Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

by William L. Shirer

  It was a hopeless position for the Poles. And yet they fought on. The German officers with us kept praising their courage. Directly below us in Gdynia’s streets, women and children stood about, sullen and silent, watching the unequal battle. Before some of the buildings long lines of Poles stood waiting for food. Before mounting the hill I had noted the terrible bitterness in their faces, especially in those of the women.

  We watched the battle until noon. In that time the Germans must have advanced about a quarter of a mile. Their infantry, their tanks, their artillery, their signal corps, all seemed to work as a precise machine. There was not the slightest sign of strain or excitement in the German officers at our observation post. Very businesslike they were, reminding me of the coaches of a championship football team who sit on the sidelines and calmly and confidently watch the machine they’ve created perform as they knew all the time it would.

  As we prepared to go, Joe [Barnes] turned to me. “Tragic and grotesque,” he said. It was, all right. The unequal battle, the dazed civilians in the streets below—tragic indeed. And grotesque the spectacle of us, with little danger to ourselves, standing there watching the killing as though it were a football game and we nicely placed in the grand-stand. Grotesque, too, to have a grand-stand seat from which to watch the women in the streets below, for whom all the thunder of the guns that we were hearing was a bitter personal tragedy.

  As we left I asked an officer about the Polish artillery.

  “They haven’t any,” he said. “If they had just one ‘75,’ they could have blown us all to bits. It’s only two miles over there, and this would have been a natural target.”

  We drove to the Westerplatte, a small island between Danzig and the sea which had been used by the Poles as a supply depot. For five days a small Polish garrison had held out on the island against the eleven-inch guns of the Schleswig-Holstein firing at point-blank range and Stukas dropping five-hundred-pound bombs. Even the Germans recognized its bravery, and when the Poles finally surrendered, their commander was allowed to keep his sword. Today the Westerplatte looked like the wasteland around Verdun. Interesting: the bombs tossed by the Stukas were more deadly and more accurate than the shells from the old battleship. A round Polish bunker not over forty feet in diameter had received two direct hits from five-hundred-pound bombs. The ten-foot thickness of concrete and steel had been torn to pieces like tissue paper. Near by we saw the graves of what was left of the Poles who had been inside.

  In the afternoon we drove to the Danzig Guild Hall, a Gothic building of great beauty, to hear Hitler make his first speech since his Reichstag address of September 1 started off the war. I had a seat on the aisle, and as he strode past me to the rostrum I thought he looked more imperious than I had ever seen him. Also he was about as angry during his speech as I’ve ever seen him. When he spoke of Britain his face flamed up in hysterical rage. Afterwards a Nazi acquaintance confided to me that the “old man” was in a terrible rage because he had counted on making today’s speech in Warsaw, that he had waited three or four days outside the Polish capital, burning to enter it like a conquering Caesar and make his speech of victory, and that when the Poles inside refused to surrender and each day continued their stubborn resistance, his patience had cracked and he rushed to Danzig to make his speech. He had to talk! We had expected Hitler to offer peace to the West and announce what the future of Poland would be. He did neither, merely remarking that Poland would never be re-created on the Versailles model and that he had no war aims against Britain and France, but would fight them if they continued the war. When Hitler brushed past me going down the aisle, he was followed by Himmler, Brückner, Keitel, and several others, all in dusty field-grey. Most of them were unshaven and I must say they looked like a pack of Chicago gangsters. Himmler, who is responsible for Hitler’s protection, kept shoving people back in the aisle, muttering at them. The army, I hear, would like to get rid of him, but fear to do so. The black-out was called off here tonight. It was good to see the lights again.

  BERLIN, September 20

  Hitler lent us one of his thirty-two-passenger planes to bring us back from Danzig. Tonight the press talks openly of peace. Says the Frankfurter Zeitung: “Why should England and France waste their blood against our Westwall? Since the Polish state has ceased to exist, the treaties of alliance with it have no more sense.” All the Germans I’ve talked to today are dead sure we shall have peace within a month. They are in high spirits. When I said to some of them today that the best time to have wanted peace was three weeks ago, before Hitler attacked Poland, and that maybe the British and French wouldn’t make peace now, they looked at me as if I were crazy. Peace now, I feel, would only be an armistice during which Hitler would further undermine the spirit of resistance in the democracies and strengthen his own armed forces until the day when he felt sure he could overrun the west of Europe.

