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

by William L. Shirer

  I said yes, and we hung up. The truth is I didn’t have the faintest idea how to do it—in eight hours, anyway. We had done one or two of these, but there had been months of fussing over technical arrangements before each one. I put in a long-distance call to Murrow in Vienna. And as valuable minutes ticked away I considered what to do. The more I thought about it, the simpler it became. Murrow and I have newspaper friends, American correspondents, in every capital in Europe. We also know personally the directors and chief engineers of the various European broadcasting systems whose technical facilities we must use. I called Edgar Mowrer in Paris, Frank Gervasi in Rome, Pierre Huss in Berlin, and the directors and chief engineers of PTT in Paris, EIAR in Turin, and the RRG in Berlin.

  Murrow came through from Vienna; he undertook to arrange the Berlin as well as the Vienna end and gave me a badly needed technical lesson as to how the entire job could be done. For each capital we needed a powerful short-wave transmitter that would carry a voice clearly to New York. Rome had one, but its availability was doubtful. Paris had none. In that case we must order telephone lines to the nearest short-wave transmitting station. Before long my three telephones were buzzing, and in four languages: English, German, French, and Italian. The first three I know fairly well, but my Italian scarcely exists. Still, I understood enough from Turin to get the idea that no executives of the Italian Broadcasting Company could be reached at the moment. Alas, it was Sunday. I still had Rome coming in. Perhaps I could arrange matters with the branch office there. Berlin came through. The Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft would do its best. Only, they explained, the one line to Vienna was in the hands of the army and therefore doubtful.

  As the evening wore on, the broadcast began to take shape. New York telephoned again with the exact times scheduled for each capital. New York’s brazen serenity, its confidence that the broadcast would come off all right, encouraged me. My newspaper friends started to come through. Edgar Mowrer, Paris correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, was spending Sunday in the country. Much urging to persuade him to return to town to broadcast. But Edgar couldn’t fool me. No man, I knew, felt more intensely than he what had happened in Austria. Gervasi in Rome and Huss in Berlin came through. They would broadcast if their New York office agreed. Not much time to inquire at the New York newspaper offices, especially on Sunday afternoon. Another call to Columbia in New York: Get permission for Gervasi and Huss to talk. And by the way, New York said, what transmitters and wave-lengths are Berlin and Rome using? I had forgotten about that. Another call to Berlin. The station would be DJZ, 25.2 metres, 11,870 kilocycles. An urgent cable carried the information to the CBS control room in New York.

  Time was getting short. I remembered that I roust also write out a talk for the London end of the show. What was Britain going to do about Hitler’s invasion of Austria? I telephoned around town for material. Britain wasn’t going to do anything. New York also wanted a member of Parliament, I suddenly recalled, to discuss British official reaction to the Anschluss. I called two or three M.P. friends. They were all enjoying the English week-end. I called Ellen Wilkinson, Labour M.P. So was she.

  “How long will it take you to drive to the BBC?” I asked her.

  “About an hour,” she said.

  I looked at my watch. We had a little more than two hours to go. She agreed to talk.

  Gervasi’s voice from Rome was on the line. “The Italians can’t arrange it on such short notice,” he said. “What shall I do?”

  I wondered myself. “We’ll take you over Geneva,” I finally said. “And if that’s impossible, phone me back in an hour with your story and I’ll read it from here.”

  Sitting alone in a small studio in Broadcasting House, I had a final check-up with New York three minutes before one a.m. We went over the exact timings of each talk and checked the cues which would be the signals for the speakers in Vienna, Berlin, Paris, and London to begin and end their talks. Rome was out, I told our control room in New York, but Gervasi was on the telephone this minute, dictating his story to a stenographer. We agreed upon a second switchback to London from New York so that I could read it. One a.m. came, and through my earphones I could hear on our transatlantic “feedback” the smooth voice of Bob Trout announcing the broadcast from our New York studio. Our part went off all right, I think. Edgar and Ed were especially good. Ellen Wilkinson, flaunting her red hair, arrived in good time. New York said on the “feedback” afterwards that it was a success. They want another one tonight.

