WARSAW, April 6
Beck [the Polish Foreign Minister], who committed this country to a pro-Nazi, anti-French policy for so many years, has been in London and tonight we have an Anglo-Polish communiqué announcing that the two countries will sign a permanent agreement providing for mutual assistance in case of an attack on either of them by a third power. I think this will halt Hitler for the time being, since force is something he understands and respects and there is no doubt in my mind after a week here that the Poles will fight and that if Britain and France fight too, he is in a hole. I feel uneasy about three things only: Poland’s terrible strategic position since Germany (with Poland’s help and encouragement!) moved her army into the Protectorate and Slovakia, thus flanking this country on the south (it is already flanked on the north by East Prussia); the West Wall, which, when completed next winter, will discourage France and Britain from attacking Germany in the west and thereby aiding Poland; and, finally, Russia. I have dined and drunk with a dozen Poles this week—from the Foreign Office, the army, and the old Pilsudski legionnaires who run Polskie Radio—and they will not bring themselves to realize that they cannot afford the luxury of being enemies of both Russia and Germany and that they must choose and that if they bring in Russia along with France and Britain they are saved. They reach for another piece of this wonderful smoked Vistula salmon they have here and wash it down with one of the fifty-seven varieties of vodka and point out the dangers of Russian help. To be sure, there is danger. There is the danger that the Red army, once on Polish soil, will not leave, that it will Bolshevize the country with its propaganda (this country has been so misruled by the colonels that no doubt it does offer fertile ground for the Bolsheviks), and so on. True. Then make your peace with the Nazis. Give them Danzig and the Corridor. Never! they say.
Still, on this spring day after the British guarantee we all feel better. Fodor, who leaves by boat tonight for Easter holidays in England (he’s barred from crossing Germany), optimistic. The Embassy people, Biddle and the military, happy. Only Second Secretary Landreth Harrison is sceptical. He keeps pointing out the weaknesses of the Poles to the point of exasperation. He is a man of prejudices, though intelligent.
Rumours today of German troop movements, but the Poles discount them. Polskie Radio still stalling on their new short-wave transmitter. Bad. Off to Paris tomorrow morning for an Easter broadcast, then to Geneva for Easter Monday.
BERLIN, April 7
When the Orient Express pulled into the Schlesischer Bahnhof here this evening, the first thing I saw was Huss’s face on the platform and I knew there was bad news. He said London had phoned to get me off the train as the British had reports of German troop movements on the Polish frontier. I had watched for these as we came across the border, but saw nothing. London was nervous about Albania, he said. “What’s happened there?” I asked. The Italians went in there this morning, he said. Today. Good Friday. Have satisfied myself the Germans are not contemplating anything against Poland this Easter, so will take the plane to Paris tomorrow morning.
LONDON, April 23
Broadcast with Lord Strabolgi, my main point being that the whole life of Germany was now geared to war, but that there were signs of economic cracking. Iron was so short they were tearing down the iron fences of the Reich. And the nerves of the German people were becoming frayed and they were against going to war. Strabolgi so cheered by my news he asked me to come down and address a committee meeting at the House of Lords, but I declined. Flying back to Berlin for the Reichstag, April 28.
BERLIN, April 28
Hitler in the Reichstag today denounced a couple more treaties (I could hardly repress a chuckle at this part of his speech) and answered Roosevelt’s plea that he give assurance that he will not attack the rest of the independent nations of Europe. His answer to the President rather shrewd, I think, in that it was designed to play on the sympathies of the appeasers and anti-New-Dealers at home and the former in Britain and France. He claimed he had asked the nations which Roosevelt thought threatened whether they so considered themselves and “in all cases the reply was negative.” States like Syria, he said, he could not ask because “they are at present not in possession of their freedom, but are occupied and consequently deprived of their rights by the military agents of democratic countries.” And “the fact has obviously escaped Mr. Roosevelt’s notice that Palestine is at present occupied not by German troops but by the English.” And so on in this sarcastic manner, from which, with a masterly touch—Hitler was a superb actor today—he drew every last drop of irony. America champions the conference method of settling disputes? he asked. But was it not the first nation to shrink from participation in the League? “It was not until many years later that I resolved to follow the example of America and likewise leave the largest conference in the world.”
