Berlin Diary

by William L. Shirer

  BERLIN, March 26

  Simon and Eden have been here for the last couple of days conferring with Hitler and Neurath and this afternoon the two British envoys received us at the dilapidated old British Embassy to tell us—nothing. Simon struck me as a very vain man. Eden, who looked and acted like a schoolboy, kept pacing up and down the stage—we were in the ballroom, which has a stage—prompting his chief and occasionally whispering to him when we asked an embarrassing question. The only thing Simon said worth reporting is that he and Hitler found themselves in “disagreement on almost everything.” Apparently—at least the Germans say so—Hitler put on a big song and dance against Russia and the proposed Eastern Locarno, which would bring in Russia in a defence system on Germany’s eastern frontiers. The Wilhelmstrasse scarcely hides the fact that Hitler did all the talking, Simon all the listening. Eden goes on to Warsaw and Moscow; Simon home.

  BERLIN, April 9

  A gala reception at the Opera tonight on the occasion of Göring’s wedding. He has married a provincial actress, Emmy Sonnemann. I received an invitation, but did not go. Party people tell me Goebbels is in a rage at his arch-enemy’s lavish displays, of which tonight was only one example, and that he’s told the press it can comment sarcastically. Not many editors will dare to, I think.

  BERLIN, April 11

  Dr. S., a successful Jewish lawyer who served his country at the front in the war, suddenly appeared at our apartment today after having spent some months in the Gestapo jail, Columbia House. Tess was at home and reports he was in a bad state, a little out of his head, but apparently aware of his condition, because he was afraid to go home and face his family. Tess fortified him with some whisky, cheered him up, and sent him home. His wife has been on the verge of nervous prostration for a long time. He said no charges had been preferred against him other than that he was a Jew or a half-Jew and one of several lawyers who had offered to help defend Thälmann. Many Jews come to us these days for advice or help in getting to England or America, but unfortunately there is little we can do for them.

  BAD SAAROW, April 21 (Easter)

  Taking the Easter week-end off. The hotel mainly filled with Jews and we are a little surprised to see so many of them still prospering and apparently unafraid. I think they are unduly optimistic.

  BERLIN, May 1

  A blizzard today pretty well spoiled the big Labour Day show at Tempelhof. Dosch insisted on going out to cover it despite his bad health. Hitler had nothing particular to say and seemed to be depressed. Thousands of workers being marched to Tempelhof for the meeting took advantage of the blizzard to slip out of ranks and make for the nearest pub. There were a surprising number of drunks on the street tonight—unusual for Berlin. The talk around town is that the British are going to negotiate a naval agreement with Hitler, thus helping him to break another shackle of Versailles.

  BERLIN, May 21

  Hitler made a grandiose “peace” speech in the Reichstag this evening and I fear it will impress world opinion and especially British opinion more than it should. The man is truly a superb orator and in the atmosphere of the hand-picked Reichstag, with its six hundred or so sausage-necked, shaved-headed, brown-clad yes-men, who rise and shout almost every time Hitler pauses for breath, I suppose he is convincing to Germans who listen to him. Anyway, tonight he was in great form and his program—of thirteen points—will convince a lot of people. It’s rather an amazing program, at that; very astutely drawn up.

  Leading up to it, Hitler screamed: “Germany needs peace…. Germany wants peace…. No one of us means to threaten anybody.” As to Austria: “Germany neither intends nor wishes to interfere in the internal affairs of Austria, to annex Austria, or to conclude an Anschluss.”

  Then he launched into his thirteen-point program.

  1. Germany cannot return to Geneva unless the Treaty and the Covenant are separated.

  2. Germany will respect all other provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, including the territorial provisions.

  3. Germany will scrupulously maintain every treaty voluntarily signed. In particular it will uphold and fulfil all obligations arising out of the Locarno Treaty…. In respecting the demilitarized zone, the German government considers its action as a contribution to the appeasement of Europe….

  4. Germany is ready to co-operate in a collective system for safeguarding European peace….

  5. Unilateral imposition of conditions cannot promote collaboration. Step-by-step negotiations are indispensable.

  6. The German government is ready in principle to conclude pacts of non-aggression with its neighbours, and to supplement these pacts with all provisions that aim at isolating the war-maker and isolating the area of war.

  7. The German government is ready to supplement the Locarno Treaty with an air agreement.

  8. Germany is ready to limit armaments on the basis of aerial parity with the individual big powers of the West, and naval tonnage equal to thirty-five per cent of the British.

