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

by William L. Shirer

  Julius Streicher, once a sinister power in the country, the man who terrorized his Gau of Franconia with a horsewhip, has also, as previously noted, passed out of the picture because he couldn’t keep his finances straight.

  If Hitler makes the political decisions, be it noted that he also calls the tune in the army. General von Brauchitsch, the able but not brilliant commander-in-chief of the army, occasionally speaks up, though not often. Keitel is little more than liaison man between Hitler and the General Staff. General Halder, chief of the General Staff, is probably the most brainy man in the army, but is allowed no credit by Hitler, who encourages talk that he himself personally directs both the tactics and the strategy of the great campaigns. General von Reichenau has told me personally that this is true, but I doubt it. On the other hand Hitler no doubt makes the major decisions of where the next blow will fall and when. One of his chief military advisers, very powerful in the army—though completely unknown to the German public—is General Alfred Jodi, chief of Hitler’s own military staff.

  There is one final question to be tackled in these rambling conclusions: does Hitler contemplate war with the United States? I have argued this question many hours with many Germans and not a few Americans here and have pondered it long and carefully. I am firmly convinced that he does contemplate it and that if he wins in Europe and Africa he will in the end launch it unless we are prepared to give up our way of life and adapt ourselves to a subservient place in his totalitarian scheme of things.

  For to Hitler there will not be room in this small world for two great systems of life, government, and trade.31 For this reason I think he also will attack Russia, probably before he tackles the Americas.

  It is not only a question of conflict between the totalitarian and democratic ways of life, but also between Pan-German imperialism, whose aim is world domination, and the fundamental urge of most of the other nations on the earth to live as they please—that is, free and independent.

  And just as Hitler’s Germany can never dominate the continent of Europe as long as Britain holds out, neither can it master the world as long as the United States stands unafraid in its path. It is a long-term, fundamental conflict of dynamic forces. The clash is as inevitable as that of two planets hurtling inexorably through the heavens towards each other.

  As a matter of fact, it may come sooner than almost all Americans at home imagine. An officer of the High Command somewhat shocked me the other day while we were discussing the matter. He said: “You think Roosevelt can pick the moment most advantageous to America and Britain for coming into the war. Did you ever stop to think that Hitler, a master at timing, may choose the moment for war with America—a moment which he thinks will give him the advantage?”

  I must admit I never did.

  As far as I can learn, Hitler and the High Command do not contemplate any such move within the next few months. They still hold that they can bring Britain to her knees before American aid becomes really effective. They talk now of winning the war by the middle of next summer, at the latest. But there are a few in high places who argue that if Hitler actually declares war (he hasn’t declared any wars yet) against America, he can reap decided advantages. First, it would be the signal for widespread sabotage by thousands of Nazi agents from coast to coast, which would not only demoralize the United States but greatly reduce its shipments to Britain. Second, in case of an actual declaration of war, they argue, our army and especially our navy, alarmed at what Japan might do (according to the tripartite pact it would have to go to war against us), would hold all war supplies at home, supplies that otherwise would go to Britain. Third, they believe that there would be a great increase in American internal strife, with the isolationists blaming Roosevelt for the state of things, as they blamed him for the Three-Power pact. The third point obviously is false thinking, as a war declaration by Germany would destroy American isolationist sentiment in America in ten seconds.

  The Lindberghs and their friends laugh at the idea of Germany ever being able to attack the United States. The Germans welcome their laughter and hope more Americans will laugh, just as they encouraged the British friends of the Lindberghs to laugh off the very idea that Germany would ever turn on Britain.

  How would Germany ever attack the United States? I have no authoritative information of German military plans. But I have heard Germans suggest the following possibilities:

  If they got all or part of the British navy or have time to build in Europe’s shipyards (whose total capacity is far beyond ours) a fairly strong navy, they would attempt to destroy in the Atlantic that part of our fleet which was not engaging the Japanese in the Pacific. This done, they could move an army and air force in stages across the North Atlantic, basing first on Iceland, then Greenland, then Labrador, then Newfoundland and thence down the Atlantic seaboard. As the bases were moved westward, the air armada would penetrate farther, first towards and then into the United States. This sounds fantastic, perhaps, but at the present time we have no great air force to oppose such a move.

