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

by William L. Shirer

  The time is now three eighteen p.m. Hitler’s personal flag is run up on a small standard in the centre of the opening.

  Also in the centre is a great granite block which stands some three feet above the ground. Hitler, followed by the others, walks slowly over to it, steps up, and reads the inscription engraved in great high letters on that block. It says: “HERE ON THE ELEVENTH OF NOVEMBER 1918 SUCCUMBED THE CRIMINAL PRIDE OF THE GERMAN EMPIRE… VANQUISHED BY THE FREE PEOPLES WHICH IT TRIED TO ENSLAVE.”

  Hitler reads it and Göring reads it. They all read it, standing there in the June sun and the silence. I look for the expression on Hitler’s face. I am but fifty yards from him and see him through my glasses as though he were directly in front of me. I have seen that face many times at the great moments of his life. But today! It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph. He steps off the monument and contrives to make even this gesture a masterpiece of contempt. He glances back at it, contemptuous, angry—angry, you almost feel, because he cannot wipe out the awful, provoking lettering with one sweep of his high Prussian boot. He glances slowly around the clearing, and now, as his eyes meet ours, you grasp the depth of his hatred. But there is triumph there too—revengeful, triumphant hate. Suddenly, as though his face were not giving quite complete expression to his feelings, he throws his whole body into harmony with his mood. He swiftly snaps his hands on his hips, arches his shoulders, plants his feet wide apart. It is a magnificent gesture of defiance, of burning contempt for this place now and all that it has stood for in the twenty-two years since it witnessed the humbling of the German Empire.

  Finally Hitler leads his party over to another granite stone, a smaller one fifty yards to one side. Here it was that the railroad car in which the German plenipotentiaries stayed during the 1918 armistice was placed—from November 8 to 11. Hitler merely glances at the inscription, which reads: “The German Plenipotentiaries.” The stone itself, I notice, is set between a pair of rusty old railroad tracks, the ones on which the German car stood twenty-two years ago. Off to one side along the edge of the clearing is a large statue in white stone of Marshal Foch as he looked when he stepped out of the armistice car on the morning of November 11, 1918. Hitler skips it; does not appear to see it.

  It is now three twenty-three p.m. and the Germans stride over to the armistice car. For a moment or two they stand in the sunlight outside the car, chatting. Then Hitler steps up into the car, followed by the others. We can see nicely through the car windows. Hitler takes the place occupied by Marshal Foch when the 1918 armistice terms were signed. The others spread themselves around him. Four chairs on the opposite side of the table from Hitler remain empty. The French have not yet appeared. But we do not wait long. Exactly at three thirty p.m. they alight from a car. They have flown up from Bordeaux to a near-by landing field. They too glance at the Alsace-Lorraine memorial, but it’s a swift glance. Then they walk down the avenue flanked by three German officers. We see them now as they come into the sunlight of the clearing.

  General Huntziger, wearing a bleached khaki uniform, Air General Bergeret and Vice-Admiral Le Luc, both in dark blue uniforms, and then, almost buried in the uniforms, M. Noël, French Ambassador to Poland. The German guard of honour, drawn up at the entrance to the clearing, snaps to attention for the French as they pass, but it does not present arms.

  It is a grave hour in the life of France. The Frenchmen keep their eyes straight ahead. Their faces are solemn, drawn. They are the picture of tragic dignity.

  They walk stiffly to the car, where they are met by two German officers, Lieutenant-General Tippelskirch, Quartermaster General, and Colonel Thomas, chief of the Führer’s headquarters. The Germans salute. The French salute. The atmosphere is what Europeans call “correct.” There are salutes, but no handshakes.

  Now we get our picture through the dusty windows of that old wagon-lit car. Hitler and the other German leaders rise as the French enter the drawing-room. Hitler gives the Nazi salute, the arm raised. Ribbentrop and Hess do the same. I cannot see M. Noël to notice whether he salutes or not.