  The battle which is nearly over west of Warsaw and which will probably go down in history as the Battle of Kutno is a second Tannenberg. I asked a General Staff officer about that today. He gave me some figures. At Tannenberg the Russians lost 92,000 prisoners and 28,000 dead. Yesterday at Kutno alone the Germans took 105,000 Polish prisoners; the day before, 50,000. The High Command, usually sparse with its adjectives, calls Kutno “one of the most destructive battles of all time.” After my brief look at the front it is plain, though, what has happened to the Poles. They have had no defence against the devastating attacks of the German bombers and the German tanks. They pitted a fairly good army by World War standards against a 1939 mechanized and motorized force which simply drove around them and through them. The German air force in the meantime destroyed their communications. The Polish High Command, it is true, seems to have had no idea of what it was up against. Why it kept its best army around Posen even to begin with, not to mention after the Germans had got behind Warsaw, mystifies even us amateur strategists. Had the Poles withdrawn behind the Vistula the first week of the war, they might have held out until winter, when the mud and the snow would have stopped the Germans.

  Two bomb explosions in Berlin last Sunday night, one in front of the Air Ministry, the other in the entry-way of secret-police headquarters in the Alexanderplatz. No mention of them, of course, in the press or on the radio. The perpetrators got away in the black-out.

  If the war goes on, it is still a question in my mind whether the mass of the people won’t swing behind the regime. The people, who are very patriotic, and are being fed a terrific barrage of propaganda about England alone being responsible for the war, may get the general idea that they have to “defend the Fatherland.” I have still to find a German, even among those who don’t like the regime, who sees anything wrong in the German destruction of Poland. All the moral attitudes of the outside world regarding the aggression against Poland find little echo among the people here. People of all classes, women as well as men, have gathered in front of the windows in Berlin for a fortnight and approvingly gazed at the maps in which little red pins showed the victorious advance of the German troops in Poland. As long as the Germans are successful and do not have to pull in their belts too much, this will not be an unpopular war.

  In the Saar village of Ottweiler yesterday the Germans buried with full military honours Lieutenant Louis Paul Dechanel of the French army. His father had been President of France. He was killed leading a detachment against the Westwall. At his burial a German military band played the Marseillaise. The Germans took a news-reel of the ceremony and will use it in their propaganda to show the French they haven’t anything against France. The hell with radio. Just learned my Danzig broadcast did not get through.

  BERLIN, September 21

  In an order of the day to his troops last night General von Brauchitsch, the commander-in-chief of the army, announced that the operations against Poland were concluded. Thus ends the “counter-attack.” In eighteen days this amazing fighting machine which is the German army has overrun Poland, annihilated its armies, chased its governme
nt from Polish soil. But Warsaw still holds out gallantly.

  Heard President Roosevelt ask the special session of Congress to repeal the neutrality law and allow cash-and-carry goods to be sold to those who could buy—France and Britain. Hardly had the President stopped talking before the Wilhelmstrasse issued a statement to the foreign press charging the President with being unneutral. Last summer I tried to find out whether America came into the calculations of the Nazis at all. I couldn’t find any evidence that they gave a damn about us. 1914–17 all over again. But now they’re beginning to think about us.

  Great hopes here that Russia will help Germany to survive the blockade. First, I can’t understand Hitler’s putting himself in a position where his very existence depends upon the good graces of Stalin. Second, I can’t understand the Soviets pulling Nazi Germany’s chestnuts out of the fire.

  The war, maybe, is just beginning, even though the Germans, after annihilating Poland, would like to see it ended. Wonder why Hitler said at Danzig two nights ago—and the press echoed it—“We will never capitulate.” Why bring up the subject when your position looks so strong? Talked to Tess. She is better and is running the Geneva office in my absence.

  BERLIN, September 22

  The D.A.Z., commenting on Roosevelt’s message asking for the repeal of the neutrality law, says tonight: “America is not Roosevelt, and Roosevelt must reckon with the American people.” Yesterday the B.Z. saw some hope in what it called the “Front of Reason” in America. In that front it put Senators Borah and Clark, Colonel Lindbergh, and Father Coughlin!

  BERLIN, September 23

  General von Fritsch, the man who built up the modern German army and then retired just before the Anschluss because of a fight with Hitler over attacking Austria, which he opposed, has been killed in action before Warsaw. A little strange. He had no command but was with the regiment of which he is honorary colonel.

  Starting day after tomorrow, new ration cards for food. The German people will now get per week: one pound of meat, five pounds of bread, three quarters of a pound of fats, three quarters of a pound of sugar, and a pound of ersatz coffee made of roasted barley seeds. Heavy labourers are to get double rations, and Dr. Goebbels—clever man!—has decided to classify us foreign correspondents as heavy labourers.

  BERLIN, September 24

  The High Command, reviewing the Polish campaign, says the fate of Poland was really decided in eight days. By that time the German army had already obtained its main strategical object, the trapping of the main part of the Polish forces within the great elbow of the Vistula River. Some other things: 450,000 Polish troops captured, 1,200 guns taken, and 800 airplanes either destroyed or captured; and at the end of eighteen days of fighting not a single Polish division, not even a brigade, was left intact.

