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

by William L. Shirer

  BERLIN, May 9

  What an irony that Webb Miller, who had spent most of the last twenty-four years covering wars, and was often under fire, should have escaped them all only to die by falling out of a railroad coach far from a field of battle! The German press full of absurd stories today that Webb was murdered by the British secret service. This is worse than nonsense. Contemptible. (What happens to the inner fabric of a people when they are fed lies like this daily?)

  Hitler, in ordering the release of some Norwegian prisoners, proclaims today: “Against the will of the German people and its government, King Haakon of Norway and his army staff brought about war against Germany”!

  LATER.—The shouting headlines increased in size tonight, all thundering the accusation that England plans a big act of aggression, somewhere. “BRITAIN PLOTS TO SPREAD THE WAR,” they roar.

  All of which moved me to say in my broadcast tonight. “Regardless of who spreads it, there seems little doubt that it will spread. And it may well be, as many people over here think, that the war will be fought and decided before the summer is over. People somehow seem to feel that the Whitsuntide holidays this week-end will be the last holidays Europe will observe for some time.”

  My censors didn’t like the paragraph, but after some argument they let it pass. Their line was that there was no question of Germany spreading the war.

  BERLIN, May 10

  The blow in the west has fallen. At dawn today the Germans marched into Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg. It is Hitler’s bid for victory now or never. Apparently it was true that Germany could not outlast the economic war. So he struck while his army still had supplies and his air force a lead over the Allies’. He seems to realize he is risking all. In an order of the day to the troops he begins: “The hour of the decisive battle for the future of the German nation has come.” And he concludes: “The battle beginning today will decide the future of the German nation for the next thousand years.” If he loses, it certainly will.

  As I see it, Hitler had three choices: to wait and fight the war out on the economic front, as was done all winter; to meet the Allies in some easy spot, say the Balkans; to seek a decision in the west by striking through neutral Holland and Belgium. He has chosen the third, and the biggest risk.

  I can’t boast that I was prepared for it. In fact, after broadcasting as usual last night at twelve forty-five a.m., I was sound asleep when the phone rang at seven this morning. It was one of the girls at the Rundfunk. She broke the news.

  “When do you want to broadcast?” she asked.

  “As soon as I can get there,” I said.

  “Ribbentrop has a press conference at the Foreign Office at eight,” she offered.

  “I’ll skip it,” I said. “Tell New York—send them an urgent—to monitor DJL—and that I’ll be on the air in an hour.”

  Actually it was two hours or so before I could get on the air. Time dressing, time getting out to the Rundfunk, time getting the whole story. There was considerable excitement at the Rundfunk, and it was some time before I could wrest the various communiqués from the hands of the German announcers. Fortunately, the censors, who must have been tipped during the night, were on the job and did not hold me up long. Except I could not call in my lead what the Germans were doing in Holland and Belgium “an invasion.” They denied it was. I flamed up, but finally decided that since the censors had overlooked the word “invasion” three times in the script, it might be worth while to substitute “march in” in the lead in order to give radio listeners in America a story from Berlin. I didn’t like the compromise. It was a question of sacrificing the whole important story for one word. And anyway, America knew an invasion when it happened.

  LATER.—The people in Berlin, I must say, have taken the news of the battle which Hitler says is going to decide the future of their nation for the next thousand years with their usual calm. None of them gathered before the Chancellery as usually happens when big events occur. Few bothered to buy the noon papers which carried the news. For some reason Goebbels forbade extras.

  The German memorandum “justifying” this latest aggression of Hitler’s was handed to the ministers of Holland and Belgium at six a.m., about an hour and a half after German troops had violated their neutral soil. It sets up a new record, I think, for cynicism and downright impudence—even for Hitler. It requests the two governments to issue orders that no resistance be made to German troops. “Should the German forces encounter resistance in Belgium or Holland,” it goes on, “it will be crushed with every means. The Belgian and Dutch governments alone would bear the responsibility for the consequences and for the bloodshed which would then become unavoidable.”