In the end, however, Hitler agreed to give each of the states listed by the President “an assurance of the kind desired by Mr. Roosevelt.” But of course this was just a little Nazi hokum. The sausage-necked deputies below us rocked with raucous laughter throughout the session, which was just what Hitler desired. It was a superb example of his technique of laughing off embarrassing questions, for Roosevelt’s proposal was a reasonable one after all.
The breaking of two more treaties was loudly applauded by the rubber-stamp “parliamentarians.” Hitler denounces the naval accord with Britain on the grounds that London’s “encirclement policy” has put it out of force—a flimsy excuse; of course no excuse at all. The second treaty denounced, the 1934 pact with Poland, is more serious, the excuse, incidentally, being the same. Hitler in his speech reveals the content of his “offer” to Poland: Danzig to be returned to Germany, and the Reich given an extra-territorial road through the corridor to East Prussia. To scare the Poles he says the offer was made “only once.” That is, his terms are higher today. Still much doubt here among the informed whether Hitler has made up his mind to begin a world war for the sake of Danzig. My guess is he hopes to get it by the Munich method.
LONDON, June (undated)
Leaving tomorrow on the maiden voyage of the new Mauretania for home. Tess cables she has just been granted her citizenship by a Virginia court.
ABOARD Mauretania (undated)
A dull voyage. Sir Percy Bate, chairman of Cunard, assures me there will be no war.
WASHINGTON, July 3
Hope I can stay a little while in my native land. It takes some getting used to again after being almost continuously away since the age of twenty-one. Little awareness here or in New York of the European crisis, and Tess says I’m making myself most unpopular by taking such a pessimistic view. The trouble is everyone here knows all the answers. They know there will be no war. I wish I knew it. But I think there will be war unless Germany backs down, and I’m not certain at all she will, though of course it’s a possibility. Congress here in a hopeless muddle. Dominated by the Ham Fishes, Borahs, Hiram Johnsons, who stand for no foreign policy at all, it insists on maintaining the embargo on arms as if it were immaterial to this Republic who wins a war between the western democracies and the Axis. Roosevelt’s hands absolutely tied by Congress—a situation like that which confronted Lincoln at the beginning of his first term, except that he did something about it, and Roosevelt, they say here, is discouraged and won’t. He sees the European situation correctly, but because he does, because he sees the danger, the Borahs and Fishes call him a war-monger.
Oh well, it’s pleasant to be here with the family and loaf and relax for a few fleeting days.
NEW YORK, July 4
A pleasant afternoon at the Fair with the Bill Lewises. We must start back to Europe tomorrow. Alarming news from Danzig, and the office worried I won’t get back in time. Hans Kaltenborn so sure there will be no war, he is sending his son off on his honeymoon to the Mediterranean, he tells me tonight.
ABOARD Queen Mary, July 9
Much good company aboard. Paul Robeson, whom I have not seen since he stormed London
in Show Boat ten years or so ago. In the evening we sit and argue, Robeson, Constantine Oumansky, Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Tess, and I. Oumansky tells me he has been down to third class to lecture to some American students on “Soviet Democracy.” But he takes my kidding good-naturedly. Soviet democracy! I do not envy him his job. His predecessor in Washington is now in the dog-house. I have known many Soviet diplomats, but they have all been liquidated sooner or later. Oumansky thinks the Soviets will line up with Britain and France in a democratic front against fascist aggression if Paris and London show they mean business and are not merely trying to manœuvre Russia into a war alone (or alone with Poland) against Germany. So far, he says, the British and French have done nothing but stall in their negotiations with the Kremlin.
