What is left of the three French armies cut off in Flanders and Artois is being gradually annihilated, one gathers from the German reports. Today the Germans say they captured the commander of the 1st French Army, General Prieux. They’d already got General Giroud, commander of one of the other two armies, the day he took over. The French apparently are entirely surrounded. The British still have the sea open and are undoubtedly getting as many men out as possible. London yesterday said the British were fighting “the greatest rear-guard action in history.” But they’ve been fighting too many of these.
Much talk here that Hitler is getting ready to bomb the hell out of London and Paris. A press and radio campaign to prepare his own people for it is already under way. Today the attack was mostly against the French. The Völkische Beobachter called them “bastardized, negroized, decadent,” and accused them of torturing German airmen whom they’ve captured. It said that soon the French will be made to pay for all of this. The papers are full of talk of revenge for this and that.
The German Ambassador to Belgium gave us a harangue at the press conference today on how he was mistreated by the French on his way out to Switzerland. As a German told me afterwards, the Germans seem incapable of apprehending that the hate against them in France and Belgium is due to the fact that Germany invaded these countries—Belgium without the slightest excuse or justification—and laid waste their towns and cities, and killed thousands of civilians with their bombings and bombardments. Just another example of that supreme German characteristic of being unable to see for a second the other fellow’s point of view. Same with the wrath here at the way their airmen are treated. The other side is tough with airmen coming down in parachutes because it knows Hitler has conquered Holland by landing parachutists behind the lines. But the Germans think that the other side should not defend itself against these men dropping from the skies. If it does, if it shoots them, then Germany will massacre prisoners already in her hands.
BERLIN, May 31
Italy seems to be drawing near to the day of decision—to go in on Germany’s side. Today Alfieri, the Italian Ambassador, saw Hitler at his headquarters.
It was three weeks ago today that Hitler hurled his armies into Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg, and France in a desperate effort to knock out the Allies in one blow. So far, after three weeks, he has had nothing but success. What it has cost him in lives and material, we do not know yet. This is what he’s accomplished in three weeks:
1. Overrun Holland; forced Dutch army to surrender.
2. Overrun Belgium; forced Belgian army to surrender.
3. Advanced far south of the extension of the Maginot Line on a front extending over two hundred miles from Montmédy to Dunkirk.
4. Knocked out the 1st, 7th, and 9th French Armies, which were cut off when one German army broke through to the sea.
5. Knocked out the BEF, which also is surrounded. Some of the men, at least, of the BEF, are getting away on ships from Dunkirk. But as an army it’s finished. It cannot take away its guns and supplies and tanks.
6. Obtained the Dutch, Belgian, and French Channel coasts as a jumping-off place for an invasion of England.
7. Occupied the important coal mines and industrial centres of Belgium and northern France.
I said in my broadcast tonight: “The Germans have certainly won a terrific first round. But there has been no knockout blow—yet. The fight goes on.”
Some of my friends thought that was being a bit optimistic—from the Allied point of view. Maybe. But I’m not so sure.
First American ambulance driver to be captured by the Germans is one Mr. Garibaldi Hill. The Germans have offered to release him at once. Only they can’t find him.
Word from our people in Brussels today that there is food in Belgium for only fifty days.
Ran into one of our consuls from Hamburg. He says the British have been bombing it at night severely. Trying to hit, for one thing, the oil tanks. He claims they’re dry. It seems that the Germans took all the anti-aircraft guns from Hamburg for use at the front. Hence the British came over without trouble and were able to fly low enough to do some accurate bombing. The population got so jittery that the authorities had to bring some of the guns back.
BERLIN, June 1
Though the public is no more aroused about the great victories up on the Channel than they have been about anything else in this war, the newspaper headlines today do their best to stir up interest. Typical is the B.Z. am Mittag today: “CATASTROPHE BEFORE THE DOORS OF PARIS AND LONDON—FIVE ARMIES CUT OFF AND DESTROYED—ENGLAND’S EXPEDITIONARY CORPS NO LONGER EXISTS—FRANCE’S 1ST, 7TH, AND 9TH ARMIES ANNIHILATED!”
