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

by William L. Shirer

  Count Ciano, who was rushed up from Rome to put the seal of Axis authority on Hitler’s “offer” of peace to Britain, was the clown of the evening. In his grey and black Fascist militia uniform, he sat in the first row of the diplomatic box, and jumped up constantly like a jack-in-the-box every time Hitler paused for breath, to give the Fascist salute. He had a text of the speech in his hand, but it was probably in Italian, so that he was not following Hitler’s words. Without the slightest pretext he would hop to his heels and expand in a salute. Could not help noticing how high-strung Ciano is. He kept working his jaws. And he was not chewing gum.

  Saddest figure to me in the Assembly—I do not count the wooden automatons who as “deputies” sat below on the main floor—was General Halder, chief of the German General Staff. Most people think that he is the brains of the German army, that it was he who made the final plans for the Polish campaign and the great offensive in the west and executed them in such an astonishingly successful manner. But he has never kowtowed to Hitler. It is widely reported that he has on occasions talked very sharply to the Great Man. And that, as a result, Hitler hates him. At any rate, he was not made a field-marshal tonight, but merely promoted one grade. (After the Polish campaign Hitler also skipped over him in bestowing honours, but the army kicked so hard that Hitler had belatedly to make amends.) I watched him tonight, his classically intellectual face, and he seemed to be hiding a weariness, a sadness, as he warmly congratulated his younger generals who were now raised over him as field-marshals.

  Alexander Kirk, our chargé, was there too. The Nazis put him in the back row with the small fellows, but he didn’t seem to mind. He sat there all evening, his face like a sphinx, breaking only occasionally into an ironic smile when some of his diplomatic colleagues from the Balkans popped up to give the new slave salute. Quisling, a pig-eyed little man, crouched in a corner seat in the first balcony, drinking the amazing scene in.

  BERLIN, July 20

  No official British reaction to Hitler’s “peace offer,” but Goebbels had the local press tonight break the news gently to the German people that apparently the Britons aren’t having any. The Germans I talk to simply cannot understand it. They want peace. They don’t want another winter like the last one. They have nothing against Britain, despite all the provocative propaganda. (Like a drug too often given, it is losing what little force it had.) They think they’re on top. They think they can lick Britain too, if it comes to a showdown. But they would prefer peace.

  Roosevelt has been renominated at Chicago for a third term. This is a blow to Hitler which the Wilhelmstrasse scarcely hid today. Goebbels gave orders to the Berlin press not to comment, but he did allow the DNB to publish a brief dispatch from its Washington correspondent stating that the methods by which Roosevelt’s nomination was achieved “have been sharply condemned by all eyewitnesses.”

  Hitler will now hope that Roosevelt is defeated in the election by Willkie. The point is that Hitler fears Roosevelt. He is just beginning to comprehend that Roosevelt’s support of Great Britain is one of the prime reasons why the British decline to accept his kind of peace. As Rudolf Kircher, editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, will be allowed to put it tomorrow: “Roosevelt is the father of English illusions about this war. It may be that Roosevelt’s shabby tactics are too much for the Americans, it may be that he will not be reelected, it may be that, if he is re-elected, he will stick closely to the non-intervention program of his party. But it is also clear that while he may not intervene with his fleet or his army, he will intervene with speeches, with intrigues, and with a powerful propaganda which he will put at the disposal of the English.”

  BERLIN, July 21

  Holland is beginning to feel the Nazi yoke. Mass arrests, we hear.

  BERLIN, July 22

  Hitler has given Mussolini a birthday present. It’s an anti-aircraft armoured train.

  Halifax broadcast Britain’s answer to Hitler’s “peace proposal.” It was an emphatic No. A poor speech though, I thought while listening to it at the Rundfunk—for America. He sounded awfully pious. He appealed too much to God. I remember him in India as a very religious man. But God’s been pretty good to Hitler so far….

  BERLIN, July 23

  The die seems cast, as the papers put it this evening. Halifax’s speech has jolted official circles. There were angry Nazi faces at the noon press conference. Said the spokesman with a snarl: “Lord Halifax has refused to accept the peace offer of the Führer. Gentlemen, there will be war.”

  The press campaign to whip up the people for the war on Britain started with a bang this morning. Every paper in Berlin carried practically the same headline: “CHURCHILL’S ANSWER—COWARDLY MURDERING OF A DEFENCELESS POPULATION!”

  The story is that since Hitler’s Reichstag “appeal for peace” the British have answered by increasing their night attacks—on helpless women and children. Details not previously given us as to the extent of the British bombings are suddenly hauled out. Bombings of Bremen, Hamburg, Paderborn (where there’s a big tank works), Hagen, and Bochum (all teeming with military objectives). But according to Goebbels’s lies—only women and children have been hit. Afraid the German people will swallow this. They are very depressed that Britain will not have peace. But they now pin their hopes on a quick victory which will be over by fall and therefore save them from another war winter.