  9. Germany desires the outlawing of weapons and methods of warfare contrary to the Geneva Red Cross convention. Here the German government has in mind all those arms which bring death and destruction not so much to the fighting soldiers as to non-combatant women and children. It believes it is possible to proscribe the use of certain arms as contrary to international law and to outlaw those nations still using them. For example, there might be a prohibition of the dropping of gas, incendiary, and explosive bombs outside the real battle zone. This limitation could then be extended to complete international outlawing of all bombing.

  10. Germany desires the abolition of the heaviest arms, especially heavy artillery and heavy tanks.

  11. Germany will accept any limitation whatsoever of the calibre of artillery, the size of warships, and the tonnage of submarines, or even the complete abolition of submarines, by agreement.

  12. Something should be done to prohibit the poisoning of public opinion among the nations by irresponsible elements orally or in writing, and in the theatre or the cinema.

  13. Germany is ready at any time to reach an international agreement which shall effectively prevent all attempts at outside interference in the affairs of other states.

  What could be more sweet or reasonable—if he means it? Hitler spoke until nearly ten o’clock. He was in an easy, confident mood. The diplomatic box was jammed, the ambassadors of France, Britain, Italy, Japan, and Poland being in the front row. Dodd sat in the third row—a typical Nazi diplomatic slight to America, it seemed to me. Filed several thousand words, and then to bed, tired and a little puzzled by the speech, which some of the British and French correspondents at the Taverne tonight thought might really after all pave the way to several years of Peace.

  BERLIN, June 3

  We’ve moved again, this time to Tempelhof, our studio place in the Tauenzienstrasse, which was just under the roof, proving too warm. We’ve taken the apartment of Captain Koehl, a German flying ace in the World War, and the first man (with two friends) to fly the Atlantic from east to west. He and his wife, pretty, dark, great friends of the Knicks. He is one of the few men in Germany with enough courage not to knuckle down to Göring and the Nazis. As a result he is completely out, having even lost his job with Lufthansa. A fervent Catholic and a man of strong character, he prefers to retire to his little farm in the south of Germany rather than curry Nazi favour. He is one of a very few. I’ve taken a great liking to him.

  BERLIN, June 7

  The ticker brings in this news: Baldwin succeeds MacDonald as British Prime Minister. There will be few tears for MacDonald, who betrayed the British labour movement and who in the last five years has become a vain and foolish man. Ribbentrop is in London negotiating a naval treaty which will give Germany thirty-five per cent of Britain’s tonnage. The Nazis here say it’s in the bag.

  BERLIN, June 18

  It’s in the bag, signed today in London. The Wilhelmstrasse quite elated. Germany gets a U-boat tonnage equal to Britain’s. Why the British h
ave agreed to this is beyond me. German submarines almost beat them in the last war, and may in the next. Ended up at the Taverne, as on so many nights. The Taverne, a Ristorante Italiano, run by Willy Lehman, a big, bluff German with nothing Italian about him, and his wife, a slim, timid Belgian woman, has become an institution for the British and American correspondents here, helping us to retain some sanity and affording an opportunity to get together informally and talk shop—without which no foreign correspondent could long live. We have a Stammtisch—a table always reserved for us in the corner—and from about ten p.m. until three or four in the morning it is usually filled. Usually Norman Ebbutt presides, sucking at an old pipe the night long, talking and arguing in a weak, high-pitched voice, imparting wisdom, for he has been here a long time, has contacts throughout the government, party, churches, and army, and has a keen intelligence. Of late he has complained to me in private that the Times does not print all he sends, that it does not want to hear too much of the bad side of Nazi Germany and apparently has been captured by the pro-Nazis in London. He is discouraged and talks of quitting. Next to him sits Mrs. Holmes, a beak-nosed woman of undoubted intelligence. She swallows her words so, however, that I find difficulty in understanding what she says. Other habitués of the Stammtisch are Ed Beattie of U.P., with a moon-faced Churchillian countenance behind which is a nimble wit and a great store of funny stories and songs; Fred Oechsner of U.P. and his wife, Dorothy, he a quiet type but an able correspondent, she blonde, pretty, ebullient, with a low, hoarse voice; Pierre Huss of INS, slick, debonair, ambitious, and on better terms with Nazi officials than almost any other; Guido Enderis of the New York Times, aging in his sixties but sporting invariably a gaudy race-track suit with a loud red necktie, minding the Nazis less than most—a man who achieved the distinction once of working here as an American correspondent even after we got into the war; Al Ross, his assistant, bulky, sleepy, slow-going, and lovable; Wally Deuel of the Chicago Daily News, youthful, quiet, studious, extremely intelligent; his wife, Mary Deuel, much the same as he is, with large, pretty eyes, they both very much in love; Sigrid Schultz of the Chicago Tribune, the only woman correspondent in our ranks, buoyant, cheerful, and always well informed; and Otto Tolischus, who though not head of the bureau of the New York Times is its chief prop, complicated, profound, studious, with a fine penchant for getting at the bottom of things. Present often is Martha Dodd, daughter of the Ambassador, pretty, vivacious, a mighty arguer. Two American correspondents come rarely if at all, Louis Lochner of A.P. and John Elliott of the New York Herald Tribune, John, who is a very able and learned correspondent, being a teetotaller and non-smoker and much addicted—as we should all be—to his books.