  Most Germans talk more convincingly of a move across the South Atlantic. They assume that Germany will have the French port of Dakar from which to jump off for South America. They assume too that the main United States fleet will be engaged in the Pacific. From Dakar to Brazil is a much shorter distance than from Hampton Roads to Brazil. A German naval force based on the African port could feasibly operate in Brazilian waters, but these waters are almost too far for an American fleet to be effective in. Transports could get there from Dakar before transports from America arrived. Fifth-column action by the hundreds of thousands of Germans in Brazil and Argentina would paralyse any defence which those countries might try to put up. South America could thus, think these Germans, be taken fairly easily. And once in South America, they argue, the battle is won.

  BERLIN, December 2

  Only three more days!

  BERLIN, December 3

  A round of farewell parties which I would just as soon avoid, but can’t. An amusing incident at one of them when a Foreign Office official, more decent than most, got rather in his cups and said he had long wanted to show me something. Whereupon he took out a card showing he was a member of the secret police! I must say I hadn’t suspected him, though I knew some of his colleagues were members.

  The Foreign Office still holding up my passport and exit visa, which worries me. Did my last broadcast from Berlin tonight and fear I swallowed a couple of times.

  Before I went on the air Flannery called from Paris. He was quite excited about a big story he said would break day after tomorrow there. He evidently had a German official at his back, for I could not get out of him a hint as to what was up. The rumour here is that Hitler is to offer France some sort of a semi-permanent peace settlement, install Laval in power in Vichy, making Pétain a mere figurehead, in return for France’s joining the Axis and entering the fight against Britain.

  BERLIN, December 4

  Got my passport and official permission to leave. Nothing to do now but pack. Wally [Deuel], who is as anxious to get away as I am, left today. He was to go by plane, but the weather was bad and the Germans, who’ve lost three big passenger planes in the last three weeks—a good friend of mine was killed on one of them—sent him as far as Stuttgart by train. Hope I have better luck. I must leave all my books and most of my clothes here, as baggage accommodation on the plane is limited. Ed Murrow promises to meet me at Lisbon. My last night in a black-out. After tonight the lights… and civilization!

  IN A PLANE, BERLIN-STUTTGART, December 5

  It was still dark and a blizzard was blowing when I left the Adlon for the airport at Tempelhof this morning. There was some question whether we would take off, but at nine thirty a.m., a few minutes ago, we finally did. I don’t like this weather to fly in….

  DRESDEN AIRPORT. LATER.—We’ve just had a rather close call. We were about two thirds of the way to Stuttgart when our big Junkers thirty-two-passenger plane suddenly began to ice up.
Through the window I could see ice forming on the wing and the two starboard motors. The stewardess, though she tried to hide it bravely, got frightened, and when a stewardess on a plane gets frightened, so do I. Perspiration began to pour down the forehead of a Lufthansa official sitting opposite me. He looked very worried. Clumps of ice breaking off from the motors hurled against the side of the cabin with a terrifying crack. The pilot, hardly able to control the plane, tried to climb, but the ice was too heavy. Finally he turned back and dived and slipped from 2,500 metres to 1,000 metres (roughly, from 8,200 to 3,200 feet).

  “Can’t go lower or we’ll hit a mountain,” the Lufthansa man explained to me.

  “So, so…” I said.

  “Can’t use the radio because the blizzard blots it out,” he continued.

  “Perhaps we could land some place,” I suggested.

  “Not around here,” he said. “Ground visibility is zero.”

  “So, so…” I said.

