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

by William L. Shirer

  I hope I didn’t put myself out on a limb, but from what I’ve heard this week I wrote tonight in my broadcast: “Some people here believe the war may spread to Scandinavia yet. It was reported in Berlin today that last week a squadron of at least nine British destroyers was concentrated off the Norwegian coast and that in several instances German freighters carrying iron received warning shots…. From here it looks as if the neutrals, especially the Scandinavians, may be drawn into the conflict after all.”

  I often write a paragraph like that to see how the military censor will react. He made no objection, which is interesting.

  BERLIN, March 30

  The Nazis launched last night what they thought would be a bomb-shell in America. Today it looks more like a boomerang. And a fine example of clumsy German diplomatic blundering.

  The Foreign Office released a new White Book containing what is purported to be sixteen documents discovered by the Germans in the Warsaw Foreign Office. Ribbentrop says they are secret reports of various Polish envoys. The most important are from the Polish ambassadors in London, Paris, and Washington. They “implicate” American ambassadors Kennedy, Bullitt, and Biddle, and the point of them is that these diplomats, backed by Roosevelt, were leading conspirators in forcing this war on Germany!

  Though it seems incredible that even the Germans could be so stupid, my friends in the Foreign Office say that Ribbentrop actually thought these “revelations” would make Roosevelt’s position so untenable that his defeat in the next election—or the defeat of his candidate, should he not run—would be assured. Having got wind of the strong sentiment in America to stay out of war, Ribbentrop thought these “documents” would greatly strengthen the hand of the American isolationists by convincing the American people that Roosevelt and his personally appointed ambassadors had not only had a hand in starting the war but had done everything to get us in. Happily, first American reactions are good and the New York press is suggesting the documents are fakes. They may not be faked; probably only doctored.

  LATER.—One of the most amusing Nazi fakes I’ve seen in a long time appears in the evening press. It tells the German people that the publication of the Polish “documents” has hit America like a bombshell. The implication is that Roosevelt has been dealt a staggering blow. Secretary Hull issues an official denial of the allegations in the “documents.” The DNB twists it around and heads it: “HULL DISAVOWS USA AMBASSADORS!” A crude piece of faking!

  The only trouble is that men like Ham Fish and Senator Rush Holt may snatch at Nazi propaganda such as this to help fight Roosevelt. The DNB cables flatly that Senator Holt “agrees with the German White Book.”

  BERLIN, April 2

  I broadcast tonight: “Germany is now waiting to see what the Allies intend to do in stopping shipments of Swedish iron ore down the Norwegian coast to the Reich. It’s accepted here as a foregone conclusion that the British will go into Scandinavian territorial waters in order to halt this traffic. It’s also accepted as a foregone conclusion here that the Germans will react…. Germany imports ten million tons of Swedish iron a year. Germany cannot afford to see these shipments of iron stopped without fighting to prevent it.”

  But how? S. whispers about Nazi troops being concentrated at the Baltic ports. But what can Germany do against the British navy?

  BERLIN, April 7

  The V.B. today: “Germany is ready. Eighty million pairs of eyes are turned upon the Führer…”

  BERLIN, April 8

  The British announce they have mined Norwegian territorial waters in order to stop the German iron ships coming down from Narvik. The Wilhelmstrasse says: “Germany will know how to react.” But how? There are two rumours afloat tonight, but we can confirm nothing. One, that the German fleet has sailed into the Kattegat, north of Denmark, west of Sweden and south of Norway, and is heading for the Skagerrak. Two, that a German expeditionary force is forming at the Baltic ports and that dozens of passenger ships have been hurriedly collected to transport it to Scandinavia.