The mass of the German army which liquidated the Allied forces in Flanders is now ready for new assignments. There are two courses open to the German High Command. It can strike across the Channel against England or roll the French back on Paris and attempt to knock France out of the war. From what I gather in military circles here, there seems to be no doubt that the German command has already chosen the second course and indeed moved most of its troops into position facing what is left of the French along the rivers Somme and Aisne. General Weygand has now had ten days to organize his armies along this line, but the fact that he has not felt himself strong enough to attempt an offensive northward from the Somme against the fairly thin German line—a move which if pushed home would have saved the Franco-British-Belgian armies in Flanders—has convinced the German generals, if they needed convincing, that they can crack his forces fairly easily and quickly break through to Paris and to the Norman and Breton ports.
I learn from a High Command officer that God at last has given the British a break. They have had two days of fog and mist around Dunkirk and as a result the Luftwaffe has been unable to do much bombing of the transports busily engaged in taking off British troops. Today the weather cleared and Göring’s bombers went back to work over Dunkirk beach. Says the High Command tonight in a special communiqué: “The rest of the defeated British Expeditionary Force tried today to escape on small craft of all kinds to the transports and warships lying off shore near Dunkirk. The German air force frustrated this attempt through continuous attacks, especially with Junker dive-bombers, on the British ships. According to the reports received so far, three warships and eight transports, totalling 40,000 tons, were sunk, and four warships and fourteen transports set on fire and damaged. Forty English fighter planes protecting the ships were shot down.”
No mention of the German air losses, so I assume they were larger than the British—otherwise Göring would have mentioned them. The Junker-87 dive-bomber is a set-up for any British fighter.
The Germans claim today that the battleship Nelson, flagship of the British Home Fleet, has been sunk with the loss of 700 of her crew of 1,350. So far as I can make out, the only source for this is an alleged dispatch from the A.P. in New York. But a naval officer tonight insisted it was true. He said the ship was sunk on May 11.
BERLIN, June 2
Those British Tommies at Dunkirk are still fighting like bulldogs. The German High Command admits it.
Its official war communique today: “In hard fighting, the strip of coast on both sides of Dunkirk which yesterday also was stubbornly defended by the British, was further narrowed. Nieuport and the coast to the northwest are in German hands. Adinkerke, west of Furnes, and Ghyvelde, six and a quarter miles east of Dunkirk, have been taken.” Six and a quarter miles—that’s getting close.
In the air the Germans again make mighty claims. The official communiqué: “All together, four warships and eleven transports, with a total tonnage of 54,000 tons, were sunk by our bombers. Fourteen warships, including two cruisers, two light cruisers, an anti-aircraft cruiser, six destroyers, and two torpedo boats, as well as thirty-eight transports, with a total tonnage of 160,000, were damaged by bombs. Numberless small boats, tugs, rafts were capsized….”23
Despite the lack of popular enthusiasm for this collossal German victory in Flanders, I gath
er quite a few Germans are beginning to feel that the deprivations which Hitler has forced on them for five years have not been without reason. Said my room waiter this morning: “Perhaps the English and French now wish they had had less butter and more cannon.”
And yet the picture this capital presents at this great moment in German history still confounds me. Last evening, just before dark, I strolled down the Kurfiirstendamm. It was jammed with people meandering along pleasantly. The great sidewalk cafés on this broad, tree-lined avenue were filled with thousands, chatting quietly over their ersatz coffee or their ice-cream. I even noticed several smartly dressed women. Today, being the Sabbath and a warm and sunny June day, tens of thousands of people, mostly in family groups, betook themselves to the woods or the lakes on the outskirts of the city. The Tiergarten, I noticed, also was thronged. Everyone had that lazy, idle, happy-go-lucky Sunday holiday air.