  NEW YORK, September 9

  Home for a brief vacation, and New York looks awfully good though I find most of the good people much too optimistic about European affairs. Everyone here, I find, has very positive knowledge and opinions.

  NEW YORK, September 16

  Week-end with Nicholas Roosevelt out on Long Island. Had not seen him since he was Minister in Budapest. He was too preoccupied with Franklin Roosevelt’s “dictatorship”—as he called it—to allow for much time to argue European affairs. He seemed deeply resentful that the New Deal would not allow him to grow potatoes in his garden, and went into the matter in some detail, though I’m afraid I did not follow. I kept thinking of Ethiopia and the chances of war. A very intelligent man, though. Have had a good visit—but much too short—with my family. Mother, despite her age and recent illnesses, seemed to be looking quite pert. The office insists I return at once to Berlin because of the Abyssinian situation. Dosch is to go to Rome and I am to have the Buro.

  BERLIN, October 4

  Mussolini has begun his conquest of Abyssinia. According to an Italian communiqué, the Duce’s troops crossed the frontier yesterday “in order to repulse an imminent threat from the Ethiopians.” The Wilhelmstrasse is delighted. Either Mussolini will stumble and get himself so heavily involved in Africa that he will be greatly weakened in Europe, whereupon Hitler can seize Austria, hitherto protected by the Duce; or he will win, defying France and Britain, and thereupon be ripe for a tie-up with Hitler against the Western democracies. Either way Hitler wins. The League has provided a sorry spectacle, and its failure now, after the Manchurian debacle, certainly kills it. At Geneva they talk of sanctions. It’s a last hope.

  BERLIN, December 30

  Dodd called us in today for a talk with William Phillips, Under Secretary of State, who is visiting here. We asked him what action Washington would take if the Nazis began expelling us. He gave an honest answer. He said: None. Our point was that if the Wilhelmstrasse knew that for every American correspondent expelled, a German newspaperman at home would be kicked out, perhaps the Nazis would think twice before acting against us. But the Secretary said the State Department was without law to act in such a case—a lovely example of one of our democratic weaknesses.

  BERLIN, January 4, 1936

  The afternoon press, especially the Börsen Zeitung and the Angriff, very angry at Roosevelt’s denunciation of dictatorships and aggression, obviously directed mostly against Mussolini, but also meant for Berlin. Incidentally, an item I forgot to record: X of the Börsen Zeitung is not to be executed. His death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment. His offence: he occasionally saw that some of us received copies of Goebbels’s secret daily orders to the press. They made rich reading, ordering daily suppression of this truth and the substitution of that lie. He was given away, I hear, by a Polish diplomat, a fellow I never trusted. The German people, unless they can read foreign newspapers (the London Times has an immense circulation here now), are terribly cut off from events in the outside world and of course are told nothing of what is happening behind the scenes in their own country. For a while they stormed the news-stands to buy the Baseler Nachrichten, a Swiss German-language paper, which sold more copies in Germany than it did in Switzerland. But that paper has now been banned.

  BERLIN, January 23

  An unpleasant day. A telephone call awakened me this morning—I work late and sleep late—and it turned out to be Wilfred Bade, a fanatical Nazi careerist at the moment in charge of the Foreign Press in the Propaganda Ministry. He began: “Have you been in Garmisch recently?” I said: “No.” Then he began to shout: “I see, you haven’t been there and yet you have the dishonesty to write a fake story about the Jews there….” “Wait a minute,” I said, “you can’t call me dishonest…” but he had hung up.