Much wild ping-pong with Tess on this voyage.
LONDON, July 14
Paul White from New York and our “European staff,” consisting of Murrow, Tom Grandin from Paris, and myself here conferring on war coverage. We worked out technical matters such as transmission lines and short-wave transmitters and arranged to build up a staff of Americans (the New York Times, for example, has several Englishmen on its foreign staff) as regular staff correspondents, figuring that the American press associations and newspapers will not allow their men to broadcast, once the war starts. We hear our rival network plans to engage a number of big-name foreigners such as Churchill here, Flandin in France, Gayda in Italy, et cetera, but we think our plan is better. American listeners will want news, not foreign propaganda, if war comes. We distressed at the failure of the Poles to rush their new short-wave transmitter to completion, as this may leave us in a hole. A wild game of golf with Ed and it was good—after listening to my Labour friends in Parliament curse conscription and the Conservatives express hopes for further appeasement—to hear my caddy say in a thick cockney: “Seems as ’ow we’ll have to give that bloke Hitler a damned good beatin’ one o’ these days….”
PARIS (undated)
John Elliott, formerly Berlin, now Paris correspondent of the Herald Tribune, tells me that in all the years he has been writing the day-to-day history of Europe for his paper he has received but a dozen or so letters from readers who were interested enough in what he had written to write him. But after two or three broadcasts from Paris during the March 15 Prague occupation he received scores of letters, praising, protesting, inquiring.
GENEVA, July 28
Fodor and Gunther dropped in tonight and we argued and talked most of the night through. John fairly optimistic about peace. Fodor, a trained engineer himself, had a lot of material about Germany’s lack of iron. You can’t store much iron ore, Fodor says. John’s latest, Inside Asia, going blazes. We argued a little about India, on which subject, I fear, I’m a crank. John not so impressed by Gandhi as I was.
GENEVA, August 3
Much golf, including a comical game with Joe Phillips, and tramps in the near-by mountains, and swims in the lake with my family, with whom I’m beginning to get acquainted again. From a personal viewpoint it will be nice if there’s no war. But must get off to Danzig next week to see.
BERLIN, August 9
The people in the train coming up from Basel last night looked clean and decent, the kind that made us like the Germans, as people, before the Nazis. For breakfast in the Adlon this morning I asked for a glass of orange juice, if they had any.
“Certainly we have oranges,” the waiter said, haughtily. But when he brought the breakfast there was no orange juice. “Not a one in the hotel,” he admitted sheepishly.
A discussion this day with Captain D. A World War officer of proved patriotism, he was against war during the Munich crisis, but changed, I noticed, after April 28, when Hitler denounced the Polish and British treaties. He became violent today at the very mention of the Poles and British. He thundered: “Why do the English butt in on Danzig and threaten war over the return of a German city? Why do the Poles [sic] provoke us? Haven’t we the right to a German city like Danzig?”
“Have you a right to a Czech city like Prague?” I asked. Silence. No answer. That vacant stare you get on Germans.
“Why didn’t the Poles accept the generous offer of the Führer?” he began again.
“Because they feared another Sudetenland, Captain.”
“You mean they don’t trust the Führer?”
“Not much since March 15,” I said, looking carefully around before I spoke such blasphemy to see I was not being overheard. Again the vacant German stare.
Lunch with Major Eliot and his wife. He has just come from London and Paris and thinks highly of the French army and the British air-force, which was good news to me. Met Joe Barnes (Herald Tribune) at the Taverne at midnight. He just back from Danzig and Poland. His theory is that if Hitler waits nine months he’ll have Danzig and perhaps more without much trouble and certainly without war. He thinks Polish resistance to Hitler’s demands would collapse, that Poland simply couldn’t afford to stay mobilized any longer than that. I argued that Britain and France could afford to foot the bill for the Poles. Joe didn’t think they would. I won’t say he’s dead wrong, but think he underestimates the change in France and Britain. Joe’s description of the backwardness of the Poles very impressive. He and Maurice Hindus visited the villages. Only two million people in Poland read any kind of newspaper, he reports, and many villages are without a single radio.