One reason for this peculiar state of things, I suppose, is that the war has not been brought home to the people of Berlin. They read about it, or on the radio even hear the pounding of the big guns. But that’s all. Paris and London may feel in danger. Berlin doesn’t. The last air-raid alarm I can recall here was early last September. And then nothing happened.
BERLIN, June 3
BBC just announced that the Germans bombed Paris this afternoon. Maybe the Allies will drop a few on Berlin tonight.
Donald Heath, our chargé d’affaires, was called to the Wilhelmstrasse this noon and handed a copy of a press release in which the German government stated it had information from confidential sources that the British secret service planned to sink three American liners—the President Roosevelt and Manhattan now en route to New York with American citizens, and the Washington en route to Bordeaux to bring back a further batch of American refugees. The Germans informed the American government through this press release—a curious diplomatic procedure—that strict orders have been dispatched to all German naval commanders instructing them not to molest any of the three American ships.
An official statement in the release said: “The Reich government expects the American government to take all necessary measures to frustrate such a crime as the British contemplate perpetrating.”
The German “theory” is that if the ships are sunk the Americans will blame the Germans. Something very suspicious about this. What is to prevent the Germans from torpedoing these American vessels themselves and then crying to the skies that the British did it and that Berlin had even gone out of its way to warn Washington beforehand that the British would do it. Submarine periscopes are very difficult to identify.
BERLIN, June 4
The great battle of Flanders and Artois is over. The German army today entered Dunkirk and the remaining Allied troops—about forty thousand—surrendered. The German High Command in an official communiqué says the battle will go down in history “as the greatest battle of destruction of all time.” German losses for the western offensive, as given out tonight, are said to be: dead—10,252; missing—8,467; wounded—42,523; planes lost—432. All of which is very surprising. Only three days ago the military people tipped us that the losses would soon be given out, and that they were approximately 35,000 to 40,000 dead; 150,000 to 160,000 wounded. But most Germans will believe any figures they are given.
The communiqué speaks of Allied losses: 1,200,000 prisoners, counting the Belgians and the Dutch. And a whole navy destroyed, including five cruisers and seven destroyers sunk, and ten cruisers and twenty-four destroyers damaged. It also claims the German navy did not lose a single vessel.
Paris says 50 killed, 150 injured in yesterday’s German air-raid. BBC says the Parisians are demanding revenge. But no planes came over here last night; none so far tonight….
I’m worried about Tess and Baby. She called this afternoon, said she’d at last got passage on the Washington, but that it would not call at Genoa. She must get it at Bordeaux. But she’s advised not to cross France with the French in their present panicky mood. The railroad near Lyon which she must take has been bombed twice this week by the Germans. And she would still prefer to stay on.
BERLIN, June 6
The church bells rang, and all the flags were out today, by order of Hitler, to celebrate the victory in Flanders. There is no real elation over the victory discernible in the people here. No emotion of any kind. In grandiose proclamations to the army and the people, Hitler announced that today a new offensive was being launched in the west. So far no details are available here, but the BBC says the offensive is on a two-hundred-kilometre front from Abbeville to Soissons, with the biggest German pressure along the Somme-Aisne Canal.
I’ve heard here that the Allies have been bombing Munich and Frankfurt the last few nights. But Berlin is never told of these enemy air-raids. No one here feels the war as yet.
BERLIN, June 7
The Germans are keeping very mum about their new offensive on the Somme. High Command simply states that the so-called Weygand line has been broken through on the entire front. Strange, though, that no details are given; no place names at all. No special war communiqués tonight. Can it be that the drive isn’t going so well?
Our Ambassador to Belgium, Cudahy, arrived here today. He confirms what I was told a few days ago, that the Belgians have food for not more than fifty days.
I took the day off from the war yesterday. I walked for hours in the Grunewald, swam in the Havel, and found a neat little restaurant in the woods which produced a surprisingly good beefsteak. After lunch I walked, sun-bathed, swam some more.