  BERLIN, July 25

  Today we get the first glimpse of how Hitler intends to break up France. A special German governor named Weyer has been appointed for the five French departments which comprise Brittany, and a Breton “National Committee” formed and made to proclaim a new Breton national state.

  Today in Alsace French signs were removed and German substituted.

  From Dr. Walther Funk, president of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics, who showed up at our evening press conference, we also received a first glimpse into Hitler’s “new order.” Funk, a shifty-looking little man who, they say, drinks too much, but who is not unintelligent and not devoid of humour, admitted quite frankly that the purpose of the “new order” was to make Germany a richer land. He put it this way: “It must guarantee Germany a maximum of economic security and a maximum also of goods consumption. This is the goal of the new European economy.” Later the censor cut this part out of my report.

  Funk also said that gold would be abandoned as the basis of the new European currency, and the now worthless Reichsmark substituted. Gold would also lose most of its importance, he claimed, as a means of international payment. Thus America’s great gold supply would lose most of its value. The Reichsbank, he went on, would act as clearing house for the new European system. In other words, any trade, say, that America might want to carry on with a European country would have to be done through Berlin. On the other hand Funk belligerently attacked what he called America’s “intervention” in Germany’s trade with South America. “Either we will trade directly with the sovereign South American states or we won’t trade at all,” he shouted. Just one more example of the Germans wanting one standard for themselves and a worse one for others.

  Funk’s enmity to Dr. Schacht, whom he chased out of the Reichsbank and the economics ministry, cropped out when we asked him about the widespread reports that Schacht, too, had worked out a plan for the “new order.” “I haven’t heard of it,” he snapped. Then on second thought: “Oh, I did read something in the foreign press about it, but I only believe half of what I read in the papers.” Then seriously: “The Führer entrusted me with the economic plans for the ‘new order.’”

  BERLIN, July 28

  More about the “new order.” Dr. Alfred Pietzsch, president of the Reich Economic Chamber, says the Continent under the “new order” will have a population of 320,000,000 people and cover 1,500,000 square miles of space. It will grow annually 160,000,000 tons of potatoes and 120,000,000 tons of grain and will be practically self-supporting in foods. Dr. Pietzsch admits something which most Nazis won’t. He says the Hitler-d
ominated Continent will be far from self-sufficient in raw materials. For example, it will grow little wool and practically no cotton. At the present time, he says, the Continent imports annually a billion and a half dollars’ worth of raw materials.

  Himmler announced today that a Polish farm labourer had been hanged for sleeping with a German woman. No race pollution is to be permitted.

  Another American correspondent kicked out today. He is Captain Corpening of the Chicago Tribune, said to be a confidential man of Colonel McCormick’s. He arrived yesterday from Switzerland and broke a story about Germany’s peace terms to Britain which he thinks have been sent to London through Sweden. The Propaganda Ministry attempted to pin the story on the Tribune’s regular correspondent, Sigrid Schultz, whom they would like to toss out because of her independence and knowledge of things behind the scenes, but finally decided to expel only the captain.

  BERLIN, July 31

  The news-reels today show German army engineers blowing up the French armistice monuments at Compiègne. They dynamited all but the one of Marshal Foch. Last month in Paris a German official invited me to Compiègne to see the dynamiting, but when I expressed amazement that the Germans would do such a barbaric thing he withdrew the invitation.

  I remarked in my broadcast tonight that the German people at the moment were certainly benefiting by the amount of vegetables, eggs, and bacon which the Dutch and Danes were sending in. The censors said I could not mention the subject.

  BERLIN, August 1

  Goebbels made the German radio today falsify a statement by Secretary of War Stimson. It quoted Stimson as saying: “Britain will be overpowered in a short time and the British fleet will pass under enemy control.” This is part of a new propaganda campaign to convince the German people that even the United States has given up hope of saving Britain.

  Everyone impatient to know when the invasion of Britain will begin. I have taken two new bets offered by Nazis in the Wilhelmstrasse. First, that the Swastika will be flying over Trafalgar Square by August 15. Second, by September 7. The Nazis say General Milch, right-hand man of Göring, has tipped the latter date as a dead certainty.

  BERLIN, August 3

  Sir Lancelot Oliphant, British Ambassador to Belgium, who is being held a captive by the Nazis at a Gestapo training school between here and Potsdam, is sore. The other night they had an air-raid out there and he said he’d be damned if he’d take refuge in the cellar when his own people came over to bomb. The S.S. guards thereupon removed him forcibly to the cellar. Sir Lancelot raised such a howl that the matter went to Hitler. The Führer’s decision is that he may damned well stay where he pleases when his own folks come over, but that he must sign a paper absolving the Germans of any responsibility.