  The plane tossed and dipped. Pretty soon, by the dial, I saw we were dropping below 1,000 metres. The weight of the ice was getting too much. The next fifteen minutes were an age. And then out of the mist and snow we dived towards a road. It was a two-lane Autobahn. We flew along fifty feet above it, but sometimes when we hit a flurry of snow or a fog spot, the pilot, momentarily blinded, zoomed up, afraid of grazing the trees or a hill. And then at eleven thirty we were skimming into an airport. It turned out to be Dresden, which is as far from Stuttgart as Berlin, if not farther. It was nice to feel one’s feet on the ground. The two pilots, when they stepped out of their cabin, looked very shaky. Over lunch here I overheard one telling the airport superintendent that he had had to fight like hell to keep his machine in the air. Weird: we had no more stepped into the lunchroom here than the noon news broadcast was switched on and the first item of news told of an American plane cracking up near the Chicago airport with several fatal casualties. It’s just an unlucky day, I guess.

  IN A PLANE, STUTTGART—LYON—MAESEILLE—BARCELONA, December 6

  A slight Katzenjammer… last night the excitement at leaving Germany, the close shave in the plane, the nice bars in Stuttgart…. Hallet Johnson, counsellor of our Legation in Stockholm, shows up in the plane. He says I’ve been sleeping for an hour—ever since we left Stuttgart—and that this is his first flight and that we’ve been flying blind through the clouds and… We refuel at Lyon. The German air force is in control of the field, though this is in unoccupied France. On one side of the field a large number of dismantled French war planes piled up; on the other side a hundred French planes lined up, in perfect condition—some of those planes the French never used to fight with…. A German Foreign Office official with the face of a crow looks at the junked planes and sneers: “La Belle France! And how we’ve destroyed her! For three hundred years, at least!”… Nearing Barcelona we skirt the coast, and suddenly off the starboard side I see our little Spanish village, Lloret de Mar, the houses white in the afternoon sun against the green hills. A long time….

  LATER. BARCELONA.—Fascism has brought chaos and starvation here. This is not the happy, care-free Barcelona I used to know. On the Paseo, on the Ramblas, on the Plaza de Cataluña, gaunt, hungry, bitter faces moving silently about. At the Ritz Hotel, which we reach on a rickety farm wagon from the air station, because there is no oil for cars, I run into a couple of friends.

  “God, what has happened here?” I ask. “I know the civil war left things in bad shape. But this…”

  “There is no food,” they reply. “There is no organization. The jails are jammed and overflowing. If we told you about the filth, the overcrowding, the lack of food in them, you would not believe us. But no one really eats any more. We merely keep alive.”

  At the airport the Spanish officials keep us cooped up in a tiny room all afternoon, though we are only a few. They, too, seem paralysed—incapable of the least bit of organizing. The chief officer of police has not washed his hands for a week. His main preoccupation is our money. We count over and over for him our silver, our paper money, our travel cheques. Finally, as darkness falls, he lets us go.

  Wally comes in on a German plane from Stuttgart about an hour after we have arrived. He has a tale to tell of leaving Germany. His plane had not gone from Berlin to Stuttgart and he had made the journey by train, thus losing a day. That made his exit visa run out before he could leave German soil. No official in Stuttgart at first would take the responsibility of issuing a new one. He must return to Berlin for that. To return to Berlin meant that he would have to begin all over again—wait for a new exit visa, wait for new visas for Spain and Portugal, wait months for a place in the plane from Berlin to Lisbon and more months for a place on the plane or boat from Lisbon to America. He saw his return to America postponed indefinitely, perhaps until the end of the war. At the last minute the secret police finally allowed him to depart.

  ESTORIL, NEAR LISBON, December 7

  Lisbon and light and freedom and sanity at last! We flew from Barcelona to Madrid against a hundred-kilometre-an-hour gale. The pilot of the slow old Junkers-52 thought for a while he would have to turn back because of lack of fuel, but he finally made it. We bumped the whole way over the mountains, most of which we cleared by only a few feet. Air pockets so bad that two passengers hit the ceiling, one of them being knocked out by the blow.