BERLIN, June 8
Still no news here of the offensive, although it’s at the end of its fourth day. The High Command merely states that it is continuing successfully, but gives no details, no place names. One almost dares to think…
BERLIN, June 9
The High Command broke its reserve about the great offensive with a bang this afternoon. It says the French south of the Somme and in the Oise district have been beaten all along the line. It talks about the German troops driving towards the lower Seine, which is a hell of a way forward from the Somme, where they started four days ago. BBC at six tonight confirmed this. Weygand issues another order of the day to his men to hold. But there is something desperate in it.
The Germans also announce: “This morning on a further part of the front in France a new offensive has started.” Weygand reveals it’s on a front from Reims to the Argonne. The Germans are now hurling themselves forward on a two-hundred-mile front from the sea to the Argonne. No drive in World War I was on this scale!
The High Command also states that Germany’s only two battleships, the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst have put to sea and have gone to the relief of the German forces driven out of Narvik a couple of weeks ago Hand it to the Germans for their daring, their sense of surprise. How could the British fleet allow two battleships to get up to Narvik? High Command says the two have already sunk the British aircraft-carrier Glorious, the 21,000-ton transport Orama, and an oil tanker of 9,100 tons. Another instance of the Germans taking a chance—taking the initiative. The Allies seem to take neither.
BERLIN, June 10
Italy is in the war.
She has stabbed France in the back at the moment when the Germans are at the gates of Paris, and France appears to be down.
At six o’clock this evening, just as people here were tuning in on their radios to hear the latest news of the German army’s onslaught on Paris, the announcer said: “In one hour the Duce will address the Italian people and the world. All German stations will broadcast his speech.”
An hour later they did—with a German radio commentator conveniently at hand (he’d been sent to Rome last Saturday, June 8, for the job) at the Piazza Venezia to describe the tumult.
We got wind of it early in the afternoon when we were convoked for a special press conference at the Foreign Office at seven p.m., to hear Ribbentrop make a declaration. At four thirty p.m., at the Propaganda Ministry, we were shown the English propag
anda film The Lion Has Wings. Even making allowances for the fact that it was turned out last fall, I thought it very bad. Supercilious. Silly. At the six p.m. press conference we were given another dose of the weekly German news-reel. Again the ruined towns, the dead humans, the putrefying horses’ carcasses. One shot showed the charred remains of a British pilot amid the wreckage of his burnt plane. Most Germans there seemed to get a sadistic pleasure from these pictures of death and destruction. A few I know, however, didn’t. A few react still like human beings.
I went over to the Foreign Office about seven and soon found myself crowding into the Hall of whatever-it-is. Designed to hold about fifty people, five hundred had already jammed their way in. It was a hot day, the windows were sealed tight, and hot Klieg lights were burning so that Ribbentrop could be properly photographed. In one corner of the room the most screeching radio I ever heard was screaming out Mussolini’s speech at the Piazza Venezia in Rome. I caught just enough of it to learn that he was announcing Italy’s decision to enter the war on the side of Germany. The combination of this tin-pan racket and the foul, hot air, and the photographers scrapping and most of the newspapermen standing there sweating, and of some other things, was enough for me. S. and I pushed our way out before Ribbentrop arrived. I went back to Joe’s room, tuned in on the radio, and got from Rome a rather comical English translation of the Duce’s words.
About the same time there was a comedy act in front of the Italian Embassy, which Ralph described to me. Two or three thousand Italian Fascists, residents of Berlin, shouted themselves hoarse in the little street that runs off the Tiergarten past the Italian Embassy. The Germans had rigged up loud-speakers, so that the mob could hear the Duce’s words. Later Ribbentrop and Alfieri, the new Italian Ambassador, appeared on the balcony, grinned, and made brief inane speeches, Ralph reported.
Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941 Page 34