  Hitler, as far as we can see through the windows, does not say a word to the French or to anybody else. He nods to General Keitel at his side. We see General Keitel adjusting his papers. Then he starts to read. He is reading the preamble to the German armistice terms. The French sit there with marble-like faces and listen intently. Hitler and Göring glance at the green table-top.

  The reading of the preamble lasts but a few minutes. Hitler, we soon observe, has no intention of remaining very long, of listening to the reading of the armistice terms themselves. At three forty-two p.m., twelve minutes after the French arrive, we see Hitler stand up, salute stiffly, and then stride out of the drawing-room, followed by Göring, Brauchitsch, Raeder, Hess, and Ribbentrop. The French, like figures of stone, remain at the green-topped table. General Keitel remains with them. He starts to read them the detailed conditions of the armistice.

  Hitler and his aides stride down the avenue towards the Alsace-Lorraine monument, where their cars are waiting. As they pass the guard of honour, the German band strikes up the two national anthems, Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles and the Horst Wessel song. The whole ceremony in which Hitler has reached a new pinnacle in his meteoric career and Germany avenged the 1918 defeat is over in a quarter of an hour.

  PARIS, June 22 (midnight)

  Too tired to write of today. Here is what I broadcast:

  “The armistice has been signed. The armistice between France and Germany was signed at exactly six fifty p.m., German summer time—that is, one hour and twenty-five minutes ago…. It was signed here in the same old railroad coach in the middle of Compiègne Forest where the armistice of November 11, 1918 was made…. Now the armistice, though signed by the French and the Germans, does not go into effect yet. We’ve been informed that the French delegation is leaving by special plane for Italy. When it gets there, Italy will lay down armistice terms for ceasing its war with France…. As soon as the French and Italians sign, the news will be flashed to the Germans. They will immediately inform the French government at Bordeaux. And then, six hours after this, the fighting stops, the guns cease fire, the airplanes come down, the blood-letting of war is at an end. That is, between Germany and Italy on the one hand, and France on the other. The war with Britain, of course, goes on….

  “The negotiations for this armistice have gone much faster than anyone expected. There has been a good deal of telephoning and telegraphing between here and Bordeaux by the French. One of the little wonders of this war was a telegraph line to Bordeaux which went right through both the front lines where they’re still fighting.

  “As a matter of fact, late last night the Germans and French succeeded in establishing telephone contact between the plenipotentiaries here at Compiègne and the French government at Bordeaux. A few minutes ago I listened to a recording of the first conversation as they were establishing the first communication. It’s an interesting record, if a minor one, for history.

  “The Germans got the telephone line going as far as the Loire River at Tours. There German army engineers strung a line over a bridge across the river, where it was hooked up, strangely and miraculously enough, with the French telephone central, which carried it on to Bordeaux. We could hear the German telephonist here in Compiègne say: ‘Hello, Bordeaux. Hello, the French government in Bordeaux!’ He said it in both French and German. It sounded uncanny, and it must have been, too, to the French when he said in French: ‘Ici la centrale de l’armée allemande à Compiègne. Here’s the headquarters of the German army at Compiègne, calling the French government at Bordeaux.’ The line was very good, and we could hear the telephonist in Bordeaux very clearly. The line was then turned over to the French government and their delegates here.

  “And so the negotiations went on last night and today for the ending of the war. Occasionally the French delegation would return to the car from their tent for further talks with General Keitel. About mi
dnight last night the talks were broken off and the French delegates, though cots had been provided for them in their tent, were driven by the Germans into Paris, some fifty miles away, where they spent the night. The city must have seemed strange to them.

  “The French delegates returned to Compiègne Forest this morning. About ten thirty a.m. we saw them filing into Marshal Foch’s old Pullman coach. They remained for an hour and then General Keitel arrived. Through the windows we could see them talking and going over various papers. At one thirty p.m. there was a recess so that the French could contact their government in Bordeaux for the last time.

  “And then came the big moment. At six fifty p.m. the gentlemen in the car started affixing their signatures to Germany’s armistice conditions. General Keitel signed for Germany; General Huntziger for France.

  “It was all over in a few moments.”