  Hitler, say the dispatches, entered Vienna in triumph this afternoon. Nobody fired. Chamberlain has just spoken in the House. He is not going to do anything. “The hard fact is,” he says, “that nothing could have arrested what has actually happened—unless this country and other countries had been prepared to use force.” There will be no war. Britain and France have retreated one step more before the rising Nazi power.

  LATER.—Albion Ross of the New York Times staff in Berlin had an interesting line in his talk on our round-up tonight. He said the Berliners had taken the Anschluss with “phlegmatic calm.”

  LONDON, March 15

  Hitler, speaking in Vienna from the balcony of the Hofburg, palace of the once mighty Habsburgs, today proclaimed the incorporation of Austria in the German Reich. Still another promise broken. He could not even wait for the plebiscite, scheduled for April 10. Talked with Winston Churchill on the phone this morning. He will do a fifteen-minute broadcast, but wants five hundred dollars.

  LONDON, March 16

  Ed telephoned from Vienna. He said Major Emil Fey has committed suicide after putting bullets through his wife and nineteen-year-old son. He was a sinister man. Undoubtedly he feared the Nazis would murder him for having double-crossed them in 1934 when Dollfuss was shot. I return to Vienna day after tomorrow. The crisis is over. I think we’ve found something, though, for radio with these round-ups.

  VIENNA, March 19

  Ed met me at Aspern airport last evening. When we arrived at dusk before my house in the Ploesslgasse, S.S. guards in steel helmets and with fixed bayonets were standing before my door. A glance up the street showed they were guarding all doors, especially that of the Rothschild palace next to us. Ed and I started into our place, but the Nazi guards prodded us back.

  “I live here,” I said, suddenly angry.

  “Makes no difference. You can’t go in,” one of the guards countered.

  “I said I lived here!”

  “Sorry. Strict orders. No one can enter or leave.” He was an Austrian lad, his accent showed, and polite, and my anger subsided.

  “Where can I find your commandant?” I asked.

  “In the Rothschild palace.”

  He gave us a towering S.S. man, who escorted us into the gardener’s house which adjoined our building and where Rothschild had actually resided the last year. As we entered we almost collided with some S.S. officers who were carting up silver and other loot from the basement. One had a gold-framed picture under his arm. One was the commandant. His arms were loaded with silver knives and forks, but he was not embarrassed. I explained my business and our nationality. He chuckled and told the guard to escort us to my door.

  “But you’ll have to stay there for a while,” he laughed.

  We stayed until after dinner. Then wishing to go downtown we crept down the stairs, waited until our guard had paced several steps away from the door, and sneaked out on tiptoe in the darkness. We found a quiet bar off the Kärntnerstrasse for a talk. Ed was a little nervous.

  “Let’s go to another place,” he suggested.

  “Why?”

  “I was here last night about this time,” he said. “A Jewish-looking fellow was standing at that bar. After a while he took an old-fashioned razor from his pocket and slashed his throat.”

  Tess none too well. The phlebitis still critical. And her nerves not exactly soothed by the shock of what has been happening and the noise of Göring’s bombers over the hospital all day long. Ed flies back to London in the mor
ning.

  VIENNA, March 20

  Broadcast this morning. Described how Vienna has been completely Nazified in a week—a terrifying thing. One of the American radio networks had emphasized all week that its correspondent was not censored in what he said from here. But when he arrived at the studio to go on the air just after me, the Nazis demanded his script as well as mine and gave it a going-over.

  VIENNA, March 22

  Tess’s condition still critical. And the atmosphere in the hospital has not helped. First, Tess says, there was a Jewish lady whose brother-in-law committed suicide the day Hitler entered town. She screamed all the first night. Today she left in black mourning clothes and veil, clutching her baby. There was a second Jewish lady. No one in her family was murdered, but the S.A., after taking over her husband’s business, proceeded to their home and looted it. She fears her husband will be killed or arrested, and weeps all night long.