  The memorandum, which Ribbentrop also read to the correspondents at the eight a.m. press conference, argues that Britain and France were about to attack Germany through the two Low Countries and that the Reich therefore deemed it necessary to send in its own troops to “safeguard the neutrality of Belgium and Holland.” This nonsensical hypocrisy is “backed up” by a spurious “document” from the High Command claiming that it has proofs that the Allied troops were about to march into Belgium and Holland in an effort to seize the Ruhr.

  It’s evident that the German army has struck with everything it has. The air force has gone all out and is obviously going to take full advantage of its superiority over the Allies. The High Command says that at dawn the Luftwaffe bombed scores of airfields in Holland, Belgium, and France as far south as Lyon. And then this is news: a communiqué speaks of German troops having been landed by air at many airports in Belgium and the Netherlands. The Germans claim they seized the airfields and occupied surrounding territory. Apparently, though the High Command censor would not let me say it in my talks today, they’ve been dropping thousands of parachutists. A report that the German parachutists have already occupied part of Rotterdam is not confirmed. It sounds inconceivable, but after Norway anything can happen.

  First German reports claim they’ve crossed the river Maas (Meuse) and captured Maastricht, and have also driven through Luxemburg and into Belgium. Tonight the German army lies before Liège, which held it up for several days in 1914, and where Ludendorff first attracted attention.

  War on civilians started too. The other side reported German planes had killed many. Tonight the Germans claimed three Allied planes dropped bombs in the middle of Freiburg, killing twenty-four civilians. As a taste of what this phase of the war is going to be like, a German communiqué tonight says that “from now on, every enemy bombing of German civilians will be answered by five times as many German planes bombing English and French cities.” (Note Nazi technique there. (1) The statement is part of the nerve war on the enemy. (2) It is designed to make German civilians stand up to bombings by assuring them the English and French are getting five times worse.)

  That’s one taste. Here’s another: When the Belgian and Dutch ministers called for their passports at the Wilhelmstrasse today and at the same time lodged strong protests at the ruthless violation of their neutrality, an official statement was promptly published here saying that “an official on duty [at the Foreign Office] after reading the contents, which were arrogant and stupid, refused to accept them, and asked the two ministers to request for their passports in the usual manner”! The Germans are out of their minds.

  Tired, after broadcasting all this day, and sick in the pit of the stomach.

  BERLIN, May 11

  The German steamroller sweeps on through Holland and Belgium. Tonight the Germans claim to have captured what the High Command claims is Liege’s most important fort, Eben-Emael, which commands the junction of the Meuse (Maas) River and the Albert Canal. The High Command, which under Hitler’s leadership is missing no opportunities for propaganda, makes it look mysterious by saying that the fort was taken by a “new method of attack.” Is history repeating itself? In 1914, when Liége held up the Germans for twelve days, the German army also had a surprise—the new 42-centimetre howitzer, which smashed the Belgian
forts as if they were made of wood.

  The Germans are keeping mum about their troops landed behind the Dutch lines at The Hague and Rotterdam by parachute and by plane. But the High Command, stung by Allied reports, did deny today that the Dutch had recaptured the airfields at The Hague or Rotterdam. The parachutists, then, carry portable radio transmitters too!

  Strange, the apathy of the people in the face of this decisive turn in the war. Most Germans I’ve seen, outside of the officials, are sunk deep in depression at the news. The question is: How many Germans support this final, desperate gamble that Hitler has taken? Discussing it at the Adlon today, most of the correspondents agreed: many, many. And yet I can’t find any Germans who actually believe Hitler’s excuse that he went into the neutral countries, whose integrity he had guaranteed, to counter a similar move which the Allies were about to begin. Even for a German, it’s an obvious lie.