  And now to depart from my broadcast to set down a scene which I gave to Kerker for his part of the transmission. I know that the Germans have hidden microphones in the armistice car. I seek out a sound-truck in the woods. No one stops me and so I pause to listen. It is just before the armistice is signed. I hear General Huntziger’s voice, strained, quivering. I note down his exact words in French. They come out slowly, with great effort, one at a time. He says: “I declare the French government has ordered me to sign these terms of armistice. I desire to read a personal declaration. Forced by the fate of arms to cease the struggle in which we were engaged on the side of the Allies, France sees imposed on her very hard conditions. France has the right to expect in the future negotiations that Germany show a spirit which will permit the two great neighbouring countries to live and work peacefully.”

  Then I hear the scratching of pens, a few muffled remarks from the French. Later someone, watching through the window, tells me Admiral Le Luc fights back the tears as the document is signed. Then the deep voice of Keitel: “I request all members of the German and French delegations to rise in order to fulfil a duty which the brave German and French soldiers have merited. Let us honour by rising from our seats all those who have bled for their fatherland and all those who have died for their country.” There is a minute of silence as they all stand.

  As I finished speaking into the microphone, a drop of rain fell on my forehead. Down the road, through the woods, I could see the refugees, slowly, tiredly, filing by—on weary feet, on bicycles, on carts, a few on trucks, an endless line. They were exhausted and dazed, those walking were footsore, and they did not know yet that an armistice had been signed and that the fighting would be over very soon now.

  I walked out to the clearing. The sky was overcast and rain was coming on. An army of German engineers, shouting lustily, had already started to move the armistice car.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  “To Berlin,” they said.

  PARIS, June 23

  It seems we had something of a scoop yesterday. We beat the world with the announcement that the armistice had been signed, not to mention a detailed description of it. Some of those who helped us get it are catching hell. I had no idea we’d had a scoop until this morning when Walter Kerr told me he had picked up some American broadcast last night. For two or three hours, he says, we were the only ones with the news. Some of our commentators, he says, appeared to grow a little nervous as the hours ticked by and there was no confirmation. They were probably thinking of the premature U.P. story on the armistice on November 7, 1918.

  I got my first night’s sleep in a week, and felt a little better. Breakfasted at noon at the Café de la Paix with Joe [Harsch] and Walter on café crème and brioches, and the sun on the terrace was warm and soothing. At one we went down the street to Philippe’s, where we had a nice lunch, the first decent one since arriving.

  Then Joe and I made a little “Sentimental Journey.” On foot, because there are no cars, buses, or taxis. We walked down through the Place Vendôme and thought of Napoleon. Pushed on through the Tuileries. It made my heart feel a little better to see so many children about. They were playing on the seesaws. The merry-go-round was turning with its load of children, until an irate agent for some reason (to curry favour with the Germans?) closed it down.

  It was an exquisite June day, and we stopped to admire the view (my millionth, surely!) up the Tuileries to the Champs-Elysées, with the silhouette of the Arc de Triomphe on the horizon. It was as good as ever. Then through the Louvre and across the Seine. The fishermen were dangling their lines from the bank, as always. I thought: “Surely this will go on to the end of Paris, to the end of time… men fishing in the Seine.” I stopped, as I have always stopped a thousand times, to see if—after all these years—I might witness one man at last having at least a bite. But though they jerked their lines out continually, no one caught a fish. I have never seen a fish caught in the Seine.

  Then down the Seine to Notre-Dame. The sandbags had been removed from the central portal. We stopped to observe it. Inside the Cathedral the light was too strong, with the original rose window and the two transept windows out. But from up the river as we had approached, the view of the façade, the Gothic in all its glory, was superb. We went round behind. The grace of the flying buttresses that support the upper part of the nave!

