BERLIN, December 25
A pleasant Christmas dinner, and American at that, even to mince pie, with Ralph and Esther Barnes and their children. Ralph and I had to get up in the middle of it, though, to check on queries from New York about a sensational A.P. report that the Germans had landed a large body of troops in Morocco to help Franco. There was no one in the Wilhelmstrasse, as all officials are out of town over the holidays, so we were unable to get a confirmation or denial. Sounds like a fake, though.
BERLIN, April 8, 1937
April here and no Hitler surprise this spring yet. This may be a year of Nazi consolidation, building up the armed forces, assuring Franco victory in Spain, cementing relations with Italy (support for the Duce in Spain and the Mediterranean in return for his giving Germany a free hand in Austria and the Balkans), and giving the nerves of the German people a little rest.
BERLIN, April 14
Have bought a sailboat for four hundred marks from a broken-down boxer who needed the cash. It has a cabin with two bunks and Tess and I can week-end on it, if we ever get a week-end free. Know nothing about sailing, but with the help of some hastily scrawled diagrams on the back of an envelope telling what to do with the wind behind you or against you or from the side which one of the Germans at the office did for me, and with much luck, we managed to sail ten miles down the Wannsee to where the Barneses have taken a house for the summer. Had some difficulty in docking it there, as the wind was blowing towards shore and I didn’t know what to do. The little boat-house owner raised an awful howl, claiming I’d damaged his dock, but a five-mark piece quieted him.
BERLIN, April 20
Hitler’s birthday. He gets more and more like a Caesar. Today a public holiday with sickening adulation from all the party hacks, delegations from all over the Reich bearing gifts, and a great military parade. The Reichswehr revealed a little of what it has: heavy artillery, tanks, and magnificently trained men. Hitler stood on the reviewing stand in front of the Technische Hochschule, as happy as a child with tin soldiers, standing there more than two hours and saluting every tank and gun. The military attachés of France, Britain, and Russia, I hear, were impressed. So were ours.
BERLIN, May 3
Gordon Young of Reuter’s and I ran into Lord Lothian about midnight in the lobby of the Adlon. He arrived here suddenly yesterday to confer with Nazi leaders. Young asked him why he had come. “Oh, Göring asked me to,” he replied. He is probably the most intelligent of the Tories taken in by Hitler, Göring, and Ribbentrop. We wanted to ask him since when he was under orders from Göring, but refrained.
BERLIN, May 7
Hillman awakened me with a phone call from London about four a.m. today to inform me that the Zeppelin Hindenburg had crashed at Lakehurst with the loss of several lives. I immediately phoned one of the men who designed it, at Friedrichshafen. He refused to believe my words. I telephoned London and gave them a little story for the late editions. I had hardly gone back to sleep when Claire Trask of the Columbia Broadcasting System phoned to ask me to do a broadcast on the German reaction to the disaster. I was a bit ill-tempered, I’m afraid, at being awakened so early. I told her I couldn’t do it and suggested two or three other correspondents. About ten she called back again and insisted I do it. I finally agreed, though I had never broadcast in my life.
Kept thinking all morning of how first I and then Tess were invited to make this trip on the Hindenburg, and almost accepted. For some reason there were several places they could not sell, so about ten days before it was due to leave, the press agent of the Zeppelin Reederei phoned me and offered a free passage to New York. It was impossible for me, as I was holding down the office alone. The next day he called up and asked if Tess would like to go. For reasons which are a little obscure—or maybe not so obscure, though I do not think it is honest to say I had a feeling that something might happen—I did not mention the matter to Tess and politely declined on her behalf the next day.
Wrote out my broadcast this afternoon between dispatches to New York, Claire Trask taking it page by page to the Air Ministry for censorship. Was a little surprised to find that there was Nazi censorship of radio, as we have none as newspaper correspondents, but Miss Trask explained it was just for this time. I arrived at the studio a quarter of an hour before the time set to begin, as nervous as an old hen. With about five minutes to go, Miss Trask arrived with the script. The censors had cut out my references to Nazi suspicion that there had been sabotage, though I had cabled this early in the afternoon in a dispatch. So nervous when I began my broadcast that my voice skipped up and down the scale and my lips and throat grew parched, but after the first page gradually lost my fright. Fear I will never make a broadcaster, but felt relieved I did not have microphone fright, which I understand makes some people speechless before a microphone.
BERLIN, May 10
Finished the Indian novel, or at least the first draft. A great load off my mind.
BERLIN, May 30
I have rarely seen such indignation in the Wilhelmstrasse as today. Every official I saw was fuming. The Spanish republicans yesterday bombed the pocket-battleship Deutschland at Ibitza with good result, killing, according to the Germans, some twenty officers and men and wounding eighty. One informant tells me Hitler has been screaming with rage all day and wants to declare war on Spain. The army and navy are trying to restrain him.