  On the streets today gangs of Jews, with jeering storm troopers standing over them and taunting crowds around them, on their hands and knees scrubbing the Schuschnigg signs off the sidewalks. Many Jews killing themselves. All sorts of reports of Nazi sadism, and from the Austrians it surprises me. Jewish men and women made to clean latrines. Hundreds of them just picked at random off the streets to clean the toilets of the Nazi boys. The lucky ones get off with merely cleaning cars—the thousands of automobiles which have been stolen from the Jews and “enemies” of the regime. The wife of a diplomat, a Jewess, told me today she dared not leave her home for fear of being picked up and put to “scrubbing things.”

  VIENNA, March 25

  Went with Gillie to see the synagogue in the Seitenstättengasse, which was also the headquarters of the Jewish Kultusgemeinde. We had been told that the Jews had been made to scrub out toilets with the sacred praying-bands, the Tefillin. But the S.S. guards wouldn’t let us in. Inside we could see the guards lolling about smoking pipes. On our way to lunch in a little Italian restaurant back of the Cathedral, Gillie had a run-in with some storm troopers who took him for a Jew though he is the purest of Scots. Very annoying and we drowned our feelings in Chianti. Knick here, and Agnes, though Knick will depart shortly as he is barred from Germany and is not supposed to be here. Huss here trying to get the local INS correspondent, Alfred Tyrnauer, out of jail. His wife most frantic when I talked with her on the phone. The Fodors have gone to Bratislava, taken there on the initiative of John Wiley, who sent them out in a Legation car. Schuschnigg under arrest, and the story is that the Nazis torture him by keeping the radio in his room on night and day.

  VIENNA, April 8

  Tess and baby at last home from the hospital. I carried her upstairs from the car this morning and it will be some time before she can walk. But the worst is over.

  VIENNA, April 10 (Palm Sunday)

  The “plebiscite” passed off today in a weird sort of holiday atmosphere. The Austrians, according to Goebbels’s count, have voted ninety-nine per cent Ja. Maybe so. It took a brave Austrian to vote No, as everyone felt the Nazis had some way of checking up on how they voted. This afternoon I visited a polling station in the Hofburg. The room, I imagine, had once been occupied by the Emperor’s guard. I went inside one of the booths. Pasted on the wall in front of you was a sample ballot showing you how to mark yours with a Yes. There was also a wide slit in the corner of the booth which gave the election committee sitting a few feet away a pretty good view of how you voted! Broadcast for fifteen minutes at seven thirty p.m., and though the polls had just closed, I said the Austrians were voting ninety-nine per cent Yes. A Nazi official told me so just as I went on the air and I assumed he knew. Probably he knew yesterday. And so Austria today “votes” away its centuries-old independence and joins the Greater Reich. Finis Austria!

  VIENNA, April 12

  This crisis has done one thing for us. I think radio talks by Ed and me are now established. Birth of the “radio foreign correspondent,” so to speak.

  VIENNA, April 14

  Czechoslovakia will certainly be next on Hitler’s list. Militarily it is doomed now that Germany has it flanked on the south as well as the north. All our broadcasts from Prague now must go by telephone line through Germany, even if we take them via Geneva. That will be bad in case of trouble. Must ask the Czechs about their new short-wave transmitter when I go to Prague tomorrow.

  PRAGUE, April 16

  Put on President Beneš and Miss Alice Masaryk in a broadcast to America tonight. Yesterday I expressed the hope that Dr. Beneš would say something about the German question, though their theme tonight was ostensibly the Red Cross. Dr. Beneš obliged me beautifully, though his language was moderate and reasonable. Strange, then, that when he got to the German question he was badly faded out. Unfortunately New York booked the show via the German short-wave station at Zeesen instead of through Geneva as I had asked. I suspect the Germans faded out Beneš on purpose, though Berlin denied it when I spoke with the people there on the phone after the broadcast. They said the fault was here in Prague. The Czechs deny it. I had a long talk tonight with Svoboda, chief engineer of the Czech Broadcasting System, urging him to rush work on his new short-wave transmitter, explaining that if the Germans got tough, that would be Prague’s only outlet. Promised our co-operation in making transatlantic tests. A good-natured fellow, he does not think the Germans will do anything until they’ve digested Austria, which he thinks will take years. But he promised to get along with the new Sender.

