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

by William L. Shirer

  A young soldier comes up and attempts to plant some propaganda on us. Remarks offhand that last night the British counter-attacked, got back as far as the woods where we are, and carried off all the civilians. Most of us are not impressed. I conclude that if they did counter-attack and came back for an evening, most of the civilians probably went back with them of their own accord, so as not to fall into German hands. Even the Italians with us laugh.

  I note that over the front all afternoon hover two or three reconnaissance planes, German, obviously directing artillery fire. They cruise above the battlefield unmolested. But there are no planes directing Allied artillery fire, which seems to be aimed exclusively against the German forward positions, at no time against German artillery, which is strange. The lack of observation planes alone puts the Allies in a hole. In fact we do not see an Allied plane all day long. Once or twice we get an alarm, but no planes show up. How England and France are paying now for the criminal neglect of their aviation!

  As the afternoon wears away to the pounding of the guns, artillery units near us get orders to take up new positions forward. The advance, you suppose, is going ahead according to schedule. Immediately from all around us in the woods, men and motors, which we have not even seen, limber up, the men toss off some of the tree-limbs which have so completely camouflaged them, and get off. We take a last look at the Scheldt Valley, at the smoke rising from the bursting shells on the other side of the river. Probably it all has meaning for these German officers around us. Each whistling shell has a certain errand. Each gun and truck rushing down the road is going to some place assigned to it. Each of the thousands upon thousands. The whole chaos (to me) of the battlefield is in reality a picture of a well-oiled machine of destruction in action.

  We drive back to Brussels. German dive-bombers fly past us, going up to do a little late-afternoon work. At Brussels German fighters and bombers demonstrate over the city. This is the German idea of how to impress the population….

  It is midnight before we reach Aachen. At Maastricht the Germans are expecting British bombers. A quarter of a mile from the repaired bridge, a soldier stops us. All lights must be put out. We drive along in the moonlight—it’s almost full moon tonight; lovely—across the bridge. A quarter of a mile away, a soldier stops us; says we can put on our dim lights. Efficiency.

  Most of the boys in the party have looted Brussels for the second time, and are worried that the Germans (who still keep up a customs shed at the old Dutch-German border!) will take away their booty. But they do not.

  Too late to broadcast, so I write a story to be phoned to Berlin, cabled to New York, and there read over the air. I’ve hardly sat down to write when the British come over Aachen. I leave my room, which is on the next to the top floor (having moved out of the attic), and write my piece in the dining-room on the ground floor. The anti-aircraft of all calibres keeps thundering away. Now and then you feel the concussion of a bomb and hear it exploding. Our little hotel is a hundred yards from the station. The British are obviously trying to get the station and the railroad yards. You hear the roar of their big planes; occasionally the whirr of German night chasers….

  My call comes through about one twenty a.m. I can hardly make myself heard for the sound of the guns and the bombs.

  While writing my story, I keep notes on the air-raid.

  12.20 a.m. Sound of anti-aircraft.

  12.40 Air-raid sirens sound off.

  12.45 Big anti-aircraft gun near by thunders suddenly.

  12.50 Sound of cannon from German chasers.

  1.00 Light anti-aircraft around station blazes away.

  1.15 Still going on.

  It went on for four hours, until just after four a.m. But after my call to Berlin, being a little sleepy, I went up to bed and fell immediately to sleep.

  BERLIN, May 24

  Two weeks ago today Hitler unloosed his Blitzkrieg in the west. Since then this has happened: Holland overrun; four fifths of Belgium occupied; the French army hurled back towards Paris; and an Allied army believed to number a million men, and including the élite of the Franco-British forces, trapped and encircled on the Channel.

  You have to see the German army in action to believe it. Here are some of the things, so far as I could see, that make it good:

  It has absolute air superiority. It seems incredible, but at the front I did not see a single Allied plane during the day-time. Stuka dive-bombers are softening the Allied defence positions, making them ripe for an easy attack. Also, they’re wrecking Allied communications in the rear, bombing roads filled with trucks, tanks, and guns, wiping out strategic railroad stations and junctions. Furthermore, reconnaissance planes are giving the German command a perfect picture of what is going on. Against this, the Allies have no eyes; few of their reconnaissance planes get over. Also, Allied bombers have completely failed to disturb German lines of communications by day-time attacks. One of the sights that overwhelms you at the front is the vast scale on which the Germans bring up men, guns, and supplies unhindered. Because of the thorough manner in which the Belgians and French destroyed their railroad bridges, the German command decided to use exclusively motor transport. All day long at the front, driving along at forty or fifty miles an hour, you pass unending mechanized columns. They stretch clear across Belgium, unbroken. And they move fast—thirty or forty miles an hour. You wonder how they are kept fed with gasoline and oil. But they are. Gas supplies come forward with everything else. Every driver knows where he can tank up when he runs short.

  What magnificent targets these endless columns would make if the Allies had any planes!