BERLIN, May 31
I feel like screaming with rage myself. The Germans this day have done a typical thing. They have bombarded the Spanish town of Almería with their warships as reprisal for the bombing of the Deutschland. Thus Hitler has his cheap revenge and a few more Spanish women and children are dead. The Wilhelmstrasse also announced Germany’s (and Italy’s) withdrawal from the Spanish naval patrol and from the non-intervention talks. Dr. Aschmann called us to the Foreign Office about ten a.m. to give us the news. He was very pious about it all. I was too outraged to ask questions, but Enderis and Lochner asked a few. Perhaps today’s action will end the farce of “non-intervention,” a trick by which Britain and France, for some strange reason, are allowing Hitler and Mussolini to triumph in Spain.
BERLIN, June 4
Helmut Hirsch, a Jewish youth of twenty who was technically an American citizen though he had never been to America, was axed at dawn this morning. Ambassador Dodd fought for a month to save his life, but to no avail. It was a sad case, a typical tragedy of these days. He was convicted by the dreaded People’s Court, a court of inquisition set up by the Nazis a couple of years ago, of planning to murder Julius Streicher, the Nuremberger Jew-baiter. What kind of trial it was—no American or outside representatives were present—can only be imagined. I’ve seen a few trials before this court, though most of them are in camera, and a man scarcely has a chance, four of the five judges being Nazi party boys (the fifth is a regular judge) who do what they’re expected to do.
Actually, the Nazis had something on poor Hirsch. A student at Prague University, he was put up to the job either by Otto Strasser or some of Strasser’s followers or supposed followers in Prague. Among Strasser’s “followers” there was certainly a Gestapo agent, and Hirsch was doomed from the outset. As far as I can piece the story together, Hirsch was provided with a suitcase full of bombs and a revolver and dispatched to Germany to get someone. The Nazis claim it was Streicher. Hirsch himself never seems to have admitted who. The Gestapo agent in Prague tipped off Himmler’s people here, and Hirsch, with his incriminating suitcase, was nabbed as soon as he set foot in Germany. It may well be, as Hirsch’s lawyer in Prague suggests, that the young man was merely bringing the weapons to Germany for someone else, already here, to do the job, and that he may not have known, even, of the contents of his luggage. We shall never know. Perhaps he was simply framed by the Gestapo. He was arrested, tried, and, this morning, executed. I had a long talk with Dodd this morning about the case. He told me he had appealed to Hitler himself to commute the sentence and read me the text of his moving letter. The Fii
hrer’s reply was a flat negative. When Dodd tried to get a personal interview with Hitler to plead the case in person, he was rebuffed.
This afternoon I received from Hirsch’s lawyer in Prague a copy of the last letter the young man wrote. He wrote it in his death cell and it was addressed to his sister, for whom he obviously had a deep attachment. I have never read in all my life braver words. He had just been informed that his final appeal had been rejected and that there was no more hope. “I am to die, then,” he says. “Please do not be afraid. I do not feel afraid. I feel released, after the agony of not quite knowing.” He sketches his life and finds meaning in it despite all the mistakes and its brief duration—“less than twenty-one years.” I confess to tears before I had finished reading. He was a braver and more decent man than his killers.
BERLIN, June 15
Five more Protestant pastors arrested yesterday, including Jacobi from the big Gedächtniskirche. Hardly keep up with the church war any more since they arrested my informant, a young pastor; have no wish to endanger the life of another one.
BERLIN, June 21
Blum out in Paris, and that’s the end of the Popular Front. Curious how a man as intelligent as Blum could have made the blunders he’s made with his non-intervention policy in Spain, whose Popular Front he has also helped to ruin.
BERLIN, July 5
The Austrian Minister tells me that the new British Ambassador here, Sir Nevile Henderson, has told Göring, with whom he is on very chummy terms, that Hitler can have his Austria so far as he, Henderson, is concerned. Henderson strikes me as being very “pro.”
LONDON, July (undated)
Dinner with Knick at Simpson’s, and then out to his house, where Jay Allen and Carroll Binder, foreign editor of the Chicago Daily News, joined us. We chinned until about two a.m. Jay had said that Binder was supposed to take me aside and offer me a job on the News (Colonel Knox in Berlin had asked me if I wanted one), but he did nothing of the kind. Jay also gave me a card to Ed Murrow, who, he said, was connected with CBS, but I shall not have time to see him as Knick and I leave tomorrow morning for Salcombe, where Tess and Agnes already are installed at Gallico’s. From there Tess and I cross to France without returning to London.
PARIS, July (undated)
The Van Goghs at the Paris Exposition well worth the price of admission. Have had little time to see anything else. Saw Berkson, chief of Universal Service in New York. He assured me there was nothing to the rumours about Universal closing down and that-in fact for the first time in history it was actually making money. So, reassured about my job, we leave for the Riviera tomorrow for some sun and swimming, Tess to remain there until fall on account of—we are to have a baby!
BERLIN, August 14
Universal Service has folded after all. Hearst is cutting his losses. I am to remain here with INS, but as second man, which I do not like.