  VIENNA, April 17 (Easter)

  Got home this morning. Tess better and we presented the baby with a giant Easter egg I had bought in Prague yesterday. Much fun.

  ROME, May 2

  Some time during the night S.S. Black Guards at the Austro-Italian border got me out of bed in my wagons-lits compartment and seized all my money. They argued a long time among themselves about arresting me, but finally desisted. Hitler arriving this evening at sundown. I’m broadcasting from the roof of the royal stables overlooking the entrance to the Quirinale Palace and have it timed for the moment the King and the Führer are due to arrive.

  LATER.—Unfortunately for me, the horses pulling Hitler’s carriage galloped faster than we all anticipated. When I went on the air this evening, he had arrived, entered the palace, come out and bowed to the populace, disappeared, and as my microphone opened there was nothing left to describe. I had made notes, however, about the background of the visit and had received descriptive reports in German by radio of his dramatic ride up the Triumphal Way, past the splendid ruins of ancient Rome, past the Colosseum, from whose archways columns of red fire flamed, to the palace. But it was pitch-dark when I went on the air, and the electric light attached to the mike suddenly failed. I could not make out a word of my notes. The only thing was to speak ad lib. from memory, but after standing on the wind-swept roof for five hours I discovered that the light in my memory had gone out too. There was a row of torches burning near by on the roof in honour of Hitler’s arrival. I motioned to an Italian engineer to fetch one. It flickered badly, but gave just enough light to enable me to make out a few key points in my scribbled notes. Feel, however, that I talked badly.

  ROME, May 3

  A cable of congratulations from Paul White on last night’s talk, which cheers me up. The town full of dicks—fifty thousand of them, they say, German and Italian, to protect the two great men. All the foreign Jews here have been jailed or banished for the duration of the visit. The Italians hardly hide their hostility to the Germans. They watch them walk by, and then spit contemptuously. The Eternal City lovely in this springtime. Wandered down to the Piazza di Spagna, full of superb flowers stacked against the stairways leading up to the baroque church. I shall spend these days wandering about.

  FLORENCE, May—?

  Followed Hitler up here, but did not have to broadcast. New York wanted me to look up some singing birds—of all things!—for a broadcast, but could not find them. Spent the day at the Uffizi, but somehow the Leonardos, Raphaels, Titians, even the Bott
icellis, pale a little after the Grecos in Spain. Walked along the Arno. Remembered the magnificent view from Fiesole, an old Etruscan town five miles up in the hills from here, but no time to revisit it. Back to Vienna tomorrow.

  VIENNA, May 20

  While Tess and I were dining tonight with Charles Dimont (of Reuter’s) and his dark, beautiful wife in a little Hungarian restaurant near the Opera, he was called away to the phone. He came back greatly excited. London had called. German troops were reported marching on Czechoslovakia. He decided to hire a car and run up towards Bratislava and take a look. I decided to remain in town and get on the phone to Prague, Berlin, and London before jumping one way or the other.

  VIENNA, May 21

  Leaving tonight for Prague. The story is that Hitler has mobilized ten divisions along the Czech frontier. The Czechs have called up one class and have manned their “Maginot Line.” Had hoped to remain here a few days since Tess must have another operation day after tomorrow. If there’s no war in Czecho we hope to leave here definitely June 10 for our new headquarters in Geneva. Tess’s Swiss visa expires then and it will be a long job to get another if we don’t get away under the deadline. Have picked Geneva because it’s no longer possible to do my job from here, what with the currency restrictions, the Nazi censorship and snooping, and all.

  VIENNA, June 9

  Leaving tomorrow. The Gestapo have been here for two days checking over my books and effects, but they were Austrian fellows and much beer and plenty of sausage made them agreeable and reasonable. Tess in no shape to travel, all bound up in bandages still, but we are going by air.