  The chaos at the Madrid airport was even worse than at Barcelona. Franco’s officers ran madly round in circles. The authorities decided that because of the gale no planes could take off. Then they decided one of three scheduled flights could be made to Lisbon. They told me I could go, then that I couldn’t go, then that I must catch the four p.m. train, then that the train had left. All the while shouting officials and passengers milling about the place. There was a restaurant, but it had no food. In the end they called the passengers for the Lisbon plane. Only a group of Spanish officials and the German diplomat would be allowed to go. I asked for my baggage. No one knew where it was. Then an official came tearing up to me and tugged me towards a plane. No opportunity to ask about baggage or where the plane was going. In a minute we were off, flying over the ruins of the University Cité, and then down the Tagus Valley until dusk, when Lisbon came into view. At the airport the Portuguese authorities held me up a couple of hours because I could not show a ticket for New York, but finally they let me go. In Lisbon the hotels were full, no rooms to be had—the city full of refugees—but here I have found one. A good dinner tonight with some local wines and a stroll through town to stare at the lights and now to bed, feeling a great load slipping off. Ed [Murrow] arrives tomorrow from London and we shall have a mighty reunion.

  ESTORIL, December 8

  Unable to sleep—a sudden toothache, the first in my life, and now I shall pay for my neglect though it was impossible to do anything in Germany, where the shortage of gold and other metals has reduced dentists to plugging teeth with a tin alloy. But there was a glorious southern sun and I spent the morning tramping through the municipal garden, delighted that so many flowers were still in bloom, and then along the beach, where great blue rollers were coming in from the sea, breaking furiously into foam on the sun-strewn sands. The tranquillity, the peacefulness, the soft rhythm of the sea were tremendous. They were too much, they demanded an adjustment that could not be made in a morning. I fled, hailed a taxi, and went into Lisbon to wait for Ed’s plane. The suspicious Britishers at the air-line would not say when the London plane was coming in or whether it was coming, apparently for fear the information in some miraculous way would get to the Germans, who would shoot it down. I waited until dark and then returned to Estoril.

  LATER.—Ed finally arrived and it was grand. Since ten p.m. we have been talking a year of the war out of our systems and now at five a.m. to bed, pleasantly exhausted. Considering the bombings he has taken and the killing pace of his job, Ed looked better than I had expected—in fact, right fit.

  ESTORIL, December 9

  We lolled in the sun on the beach.
Ed says the bombing of Britain has been severe, but not so bad as the Germans have boasted. Besides London—Coventry, Bristol, Southampton, and Birmingham have taken terrible poundings, but it has been the centre of these cities—the churches, the public buildings, the private dwellings—that has been hardest hit. The curtailment of war industrial output, Ed thinks, has been due not so much to physical damage of actual factory plant, but to the disorganization of the cities where the workers live and where electric power, water, and gas facilities are concentrated. The British argue, he says, that the Luftwaffe in its night attacks does not aim at factories, but has two other main objectives: first, to strike terror in the civilian population; second, to knock out essential public services and thus paralyse the great cities. I think this is correct.

  Ed has good tidings about British morale, about which we in Berlin were a little doubtful. He says it’s superb.

  ESTORIL, December 10

  Pat Kelly, the genial and able local manager of Pan American Airways, confides that I have small chance of getting home for Christmas if I wait for a Clipper. The service is stalled because of ground swells at Horta, which prevent the big ships from taking off. He advises taking the boat. Since this will be my first Christmas at home in sixteen years, if I make it, I went in this afternoon to the offices of the Export Lines to book on the Excambion, leaving Friday. The office was jammed with a mob of refugees—jittery, desperate, tragic victims of Hitler’s fury—begging for a place—any place—on the next ship. But as one of the company officials explained to me, there are three thousand of them in Lisbon and the boats only carry one hundred and fifty passengers and there is only one boat a week. He promised me a place on the Excambion, sailing Friday the 13th, though it may only be a mattress in the writing room.