  BERLIN, April 9

  Hitler this spring day has occupied a couple more countries. At dawn Nazi forces invaded the two neutral states of Denmark and Norway in order, as an official statement piously puts it, “to protect their freedom and independence.” After twelve swift hours it seems all but over. Denmark, with whom Hitler signed a ten-year non-aggression pact only a year ago, has been completely overrun, and all important military points in Norway, including the capital, are now in Nazi hands. The news is stupefying. Copenhagen occupied this morning, Oslo this afternoon, Kristiansand this evening. All the great Norwegian ports, Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, captured. How the Nazis got there—under the teeth of the British navy—is a complete mystery. Obviously the action was long prepared and longer planned and certainly put into operation before the British mined Norwegian territorial waters day before yesterday. To get to Narvik from German bases would have taken at least three days.

  At ten twenty this morning we were urgently convoked to a special press conference at the Foreign Office to begin at ten thirty. We waited a half-hour. At eleven a.m. Ribbentrop strutted in, dressed in his flashy field-grey Foreign Office uniform and looking as if he owned the earth. Schmidt, his press chief, announced the news and read the text of the memorandum addressed in the early hours of this morning to Norway and Denmark, calling on them to be “protected” and warning that “all resistance would be broken by every available means by the German armed forces and would therefore only lead to utterly useless bloodshed.”

  “The Reich government,” Schmidt, a fat, lumpy young man, droned on, “therefore expects the Norwegian government and the Norwegian people to have full understanding for Germany’s procedure and not to resist in any way…. In the spirit of the good German-Norwegian relations which have existed so long, the Reich government declares to the Royal Norwegian government that Germany has no intention now or in the future of touching upon the territorial integrity and political independence of the Kingdom of Norway.”

  Ribbentrop sprang up, snake-like, and said: “Gentlemen, yesterday’s Allied invasion of Norwegian territorial waters represents the most flagrant violation of the rights of a neutral country. It compares with the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. However”—showing his teeth in a smug grin—“it did not take Germany by surprise…. It was the British intention to create a base in Scandinavia from which Germany’s flank could be attacked. We are in possession, gentlemen, of incontestable proof. The plan included the occupation of all Scandinavia—Denmark, Norway, Sweden. The German government has the proofs that French and British General Staff officers were already on Scandinavian soil, preparing the way for an Allied landing.

  “The whole world can now see,” he went on, somehow reminding you of a worm, “the cynicism and brutality with which the Allies tried to create a new theatre of war. A new international law has now been proclaimed which gives one belligerent the right to take unlawful action in answer to the unlawful action of the other belligerent. Germany has availed itself of that right. The Führer has given his answer…. Germany has occupied Danish and Norwegian soil in order to protect those countries from the Allies, and will defend their true neutrality until the end of the war. Thus an honoured part of Europe has been saved from certain downfall.”

  The little man, the once successful champagne salesman who had married the boss’s daughter, who had curried Hitler’s favour in the most abject fashion, who had stolen a castle near Salzburg by having the rightful owner sent to a concentration camp, stopped. Glancing over the room, he essayed another grin—inane, vapid.

  “Gentlemen,” he shouted, “I thank you again and wish you a good-morning.” Followed by his uniformed lackeys, he strode out.

  I was stunned. I shouldn’t have been—after so many years in Hitlerland—but I was. I walked up the Wilhelmstrasse and then through the Tiergarten to cool off. At noon I drove out to the Rundfunk to do my regular broadcast. The people in the streets, I noticed,
were taking the news calmly. Few even bothered to buy the extras which the newsboys were beginning to shout. From a score of rooms at the RRG, Goebbels’s unpleasant voice came roaring out over the loud-speakers. He was reading the various memorandums, proclamations, news bulletins—all the lies—with customary vehemence. I noticed for the first time a swarm of censors. They warned me to “be careful.” I glanced over the late German dispatches. A special communiqué of the High Command said Copenhagen had been completely occupied by eight a.m. The German forces, it said, had been transported in ships from Baltic ports during the night, landed at Copenhagen at dawn, and had first occupied the citadel and the radio station.19 It was clear that the Danes had offered no resistance whatsoever. The Norwegians, it appeared, had, though the Germans were confident it would cease by nightfall. I phoned a couple of friends. The Danish Minister here had protested in the Wilhelmstrasse early this morning, but had added quickly that Denmark was not in a position to fight Germany. The Norwegian Minister—a man notorious in Berlin for his pro-Nazi sympathies, I recalled—had also protested, but had added that Norway would fight. I wrote my sad little piece, and spoke it.