  And what a magnificent machine that keeps them running so smoothly. In fact that is the chief impression you get from watching the German army at work. It is a gigantic, impersonal war machine, run as coolly and efficiently, say, as our automobile industry in Detroit. Directly behind the front, with the guns pounding daylight out of your ears and the airplanes roaring overhead, and thousands of motorized vehicles thundering by on the dusty roads, officers and men alike remain cool and business-like. Absolutely no excitement, no tension. An officer directing artillery fire stops for half an hour to explain to you what he is up to. General von Reichenau, directing a huge army in a crucial battle, halts for an hour to explain to amateurs his particular job.

  Morale of the German troops fantastically good. I remember a company of engineers which was about to go down to the Scheldt River to lay a pontoon bridge under enemy fire. The men were reclining on the edge of the wood reading the day’s edition of the army daily paper, the Western Front. I’ve never seen men going into a battle from which some were sure never to come out alive so—well, so nonchalantly.

  The contention of the BBC that these flying German columns—such as the one that broke through to the sea at Abbeville—are weak forces which cannot possibly hold what they get, is a myth. The Germans thrust not only with tanks and a few motorized infantry, but with everything. Light and heavy motorized artillery goes right up behind the tanks and infantry.

  BERLIN, May 25

  German military circles here tonight put it flatly. They said the fate of the great Allied army bottled up in Flanders is sealed.

  BERLIN, May 26

  Calais has fallen. Britain is now cut off from the Continent.

  BERLIN, May 28

  King Leopold has quit on the Allies. At dawn the Belgian army, which with the British and French has been caught in an ever narrowing pocket for a week in Flanders and Artois, laid down its arms. Leopold during the night had sent an emissary to the German lines asking for an armistice. The Germans demanded unconditional surrender. Leopold accepted. This leaves the British and French in a nice hole. High Command says it makes their position “hopeless.” Picked up a broadcast by Reynaud this morning accusing Leopold of having betrayed the Allies. Churchill, according to BBC, was more careful. Said, in a short statement to Commons, he would not pass judgment.

  Great jubilation in the press here over the capi
tulation of the Belgians. After eighteen days, the Berlin papers remind us. It took the Germans just eighteen days to liquidate the Poles. They’ll probably have the rest of the Allied army in their pocket before the week-end. Churchill, according to the BBC, warned the House to expect bad news soon.

  For the first time, communiqués today kept pouring out of the “Führer’s Headquarters.” All of them sounded as if they’d been dictated by Hitler himself. For example this typical attempt to sound generous: “DNB. Führer’s Headquarters, May 28. The Führer has ordered that the King of the Belgians and his army be given treatment worthy of the brave, fighting soldiers which they proved to be. As the King of the Belgians expressed no personal wishes for himself, he will be given a castle in Belgium until his final living-place is decided upon.”

  Decided upon by whom?

  Nazi propaganda is doing its best to show that Leopold did the decent, sensible thing. Thus the wording of a special communiqué which the German radio tells its listeners will “fill the German nation with pride and joy”:

  “From the headquarters of the Führer it is announced: Impressed by the destructive effect of the German army, the King of the Belgians has decided to put an end to further senseless resistance and to ask for an armistice. He has met the German demands for unconditional capitulation. The Belgian army has today laid down its arms and therewith ceased to exist. In this hour we think of our brave soldiers…. The entire German nation looks with a feeling of deep gratitude and unbounded pride upon the troops… which forced this capitulation…. The King of the Belgians, in order to put an end to the further shedding of blood and to the completely pointless devastation of his country, reached his decision to lay down arms, against the wishes of the majority of his Cabinet. This Cabinet, which is mainly responsible for the catastrophe which has broken over Belgium, seems to be willing even now to continue to follow its English and French employers.”

  The headlines tonight: “CHURCHILL AND REYNAUD INSULT KING LEOPOLD!—THE COWARDS IN LONDON AND PARIS ORDER THE CONTINUATION OF THE SUICIDE IN FLANDERS.” The German radio said tonight: “Leopold acted like a soldier and a human being.”

  I saw at the front last week the terrible punishment the Belgian army was taking; saw all of Belgium, outside of Brussels, laid waste by the German artillery and Stukas. You can sympathize with Leopold in a sense for wanting to quit. But the French and British say he did it without consulting them, thus betraying them and leaving them in a terrible situation, with no chance of extricating their armies from the trap. The three armies together had a small chance of fighting their way out. With half a million excellent Belgian troops out of the picture, the fate of the French and British armies, it would seem, is sealed.

  A nice, civilized war, this. Göring announces tonight that as a result of information reaching him that the French are mistreating captured German airmen, all French flyers captured by the Germans will be immediately put in chains. Further, Göring proclaims that if he hears of a German flyer being shot by the French, he will order five French prisoners shot. Further still, if he hears of a German flyer being shot “while parachuting,” he will order fifty French prisoners shot.

  Allies, as far as we know, are shooting parachutists who fail to surrender, because these boys were largely responsible for the fall of Holland and play hell behind the lines. Probably ordinary German flyers parachuting from shot-down planes have been mistaken for the dreaded parachutists. Göring’s order, however, is obviously part of Hitler’s technique of conquering by sowing terror. B., who was in Rotterdam last week, says the town was largely destroyed after it had surrendered. German excuse is that surrender came after the Stukas had left the ground and they could not be recalled in time! This sounds flimsy, as they all carry radios and are in constant touch with the ground.