  Dr. Goebbels convoked a special press conference this morning. We piled over to the Propaganda Ministry thinking maybe peace had come, or something. The little Doktor stalked in, snorting like a bull, and proceeded to devote his entire time to an attack on Knickerbocker, whom he called “an international liar and counterfeiter.” The Doc said that he himself, as a journalist, had never defamed anyone in his life! Seems Knick published a story saying the top Nazis had deposited gold abroad to guard against a rainy day in case they lost the war. This made Doktor G. furious. He revealed he had broadcast from the German shortwave stations Thursday night (September 21) a call to Knick offering him ten per cent of any sum he could prove the Nazis had salted abroad. A curious offer. He said he gave him until Saturday night (last night) to prove it. Apparently Knick was at sea, bound for New York. The story around here is that Knick radioed back that as with all German ultimatums the time limit had expired before he received it.

  BERLIN, September 26

  They buried General von Fritsch here this morning. It rained, it was cold and dark—one of the dreariest days I can remember in Berlin. Hitler did not show up, nor Ribbentrop, nor Himmler, though they all returned to Berlin from the front this afternoon. The official death notices in the papers omitted the usual “Died for Führer” and said only: “Died for the Fatherland.” Yesterday after Goebbels had finished fuming, some of us correspondents gathered in the street outside and concluded that Fritsch was either shot by order of Himmler, his mortal enemy, or was so disgusted with life and the state to which Hitler had led Germany (disgusted perhaps too at the senseless slaughter by German bombs and shells of the women and children in Warsaw?) that he deliberately sought to be killed; that is, committed suicide. What, we asked, was a general of his rank doing in the front line outside of Warsaw, where the snipers have been picking off German troops at an alarming rate? Actually, I hear, he was killed while advancing with a small detachment of scouts up a street in a suburb across the Vistula from the capital. A curious thing for Germany’s greatest modern military figure to be doing.10

  Hitler showed a typical smallness in declining to attend the funeral. He cannot forgive a man who has crossed him, even in death. He could not forgive von Kahr, who suppressed his beer-house Putsch in 1923, and so had him shot in the 1934 purge.

  The war comes home to more and more families that you know. Fräulein T. lost her brother yesterday in Poland. In the World War she had lost her father and another brother. The papers full of the little advertisements that are the official death notices inserted by families in Germany. About half omit the “Died for Führer” expression, retaining only the “Died for the Fatherland.” It is one of the few ways of showing your feelings towards Hitler.

  Germany, now that it has destroyed Poland, would like peace with the West. Big peace offensive started today. Newspapers, radio full of it. The line: Why do France and Britain want to fight now? Nothing to fight about. Germany wants nothing in the West.

  LATER.—Seven members of the American consulate staff in Warsaw arrived here tonight and we had drinks in the Adlon bar. They told a terrible tale of the bombardment of the city and the slaughter of the civilian population. Some of them seemed still shell-shocked. They got out during a temporary truce between the Germans and the Poles. One German shell scored a direct hit on the consulate, but fortunately the staff had taken refuge in the cellars of the Embassy.

  New restrictions today on clothing. If I order a new suit, my tailor must make it out of a piece of cloth exactly 3.1 metres by 144 centimetres.11 Also the papers inform us we can no longer get our shoes half-soled. No more leather. We must wait for a new substitute material not yet out.

  Also, how to shave? A decree says you can have only one piece of shaving soap or one tube of shaving cream during the next four months. I shall start a beard.

  BERLIN, September 27

  Warsaw capitulated today after a heroic but hopeless stand. The High Command says the Polish commander offered to surrender this morning after he had been “impressed by the German attack.”

  In the first battle between a naval fleet and airplanes (for years the admirals and air commanders have fought out on paper the question whether a fleet is vulnerable to air attack) the Germans today claim to have destroyed a British aircraft-carrier and damaged a battleship without losing a single plane.

  I went to the State Opera tonight before my broadcast, George Kidd of U.P. suggesting it would be good for our nerves. It was the opening night of the season and the piece an old favourite, Weber’s Freischütz. I was a little surprised at the state of my nerves. I could not sit through it. I could not stand the sight of all the satisfied burghers, men and women, many of them in evening dress, and even the music didn’t sound right. Amusing only was a special sheet of paper in the program instructing what to do in case of an air-raid alarm. Since there is no cellar in the Opera, a map showed me how to get to my cellar, which was Number One Keller. The alarm, the instructions said, would be announced from the stage. I was then to keep calm, call for my hat and coat at the Garderobe, and proceed to the cellar. At the all-clear I was to return to the Opera, check my hat and coat, and the opera would go on from where it left off.
There was no alarm.