself a former miner, keen-minded, slightly impish, a grand guy. This afternoon we had tea with Bill Stoneman, who has just replaced John Gunther as Chicago Daily News correspondent here, and Maj Lis (his wife). Bill was terribly wrought up about something, nervous as an old hen—so much so that in a moment of exasperation I said: “Why don’t you come out with it, Bill, whatever it is? Maybe you’ll feel better.” Whereupon he produced from his pocket a cablegram and tossed it to me. It was a ten-line dispatch to his paper this afternoon. I scanned it. It said: “Mrs. E. A. Simpson has filed suit for divorce against Mr. E. A. Simpson at the Ipswich Assizes. Case to be heard…” A detail or two about when the case would be heard. That was all.
It’s a tremendous scoop and should blow the story sky-high. Obviously the King intends to marry the woman now and make her Queen.
BERLIN, November 18
The Wilhelmstrasse announced today that Germany (with Italy) has recognized Franco. General Faupel, who has done good work for Germany in South America and Spain, is to be Hitler’s Ambassador to Salamanca. Apparently today’s decision was timed to offset Franco’s failure to take Madrid just as he seemed to have it in his grasp. At first, I’m told, recognition was to coincide with Franco
’s entry into Madrid, which the Germans expected ten days ago. Dodd tells me our consulate in Hamburg reported this week the departure from there of three German ships loaded with arms for Spain. In the meantime the comedy of “non-intervention” goes on in London. For two years now the policies of London and Paris have ceased making sense to me, judged by their own vital interests. They did nothing on March 16, 1935 and on March 7 this year, and they’re doing nothing about Spain now. Is my judgment becoming warped after two years in this hysterical Nazi land? Is it absurd or isn’t it absurd to conclude that Blum and Baldwin don’t know their own interests?
BERLIN, November 25
We were summoned to the Propaganda Ministry today for an “important” announcement. Wondered what Hitler was up to, but it turned out to be merely the signing of an anti-Comintern pact between Germany and Japan. Ribbentrop, who signed for Germany, strutted in and harangued us for a quarter of an hour about the pact’s meaning, if any. He said it meant, among other things, that Germany and Japan had joined together to defend “Western civilization.” This was such a novel idea, for Japan at least, that at the end of his talk one of the British correspondents asked him if he had understood him correctly. Ribbentrop, who has no sense of humour, then repeated the silly statement, without batting an eye. It seems obvious that Japan and Germany have drawn up at the same time a secret military treaty calling for joint action against Russia should one of them get involved in war with the Soviets.
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 Page 6