  Göring added that the above rule of shooting five to one or fifty to one would not apply to the English, “as they have not as yet given grounds for such reprisals.”

  The Propaganda Ministry tonight showed us a full-length news-reel, with sound effects, of the destruction in Belgium and France. Town after town, city after city, going up in flames. Close-ups of the crackling flames devouring the houses, shooting out of the windows, roofs and walls tumbling in, where a few days ago men and women were leading peaceful, if not too happy, lives.

  The German commentator’s enthusiasm for the destruction seemed to grow as one burning town after another was shown. He had a cruel, rasping voice and by the end seemed to be talking in a whirl of sadism. “Look at the destruction, the houses going up in flames,” he cried. “This is what happens to those who oppose Germany’s might!”

  And is Europe soon to be ruled and dominated by such a people—by such sadism?

  BERLIN, May 29

  Boss of one of the big American broadcasting chains (not Columbia) cables the German Broadcasting Company today: “PLEASE ARRANGE BROADCAST BY KING LEOPOLD.”

  Lille, Bruges, Ostend captured! Ypres stormed! Dunkirk bombarded! Fate of encircled Allied armies sealed! …the incredible headlines went on today without a let-up. Tonight still another phase of this gigantic battle, without precedent in history, appeared—at least in Berlin—to be drawing to a conclusion.

  The German High Command told the story in these words at the beginning of its communiqué today: “The fate of the French army in Artois is sealed. Its resistance south of Lille has collapsed. The English army which has been compressed into the territory around Dixmude, Armentières, Bailleul, Bergues, west of Dunkirk, is also going to its destruction before our concentric attack.”

  And then this evening the German command announced that in rapid attacks designed to crush the British army Ypres and Kemmel had been stormed.

  In reality, the Germans tell us, the French and British armies since yesterday have been isolated, the one from the other, and each trapped in a tiny pocket. The smaller pocket, which is in the form of a square, the sides of which are about twelve miles long, lies south of Lille—between there and Douai. In that small square is what is left of three French armies, and tonight the Germans are battering them from four sides. The larger pocket runs roughly in a semicircle around the port of Dunkirk, reaching inland for some twenty-five miles. Here the British are trapped.

  What next, then, if the British and French armies either surrender or are annihilated, as the Germans say they will be in their two pockets? The first invasion of England since 1066? England’s bases on the Continent, barring a last-minute miracle, are gone. The lowlands, just across the Channel and the narrow southern part of the North Sea, which it has always been a cardinal part of British policy to defend, are in enemy hands. And the French Channel ports which linked Britain with its French ally are lost.

  Most people here think Hitler will try now to conquer England. Perhaps. I’m not so sure. Maybe he’ll try to finish France first.

  One weird aspect of yesterday’s fighting: When the Germans yesterday took French positions east of Kassel, they actually rushed the French fortifications along the Franco-Belgian border from behind, from the reverse side.

  Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, killed in action on the western front, was buried with military honours in Potsdam today. If things had gone smoothly for Germany after 1914, he probably would have been the German emperor. Present at the funeral were the Crown Prince and Princess, Mackensen and a lot of World War officers in their quaint spike helmets. The former Kaiser sent a wreath.

  More on the nerve war: An official statement tonight says that for every German civilian killed and every stone damaged in Germany during the night raids of the British, revenge will be taken many times over.

  BERLIN, May 30

  Our Memorial Day. I remembered it when one of the consuls phoned and reminded me of a month-old golfing date. How many killed in the Civil War?

  A German dropped in today. He said: “How many years will the war last?” The question surprised me in the light of the news. Last week three Germans in the Wilhelmstrasse bet me the Ger
mans would be in London in three weeks—that is, two weeks from now.

  This German also mentioned a matter that’s been bothering me: German losses and the effect on the people of not being allowed to know by Hitler what the losses are and who is killed. (Hitler will not permit the publication of casualty lists.) He said people are comparing that situation with the one in 1914–18, when every day the papers published the names of those lost, and every few months, he said, a résumé of the total casualties up to date in killed and wounded. But today no German has the slightest idea of what the western offensive has cost in German lives. He doesn’t even know what the Norwegian campaign cost. The last figures he had were on the Polish campaign, and even then he was skeptical of those Hitler gave.

  The great battle in Flanders and Artois neared its end today. It’s a terrific German victory. Yesterday, according to the German High Command, the British made a great bid to rescue what is left of the BEF by sea. Sent over fifty transports to fetch their troops along the coast around Dunkirk. Germans say they sent over two flying corps to bomb them. Claim they sank sixteen transports and three “warships,” which no doubt is exaggerated, and hit and damaged, or set on fire, twenty-one transports and ten warships, which probably is an even greater exaggeration. British sent out hundreds of planes to protect their fleet. The Germans claim they shot down 68 British planes. The British claim they shot down 70 German planes.