  Great excitement at our noon press conference at the Foreign Office yesterday. The official spokesman was droning away as usual when suddenly all the anti-aircraft guns on the roofs of the Chancellery and Air Ministry down the street started blazing away. He stopped abruptly. Just as all present were getting ready to run for shelter the firing stopped. Seems a German student flyer entered the forbidden air zone over Berlin without giving the proper signal.

  BERLIN, August 4

  I flew to Hamburg yesterday in a weird old transport plane which the German army had been using previously to transport captive horses from Paris to Berlin. There were no seats, so we sat on the floor, which vibrated considerably. The German authorities had phoned that they were inviting me and two others to fly to Hamburg, where we could see anything we wanted. The British, they said, had just announced that Hamburg had been “pulverized” by the RAF bombings.

  When I got to the airport there were twenty others who had been invited, and when we arrived at Hamburg I soon saw that the Germans had no intention of showing me “anything” I wanted to see. For two hours before leaving I had studied the map of Hamburg and made a list of certain military objectives such as oil-storage tanks, airplane factories, shipbuilding yards, and one secret airfield. After we had been taken around on a conducted tour for a couple of hours and shown among other things how one British bomb had wiped out a wing of an institute for epileptics, I presented my list to those in charge of the party.

  “Certainly,” they answered. “We will show you all.”

  Whereupon they rushed us in a bus through the docks at thirty-five miles an hour. The docks certainly weren’t pulverized, but it was impossible to see whether there had not been hits here and there. Afterwards we climbed to the top of the St. Michaelis tower, three hundred feet high, from where we had a panoramic view of the port. Even with field-glasses, I must admit, I couldn’t see anything. The oil tanks were too far away for accurate observation. But the docks and one Blohm & Voss shipyard near by seemed intact. In one part of the river a couple of small boats had been sunk, their masts still visible above the water. Soon it was getting dark, and we were rushed back to the plane.

  Ruminating on the vibrating floor of the plane returning to Berlin I was depressed. Even if the Germans hadn’t kept their promise to show me the things I asked for, it was plain from what little we saw that slight damage had been done. I had expected that after two months of almost nightly bombings the RAF would have accomplished much more. The port, though it undoubtedly had been hit here and there, had not really been affected by the bombings. The two all-important bridges over the Elbe in the middle of the harbour had not been touched—the nearest bomb had landed two hundred yards away. Germany’s two great passenger ships, the Bremen and Europa, lay in the distance, tied up at Finkenwerder and apparently untouched. Several troop trains were unloading their men in the harbour, part of the force for the invasion of Britain, I suppose. The talk was that they would be crowded on to the two big liners.

  The point was that a square mile or more in the centre of Rotterdam had been utterly wiped out in one half-hour of bombing by German Stukas. Why had not the British, then, in two months of bombing wiped out the Hamburg harbour works and the Blohm & Voss shipping yards, which were busy constructing naval vessels, especially submarines? The important targets were largely concentrated on two islands in the Elbe—objectives which at night you could hardly miss if you followed the river up from the sea. It was depressing, too, to think that perhaps British propaganda had exaggerated the effects of their raids in other places in Germany.

  The chief complaint of the people in Hamburg with whom I talked was not the damage caused, but the fact that the British raids robbed them of their sleep.

  Strolled in the Tiergarten this afternoon, it being warm and the sun out brightly. At six different spots a crowd had gathered to watch someone feed the squirrels. Even soldiers on leave stopped to watch. And these squirrel-feeders are the ones who have stormed through Norway to Narvik and through Holland, Belgium, and France to the sea.

  BERLIN, August 5

  Despite all the talk about the invasion of Britain being launched within the next few days, the military people here tell me that the Luftwaffe must do a great deal more work before there is any question of an attempt at landing troops. Göring said as much in an article in the Völkische Beobachter yesterday signed “Arminius,” which is Latin for Hermann, his first name. He explained that the first job of an air force is to gain complete superiority in the air by destroying the other fellow’s planes, airfields, hangars, oil stores, and anti-aircraft nests. That over, he said, the second phase begins with the air force able to devote most of its energies to supporting the land army. This was the German strategy in Poland and in the west.

  My question is: Why hasn’t the Luftwaffe attacked Britain on a bigger scale, then? Is it because Hitler still hopes to force Churchill to accept peace? Or because the generals of the land army still don’t want to attempt the invasion? Or because the RAF is too strong to risk the Luftwaffe in one big blow?

  French coal mines are working again. They were not destroyed by the French this time as in 1914. A photograph in one of the papers shows French miners unloading coal at a pit. Watch
ing over them is a steel-helmeted German soldier with a bayonet. Their Moscow-dominated Communist Party and their unions told them not to work and not to fight when France was free. Now they must work under German bayonets.