  LATER.—Apparently something has gone wrong with the Norwegian part of the affair. The Norwegians were not supposed to fight, but apparently did—at least at one or two places. There are reports of German naval losses, but the Admiralty keeps mum. All the Danish and Norwegian correspondents were fished out of their beds at dawn this morning and locked up at the Kaiserhof. It was the first they knew that their countries had been protected.

  The Nazi press has some rare bits tonight: The Angriff: “The young German army has hoisted new glory to its banners…. It is one of the most brilliant feats of all time.” A feat it is, of course. The Börsen Zeitung: “England goes coldbloodedly over the dead bodies of the small peoples. Germany protects the weak states from the English highway robbers…. Norway ought to see the righteousness of Germany’s action, which was taken to ensure the freedom of the Norwegian people.”

  Tomorrow the Völkische Beobachter, Hitler’s own pride (and money-maker) will bannerline in red ink: “GERMANY SAVES SCANDINAVIA!” The exclamation point is not mine.

  Broadcast for a third time at two a.m., and now, sick in the stomach from nothing I’ve eaten, to bed.

  BERLIN, April 10

  It is plain from what I have heard today that Hitler and the High Command expected Norway to give up without a scrap. Now that it hasn’t, the complete confidence of yesterday is evaporating. An inspired statement today warned the populace that “yesterday was only the beginning of a daring enterprise. Allied counter-action is still to be reckoned with.” As a matter of fact, I get an impression in army and navy circles that if the British go in with their navy and back it up with strong landing-forces, Germany will have a much bigger fight on her hands than she bargained for. The German weak spot is its lack of a navy. The garrisons in the western Norwegian ports can only be supplied by sea. Also there are no suitable airfields north of Stavanger.

  Following a brief account of the naval battle between German and British destroyers at Narvik today, the High Command mentions something that has us a bit baffled. It remarks that on April 8—that is, the day before the Germans seized the Norwegian harbours—“a British destroyer was sunk in another affair.” Several of us have a hunch that if we could find out what that “other affair” was, we might penetrate the mystery of how the German navy managed to get warships and landing-parties into so many Norwegian ports so quickly without the British navy doing anything about it.20 As it is, it is incomprehensible.

  BERLIN, April 11

  London reports that Bergen and Trondheim have been recaptured by the Allies. The German High Command flatly denies it. It also categorically denies London reports that there has been a great naval battle in the Skagerrak—scene of the World War Battle of Jutland, incidentally. Only naval losses admitted up to date are the 10,000-ton cruiser Blücher in Oslo Fjord and the 6,000-cruiser Karlsruhe off Kristiansand, both sunk by Norwegian coastal batteries the morning of the 9th.

  Learn that Hitler has warned Sweden of the dire consequences of acting unneutral at this present juncture. As far as I can learn the Swedes are scared stiff, will not come to the aid of their Norwegian brethren, and will take their medicine later. Strange how these little nations prefer to be swallowed by Hitler one at a time.

  A Foreign Office spokesman told us today that Mr. Hambro, President of the Norwegian parliament, was an “unclean gentleman and a Jew.” The Nazi man in Norway turns out to be a former War Minister, one Vidkun Quisling, and he seems to have had a fairly strong fifth-column organization. One man in the Wilhelmstrasse told me he would be the Norwegian premier. The Börsen Zeitung complains of King Haakon’s “unintelligible attitude…. By his inflexible attitude he has shown himself to be badly advised and not the true protector of the interests of his people.”