BERLIN, August 16
Norman Ebbutt of the London Times, by far the best correspondent here, left this evening. He was expelled, following British action in kicking out two or three Nazi correspondents in London, the Nazis seizing the opportunity to get rid of a man they’ve hated and feared for years because of his exhaustive knowledge of this country and of what was going on behind the scenes. The Times, which has played along with the pro-Nazi Cliveden set, never gave him much support and published only half of what he wrote, and indeed is leaving Ebbutt’s assistant, Jimmy Holburn, to continue with the office here. We gave Norman a great send-off at the Charlottenburger station, about fifty of the foreign correspondents of all nations being on the platform despite a tip from Nazi circles that our presence would be considered an unfriendly act to Germany! Amusing to note the correspondents who were afraid to show up, including two well-known Americans. The platform full of Gestapo agents noting down our names and photographing us. Ebbutt terribly high-strung, but moved by our sincere, if boisterous, demonstration of farewell.
BERLIN, August (undated)
A little depressed tonight. I’m without a job. About ten o’clock this evening I ceased being employed. I was in my office writing a dispatch. The office boy came in with a cable. There was something about his face. It was a brief wire, hot off the ticker. It was from New York. It said—oh, something about INS being unable to retain all the old Universal Service correspondents and that I was getting the usual two weeks’ notice.
I guess I was a little stunned. I guess it was a little sudden. Who was it the other night—one of the English correspondents—who jokingly observed that it was bad to be getting a baby in your family because it invariably coincided with your getting fired? Well, maybe we shouldn’t have had a baby now. Maybe you shouldn’t ever have a baby if you’re in this business. Maybe the French girl in Paris many years ago was right. She said: “Put a baby into this world? Pas moi!”
I finished my dispatch (what was it about?) and went out for a breath of air, strolling along the river Spree down behind the Reichstag. It was a beautiful, warm, starlit August night, and the Spree making its soft curve just before it gets to the Reichstag, I noticed, and a launch going by, filled with noisy holiday-makers back from a Havel Rundfahrt. No ideas came to me, as expected. I went back to the office.
On the desk I noticed a wire that had come in ten minutes before the fatal one. It was from Salzburg, a baroque town of great charm where I used to go to hear some Mozart. It was signed: “Murrow, Columbia Broadcasting.” I dimly remembered the name, but could not place it beyond his company. “Will you have dinner with me at the Adlon Friday night?” it said. I wired: “Delighted.”
BERLIN, August 20
I have a job. I am to go to work for the Columbia Broadcasting System. That is, if…. And what an if it is! It is this way: It is crazy. I have the job if my voice is all right. That’s the catch. Whoever heard of an adult with no pretentions to being a singer or any other kind of artist being dependent for a good, interesting job on his voice? And mine is terrible. I’m positive of it. But that’s my situation tonight.
It has been quite an evening. I met Edward R. Murrow, European manager of CBS, in the lobby of the Adlon at seven o’clock. As I walked up to him I was a little taken aback by his handsome face. Just what you would expect from radio, I thought. He had asked me for dinner, I considered, to pump me for dope for a radio talk he must make from Berlin. We walked into the bar and there was something in his talk that began disarming me. Something in his eyes that was not Hollywood. We sat down. We ordered two Martinis. The cocktails came. I wondered why he had asked me. We had friends in common, Ferdy Kuhn, Raymond Gram Swing…. We discussed them. Apparently he was not here to do a broadcast, then.
“You must come sailing with me tomorrow or Sunday,” I said.
“Swell. I’d like to.”
The waiter gathered up the empty cocktail glasses and laid two menus before us.
“Just a minute before we order,” Murrow broke in.
“I’ve got something on my mind.”
That’s the way it was. He said he had something on his mind. He said he was looking for an experienced foreign correspondent to open a CBS office on the Continent. He could not cover all of Europe from London. I began to feel better, though I said nothing.
“Are you interested?” he asked.
“Well, yes,” I said, trying to down my feelings.
“How much have you been making?”
I told him.
“Good. We’ll pay you the same.”
“Fine,” I said.
“It’s a deal,” he said, and reached for the Speisekarte. We ordered dinner. We talked of America, Europe, the music at Salzburg he had just heard. We had coffee. We had brandy. It was getting late.
“Oh, there’s one little thing I forgot to mention,” he said. “The voice…”
“The what?”
“Your voice.”
“Bad,” I said, “as you can see.”
“Perhaps not. But, you see, in broadcasting it’s a factor. And our directors and nu
merous vice-presidents will want to hear your voice first. We’ll arrange a broadcast. You give a talk, say, on the coming party rally. I’m sure it’ll work out all right.”
BERLIN, September 5
Did my trial broadcast this Sabbath day. Just before it began I was very nervous, thinking of what was at stake and that all depended upon what a silly little microphone and an amplifier and the ether between Berlin and New York did to my voice. Kept thinking also of all those CBS vice-presidents sniffing at what they heard. Everything went wrong at first. Claire Trask, fifteen minutes before the start, discovered she had left the script of her introduction at a café where we’d met. She dashed madly out of the studio, returning only a few minutes before we were to begin. At the last minute the microphone which apparently had been set for a man at least eight feet tall wouldn’t come down. “It is stuck, mein Herr,” said the German engineer. He advised me to point my head towards the ceiling. I tried it, but it so constricted my vocal cords that only a squeak came out when I started to talk.
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 Page 7