BERLIN, August 10
How completely isolated a world the German people live in. A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it. Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland over Danzig, here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is being maintained. (Not that it surprises me, but when you are away for a while, you forget.) What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion, and so forth. This is the Germany of last September when the steam was turned on Czechoslovakia.
“POLAND? LOOK OUT!” warns the B.Z. headline, adding: “ANSWER TO POLAND, THE RUNNER-AMOK (AMOKLÄUFER) AGAINST PEACE AND RIGHT IN EUROPE!”
Or the headline in Der Führer, daily paper of Karlsruhe, which I bought on the train: “WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG—UNBELIEVABLE AGITATION OF THE POLISH ARCH-MADNESS (POLNISCHEN GRÖSSENWAHNS)!”
For perverse perversion of the truth, this is good. You ask: But the German people can’t possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.
But so far the press limits itself to Danzig. Will the Germans keep their real designs under cover until later? Any fool knows they don’t give a damn about Danzig. It’s just a pretext. The Nazi position, freely admitted in party circles, is that Germany cannot afford to have a strong military power on her eastern frontier, that therefore Poland as it is today must be liquidated, not only Danzig, which is Poland’s life-line, taken, but also the Corridor, Posen, and Upper Silesia. And Poland left a rump state, a vassal of Germany. Then when Hungary and Rumania and Yugoslavia have been similarly reduced (Hungary practically is already), Germany will be economically and agriculturally independent, and the great fear of Anglo-French blockade, which won the last war and at the moment probably could win the next, will be done away with. Germany can then turn on the West and probably beat her.
Struck by the ugliness of the German women on the streets and in restaurants and cafés. As a race they are certainly the least attractive in Europe. They have no ankles. They walk badly. They dress worse than English women used to. Off to Danzig tonight.
DANZING, August 11
For a place where the war is supposed to be about to break out, Danzig does not quite live up to its part. Like the people in Berlin, the local inhabitants don’t think it will come to war. They have a blind faith in Hitler that he will effect their return to the Reich without war. The Free City is being rapidly militarized, German mili
tary cars and trucks—with Danzig licence plates!—dash through the streets. My hotel, the Danzigerhof, full of German army officers. The roads leading in from Poland are blocked with tanktraps and log-barriers. They remind me of Sudetenland just a year ago. The two strategic hills of Bischofsberg and Hagelberg have been fortified. And a lot of arms are being run under cover of night across the Nogat River from East Prussia. They are mostly machine-guns, anti-tank and air-guns and light artillery. Apparently they have not been able to bring in any heavy artillery. Most of the arms are of Czech manufacture.
The town completely Nazified. Supreme boss is Albert Forster, the Nazi Gauleiter, who is not even a Danziger, but a Bavarian. Herr Greiser, the President of the Senate, is a more moderate man, but takes his orders from Forster. Among the population, much less tension than I’d expected. The people want to be joined to Germany. But not at the cost of war or the loss of their position as an outlet for Polish trade. Without the latter, reduced though it is since the building of the purely Polish port of Gdynia, twelve miles west of here, they starve, unless Germany conquers Poland. Like all Germans they want it both ways.
Danzig is a pleasing town to look at. I like the heavy Baltic-German towers, the Gothic Hanseatic steep-gabled houses with the heavily ornamented façades. Reminds me of the other Hanseatic towns—Bremen, Lübeck, Bruges. Walked around the port. Very dead-looking. Few ships. More drunkenness here in Danzig than I’ve seen outside of America. The Schnapps—they call it “Danzig goldwater” because of the little golden particles floating in it—is right good and strong.
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 Page 15