  The BBC tonight quotes Churchill as having said in the House of Commons today that “Hitler has committed a grave strategical error” and that the British navy will now take the Norwegian coast and sink all ships in the Skagerrak and the Kattegat. God, I hope he’s right.

  BERLIN, April 14

  I’ve at last found out how the Germans, without an adequate navy, occupied the chief Norwegian ports along a thousand-mile coastline under the very nose of the British fleet. German troops with guns and supplies were transported to their destinations in cargo boats which ostensibly were on their way to Narvik to fetch Swedish iron. These freighters, as they’ve been doing since the beginning of the war, sailed within the Norwegian three-mile limit and thus escaped discovery by the British navy. Ironically!—they were even escorted to their goals by Norwegian warships which had orders to protect them from the British!

  But that does not explain how the British let half the striking power of the German fleet—seven destroyers, one heavy cruiser, and one battleship—get all the way up the Norwegian coast unobserved.

  German naval circles admit that their seven destroyers were wiped out by a superior British attacking force at Narvik yesterday, but say they hold the town. Tomorrow’s papers however will say: “GREAT BRITISH ATTACK ON NARVIK REPULSED.” When I showed an early edition of one of the papers to a naval captain tonight, he blushed and cursed Goebbels.

  Learn General von Falkenhorst has posted the following proclamation in Oslo: “The Norwegian government has turned down several offers of co-operation. The Norwegian people must now decide the future of their Fatherland. If the proclamation is obeyed, as it was with great understanding in Denmark, Norway will be spared the horrors of war. However, if any more resistance is offered and the hand which was held out with friendly intentions rejected, then the German High Command will feel itself forced to act with the sharpest means to break the resistance.”

  Hitler is sowing something in Europe that one day will destroy not only him but his nation.

  BERLIN, April 17

  Hitler has sent greetings today to the royal family of Denmark on the occasion of the birth of a daughter to the Crown Princess!

  The German press and radio turned its big guns on Holland today. Said an inspired statement from the Foreign Office: “In contrast to Germany, the Allies do not wish to prevent the little states from being drawn into the war”!

  BERLIN, April 18

  Joe [Harsch] back from Copenhagen with a nice tale. He reports that on the evening of April 8 the Danish King, somewhat disturbed over that day’s reports, summoned the German Minister and asked him for assurances. The Minister swore to His Majesty that Hitler had no intention of marching into Denmark and that the day’s silly rumours were merely “Allied lies.” Actually at that moment, as the German Minister knew, several German coal ships were tied up in Copenhagen harbour, where they had arrived two days previously. Under the hatches, as he also knew, were German troops.

  At dawn up came the hatches and the German soldiers piled out. The Royal Palace is but a short distance from the docks. Up the st
reets towards the palace marched the Nazi troops. The amazed Danes, going to work on their bicycles, could not believe their eyes. Many said afterwards they thought it was some film being shot. As the Germans approached the palace, the King’s guards, however, opened fire. The Germans returned it. When the King heard the firing, Joe says, he sent his adjutant out to tell his guards for goodness’ sake to stop shooting. The adjutant, waving wildly a white handkerchief, dashed out and gave the order to cease fire. The Germans, thankful for this co-operation, surrounded the palace. Meanwhile Danish workmen, riding to work on their bicycles, were ordered by the Germans to take a side street and avoid the palace. Some of them did not understand German quickly enough. The Germans fired, killing a dozen or so. X, a Yankee businessman who happened to be in Copenhagen, thinks the Germans are minimizing their naval losses. For one thing, he says he saw the masts of a sunken pocket-battleship not sixty miles from Copenhagen.

  Today, it is true, the German Admiralty called on the populace to show more patience and discipline and stop besieging the Admiralty for news of relatives. It promised that the relatives of the dead would be duly notified. Meanwhile I learn that the Gestapo has forbidden relatives who do know that one of their kin has been killed to publish death notices in the papers. Only two or three families of the top naval men who were killed have been permitted to publish the fact.