  Goebbels’s propaganda machine, shifting into high gear, discovers today, twenty-four hours after the official announcement that twenty-four persons had been killed by the bombing at Freiburg, that thirteen of the twenty-four were children who were peacefully frolicking on the municipal playground. What were a lot of children doing on a playground in the midst of an airraid? This particular Goebbels fake is probably produced to justify German killings of civilians on the other side.

  The Berlin papers have great headlines today about the “shameful” protests of the two Low Countries against being invaded.

  The Nazis locked up in the Kaiserhof yesterday all the Dutch journalists who were not Nazis, including Harry Masdyck, who did not quite believe it would come when it did. A Dutch woman reporter for the Nazi Dutch paper has been sitting at the Rundfunk since dawn yesterday broadcasting false news to the Dutch people in their own language. A sort of Lady Haw-Haw.

  Have one more broadcast at four thirty a.m., which is only ten thirty p.m. last night in New York. On the job since eight a.m.

  BERLIN, May 12

  Sunday, and got a little sleep. Hill took the noon broadcast.

  After a mere two days of fighting the High Command claims to have occupied all of northeastern Holland east of the Zuider Zee, broken through the first and second defence lines in the heart of the Netherlands, and pierced the eastern end of the Belgian line of defence along the Albert Canal. A year or so ago I had a look at that canal, which the Belgians had fortified with bunkers. It looked like a very formidable tank-trap with its deep and very steep, paved sides. Can it be that the Belgians didn’t blow up the bridges?

  A typical Sunday in Berlin today, with no evidence that the Berliners, at least, are greatly exercised at the battle for their thousand-year existence. Cafés have been ordered to close at eleven p.m. instead of one a.m. That will get the folk home before the night air-raids start, though we’ve had none yet. Also, dancing has been verboten for the time being.

  The radio warned tonight that if Germans were mistreated in Holland, there is “ample opportunity of retaliating on the numerous Dutch nationals living in Germany.”

  BERLIN, May 13

  Astounding news. The headlines at five p.m.: “LIÈGE FALLEN! GERMAN LAND FORCES BREAK THROUGH AND ESTABLISH CONTACT WITH AIR-FORCE TROOPS NEAR ROTTERDAM!”

  No wonder a German officer told me today that even the Oberkommando was a little taken aback by the pace.

  The air-force troops were the parachutists and those landed by plane on the beach near The Hague beginning with the first day of the campaign. It was these men who took part of Rotterdam (!) including the airport, though they had no artillery and the Dutch should have had plenty, being a wealthy people. How a German land force has travelled clear across the southern part of Holland to the sea is a mystery to all of us here. It would have to be a motorized force, and in Holland there are scores of canals and rivers in their path. One supposes the Dutch would have blown up the bridges.

  “SWASTIKA FLIES FROM THE CITADEL OF LIEGE,” say the headlines tonight. Apparently the German army which had forced the Albert Canal circled down to Liège from the northwest, where it was most weakly held, the Belgians having expected the main attack from the opposite direction. Liége held out for twelve days in 1914. If it has fallen now in four, that looks bad for the Allies.

  The foreign radio stations continue to tell of German parachutists dropping all over Belgium and Holland and seizing airports and towns. (Here we can get no information on the subject whatsoever.) It’s a new form of warfare and it will be interesting to see what effect it has, if any, on a long, hard campaign, if this is to be one and not another German walkover.

  Last night Premier Reynaud of France announced that German parachutists found behind the lines in anything but a German uniform would be shot on sight. Tonight the Wilhelmstrasse told us it was informing the Allied governments that for every German parachutist shot, the Germans would execute ten French prisoners! Nice pleasant people, the Germans. That takes us back a thousand or two years. But keep in mind that this is merely a part of Hitler’s new technique of terror.

  I passed some time at the Embassy today. Everyone depressed at the news and most think—on the fourth day of the offensive!—that it is all over with the Allies. I tried to recall how black August 1914 must have seemed to Paris and London as the Germans swept on the capital and the French government fled to Bordeaux. Tess said on the telephone last night that the Swiss were calling up every available male. When will it be Switzerland’s turn? I asked her to try to book on the first ship home and take the baby. She won’t. Her arguments: she has my Geneva office to run, she doesn’t like the family to get too far apart, and now that the war is becoming a war, she wants to see it.