  Then I turned guide for Joe. Took him to the near-by Church of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, the oldest in Paris, then down the little street past the Hôtel Du Caveau, in whose cellars we had had some nights in my younger days. I showed him, a little farther down, the bordel across the eighteen-foot-wide street from the police station. Apparently the whores had all fled, like almost all of the good people of France. Then up past the Cluny, which was closed, stopping at the statue of Montaigne with its eloquent quotation about Paris being the “glory of France.” We stopped for a beer at the Balzar, next to the Sorbonne, a pub where I had spent so many nights in my first years in Paris after 1925. Then, since this was a “Sentimental Journey,” naked and unashamed, we hit up the Boulevard Saint-Michel, then up the rue de Vaugirard to the Hôtel de Lisbonne, where I had lived for two years when I first came to Paris. The Lisbonne looked as dirty and dilapidated as ever. But, according to the sign, they’d added a bath. No such sign of civilization when I lived there.

  Then the Panthéon, from the Boulevard Saint-Michel, and then through the Luxembourg Gardens, as lovely as ever, and crowded with children, as ever, which cheered me up again, and the statues of the Queens of France around the central pond, and at the pond the kids sailing their boats, and the Palace off to one side, and a pretty girl sitting under the statue of the Queen so-and-so who reigned, I noticed, as we took our eyes off the beautiful thing, in 1100 and something.

  And then Montparnasse, with aperitifs on the sidewalk of the Rotonde, and the Dôme across the street as jammed with crackpots as ever, and in front of us a large table full of middle-aged French women of the bourgeoisie, apparently recovering from their daze, because their anger was rising at the way the little gamins (elles sont françaises, après tout!) were picking up the German soldiers.

  And then a walk back, with a drink at the Deux Magots across from Saint-Germain-des-Prés, whose solid tower seemed more comforting today than ever before, and down the rue Bonaparte past the bookshops, the art shops, so civilized, past the house where Tess and I had lived in 1934. Across the Seine again, and Joe wanted to stroll in the gardens of the Palais Royal, which we did, and they were as peaceful as ever before, and as still, except for the German planes roaring overhead.

  And thence to our hotel, filled with German soldiers, and outside, on the boulevard, a long column of German artillery roaring by.

  BERLIN, June 26

  Returned from Paris. We left there at seven a.m. and drove through the “battlefields” (more accurately, the destroyed towns where what fighting there was in this war took place) to Brussels. The German officers and officials said they wanted to have one last square meal before returning to the Vaterland, so I took them around to the Taverne Royale. We stuffed on hors d’œuvres, steak
, mountains of vegetables, and fresh strawberries and cream, washing it all down with two bottles of quite good Château Margaux.

  En route to Brussels we passed through Compiègne, Noyon, Valenciennes, and Mons—all well smashed up. But except in the towns I could see no evidence of any serious fighting. Abandoned Allies’ tanks and trucks here and there, but no sign along the roads that the French had offered serious resistance. The French and Belgians in the towns still seemed numbed, but not particularly resentful, as one might have expected. As elsewhere, they acted extremely civil to the German troops.

  An attaché of the German Embassy in Brussels accompanied us as far as Louvain, and the reason soon became evident. In Louvain we were driven straight to the charred remains of the library. As we stepped out of our cars, it just happened that a priest came up on a bicycle and greeted us. It just happened that he seemed to be on good terms with the German Embassy official. The two of them then related the story the propagandists had given me some weeks before on the same spot—namely, that the British had fired the library of Louvain University before their retreat.

  I admit there are some points that bother me. None of the near-by buildings, some of which are only fifty feet from the library, suffered any damage at all. Even their windows are intact. The Germans and the Belgian priest kept harping on this as proof that no German bombs could have hit the library. On the other hand, I notice two small shell-holes in the tower, which still stands. And incendiary bombs dropped on the library wouldn’t have disturbed the adjacent buildings. True, if many had been dropped, some would have missed the target and set the near-by houses on fire.

  The priest, who said he was one of the librarians, explained that the priceless manuscripts were kept in fire-proof vaults in the basement. He then claimed that the British had started the fire in the basement and had actually set fires going in the fire-proof vaults. He and the Germans kept emphasizing that it was obvious from the looks of the charred remains, girders and all, that the fire had been started from the basement. But this wasn’t obvious to me.