  At noon Tess turned on the radio for the news just in time for us to hear a ringing personal attack on me, implying that I was a dirty Jew and was trying to torpedo the winter Olympic Games at Garmisch (which begin in a few days) with false stories about the Jews and Nazi officials there. When I got to the office after lunch, the front pages of the afternoon papers were full of typically hysterical Nazi denunciations of me. The Germans at the office expected the Gestapo to come to get me at any moment. Actually, I had written in a mail series, some time ago, that the Nazis at Garmisch had pulled down all the signs saying that Jews were unwanted (they’re all over Germany) and that the Olympic visitors would thus be spared any signs of the kind of treatment meted out to Jews in this country. I had also remarked, in passing, that Nazi officials had taken all the good hotels for themselves and had put the press in inconvenient pensions, which was true.

  Every time the office boy brought in a new paper during the afternoon I grew more indignant. Most of my friends called up to advise me to ignore the whole affair, saying that if I fought it I’d probably be thrown out. But the stories were so exaggerated and so libellous I could not control my temper. I called up Bade’s office and demanded to see him. He was out. I kept calling. Finally a secretary said he was out and would not be coming back. About nine p.m. I could contain myself no further. I went over to the Propaganda Ministry, brushed by a guard and burst into Bade’s office. As I suspected, he was there, sitting at his desk. Uninvited, I sat down opposite
him and before he could recover from his surprise demanded an apology and a correction in the German press and radio. He started to roar at me. I roared back, though in moments of excitement I lose what German I speak and I probably was most incoherent. Our shouting apparently alarmed a couple of flunkeys outside, because they opened the door and looked in. Bade bade them shut the door and we went after each other again. He started to pound on the table. I pounded back. The door was hurriedly opened and one of the flunkeys came in, ostensibly to offer his chief some cigarettes. I lit one of my own. Twice again our pounding brought in the flunkey, once with more cigarettes, once with a pitcher of water. But I began to realize, what I should have known, that I was getting nowhere, that no one, and Bade least of all, had the power or the decency ever to correct a piece of Nazi propaganda once it had been launched, regardless of how big the lie. In the end, he grew quiet, even sugary. He said they had decided not to expel me as first planned. I flared up again and dared him to expel me, but he did not react and finally I stumped out. Much too wrought up, I fear.

  GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, February

  This has been a more pleasant interlude than I expected. Much hard work for Tess and myself from dawn to midnight, covering the Winter Olympics, too many S.S. troops and military about (not only for me but especially for Westbrook Pegler!), but the scenery of the Bavarian Alps, particularly at sunrise and sunset, superb, the mountain air exhilarating, the rosy-cheeked girls in their skiing outfits generally attractive, the games exciting, especially the bone-breaking ski-jumping, the bob-races (also bone-breaking and sometimes actually “death-defying”), the hockey matches, and Sonja Henie. And on the whole the Nazis have done a wonderful propaganda job. They’ve greatly impressed most of the visiting foreigners with the lavish but smooth way in which they’ve run the games and with their kind manners, which to us who came from Berlin of course seemed staged. I was so alarmed at this that I gave a luncheon for some of our businessmen and invited Douglas Miller, our commercial attaché in Berlin, and the best-informed man on Germany we have in our Embassy, to enlighten them a little. But they told him what things were like, and Doug scarcely got a word in. It has been fun being with Pegler, whose sharp, acid tongue has had a field day here. He and Gallico and I were continually having a run-in with the S.S. guards, who, whenever Hitler was at the stadium, surrounded it and tried to keep us from entering. Most of the correspondents a little peeved at a piece in the Völkische Beobachter quoting Birchall of the New York Times to the effect that there has been nothing military about these games and that correspondents who so reported were inaccurate. Peg especially resented this. Tonight he seemed a little concerned that the Gestapo might pick him up for what he has written, but I don’t think so. The “Olympic spirit” will prevail for a fortnight or so more, by which time he will be in Italy. Tess and I have seen a great deal of Paul Gallico. He’s at an interesting cross-road. He has deliberately thrown up his job as the highest-paid sports-writer in New York, said farewell to sports, and is going to settle down in the English countryside to see if he can make his living as a free-lance writer. It’s a decision that few would have the guts to make. Back to Berlin tomorrow to the grind of covering Nazi politics. Tess is going over to the Tyrol to get a rest from the Nazis and do some skiing.