  BERLIN, May 14

  We’re all a little dazed tonight by the news.

  The Dutch army has capitulated—after only five days of fighting. What happened to its great water lines, which were supposed to be impassable? To its army of over half a million men?

  An hour before we learned this from a special communiqué, we were told of Rotterdam’s fall. “Under the tremendous impression of the attacks of German dive-bombers and the imminent attack of German tanks, the city of Rotterdam has capitulated and thus saved itself from destruction,” read the German announcement. It was the first news we had that Rotterdam was being bombed and was at the point of being destroyed. How many civilians were killed there, I wonder, in this war which Adolf Hitler “promised” would not be carried out against civilians? Was the whole city, the half million or so people in it, a military objective so that it had to be destroyed?

  Having broken through at Liège, the Germans claimed tonight to have pierced the second line of Belgian defences northwest of Namur. They must be very close to Brussels. Tanks and airplanes, especially airplanes, are doing the job for the Germans. How criminal of the British and French to have neglected their air forces!

  A little tired of the way the German radio announces each new victory. The program is halted, there are fanfares, then the communiqué is read, then a chorus sings the current hit: “We March on England.” For the big victories the two national hymns are added.

  BERLIN, May 15

  Very long, stunned faces among the foreign correspondents and diplomats today. The High Command claims to have broken through the Maginot Line near Sedan and that German forces have crossed the Meuse River both at Sedan and between Namur and Givet, farther north. To anyone who has seen that deep, heavily wooded Meuse Valley, it seems almost incredible that the Germans could get across it so quickly, provided there is any army at all defending the western bank. But both sides speak of big tank battles west of the Meuse.

  Almost all of my friends have given up hope; not I, yet. It must have looked even darker in Paris in August 1914, when nothing appeared to stand in the way of the German army and the capital. Our military people remind us that the main battle has not yet started, that the Germans have not yet run up against the bulk of the French and British armies. And the Belgians still have a half-million men in the fight. Th
e line today held by the Allies is roughly: Antwerp, Louvain, Namur, then down the Meuse to Sedan, with the Germans across the river at several points.

  There was increasing talk from Rome today that Italy, now that the Germans appear to be winning, may jump into the war this week-end. Tess phoned this morning from Geneva to give me this news. Again I urged her to leave with the child, and at last she seems willing. She and Mrs. V., with her two youngsters, will strike out across France for Spain. From Lisbon they can get the Clipper to New York. Worried all day about this. If Italy attacks France, going across to Spain from Geneva will be unpleasant, if not impossible.

  It seems the reason the Dutch gave up yesterday was that the Germans bombed the hell out of Rotterdam, and threatened to do the same to Utrecht and Amsterdam. Hitler’s technique of helping his armies by threatening terror or meting it out is as masterful as it is diabolical.

  His High Command, for instance, tonight threatened to bomb Brussels unless all troop movements, which the Germans claim their reconnaissance planes have observed there, cease immediately. “If the Belgian government,” says the communiqué, “wishes to save Brussels from the horrors of war, it must immediately put a stop to troop movements in the city and the work on fortifications.”

  A nice war.

  BERLIN, May 15

  Worried about Tess and the baby. If Italy goes into the war in the next day or two, as some think, escape for them in that direction is out. Today there are reports of more German activity along the Swiss border. The Nazis may break into Switzerland any moment now. The trouble is the French won’t let the Americans out through France. They are not issuing transit visas at the moment. Yet the American government has advised Americans in Switzerland to leave immediately for Bordeaux, where they’ll be picked up by American ships. Most of our consulate people at Geneva have sent out their own women and children with their diplomatic passports through France. I believe Hitler will bomb Geneva to destruction just out of personal hate for the League and what Geneva stands for.