Berlin Diary

by William L. Shirer

  “That’s why the German people I talked with in the streets of Cologne this morning, and in Berlin this evening, believe there’ll be peace. As a matter of fact, what do you think the new slogan in Berlin is tonight? It’s in the evening papers. It’s this: ‘With Hitler and Chamberlain for peace!’ And the Angriff adds: ‘Hitler and Chamberlain are working night and day for peace.’”

  So Berlin is optimistic tonight for peace. Unable to telephone or wire Hindus in Prague tonight to give him his time schedule. All communication with Prague cut off. Thank God for that Czech transmitter.4

  BERLIN, September 25

  Hitler to make a speech tomorrow evening at the Sportpalast. Seems he is furious at the reports from Prague, Paris, and London that his Godesberg Memorandum goes beyond his original agreement with Chamberlain at Berchtesgaden. He claims not. No war fever, not even any anti-Czech feeling, discernible here on this quiet Sabbath day. In the old days on the eve of wars, I believe, crowds used to demonstrate angrily before the embassies of the enemy countries. Today I walked past the Czech Legation. Not a soul outside, not even a policeman. Warm and sunny, the last summer Sunday of the year probably, and half the population of Berlin seems to have spent it at the near-by lakes or in the woods of the Grunewald. Hard to believe there will be war.

  BERLIN, September 26

  Hitler has finally burned his last bridges. Shouting and shrieking in the worst state of excitement I’ve ever seen him in, he stated in the Sportpalast tonight that he would have his Sudetenland by October 1—next Saturday, today being Monday. If Beneš doesn’t hand it over to him he will go to war, this Saturday. Curious audience, the fifteen thousand party Bonzen packed into the hall. They applauded his words with the usual enthusiasm. Yet there was no war fever. The crowd was good-natured, as if it didn’t realize what his words meant. The old man full of more venom than even he has ever shown, hurling personal insults at Beneš. Twice Hitler screamed that this is absolutely his last territorial demand in Europe. Speaking of his assurances to Chamberlain, he said: “I further assured him that when the Czechs have reconciled themselves with their other minorities, the Czech state no longer interests me and that, if you please, I would give him another guarantee: We do not want any Czechs.” At the end Hitler had the impudence to place responsibility for peace or war exclusively on Beneš!

  I broadcast the scene from a seat in the balcony just above Hitler. He’s still got that nervous tic. All during his speech he kept cocking his shoulder, and the opposite leg from the knee down would bounce up. Audience couldn’t see it, but I could. As a matter of fact, for the first time in all the years I’ve observed him he seemed tonight to have completely lost control of himself. When he sat down after his talk, Goebbels sprang up and shouted: “One thing is sure: 1918 will never be repeated!” Hitler looked up to him, a wild, eager expression in his eyes, as if those were the words which he had been searching for all evening and hadn’t quite found. He leaped to his feet and with a fanatical fire in his eyes that I shall never forget brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pounding down on the table and yelled with all the power in his mighty lungs: “Ja!” Then he slumped into his chair exhausted.

  BERLIN, September 27

  A motorized division rolled through the city’s streets just at dusk this evening in the direction of the Czech frontier. I went out to the corner of the Linden where the column was turning down the Wilhelmstrasse, expecting to see a tremendous demonstration. I pictured the scenes I had read of in 1914 when the cheering throngs on this same street tossed flowers at the marching soldiers, and the girls ran up and kissed them. The hour was undoubtedly chosen today to catch the hundreds of thousands of Berliners pouring out of their offices at the end of the day’s work. But they ducked into the subways, refused to look on, and the handful that did stood at the curb in utter silence unable to find a word of cheer for the flower of their youth going away to the glorious war. It has been the most striking demonstration against war I’ve ever seen. Hitler himself reported furious. I had not been standing long at the corner when a policeman came up the Wilhelmstrasse from the direction of the Chancellery and shouted to the few of us standing at the curb that the Führer was on his balcony reviewing the troops. Few moved. I went down to have a look. Hitler stood there, and there weren’t two hundred people in the street or the great square of the Wilhelmsplatz. Hitler looked grim, then angry, and soon went inside, leaving his troops to parade by unreviewed. What I’ve seen tonight almost rekindles a little faith in the German people. They are dead set against war.

  Tess, with baby, off today from Cherbourg for America on a voyage she had booked months ago. On the phone last night from Paris she said that France was mobilizing and it was not sure the boat train would go. No word today, so suppose it did.

  BERLIN, September 28

  There is to be no war! Hitler has invited Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier to meet him in Munich tomorrow. The latter three will rescue Hitler from his limb and he will get his Sudetenland without war, if a couple of days later than he boasted. The people in the streets greatly relieved, and if I judge correctly, the people in the Wilhelmstrasse and the Bendlerstrasse (War Department) also. Leaving right after my broadcast tonight for Munich.

  MUNICH, September 30

  It’s all over. At twelve thirty this morning—thirty minutes after midnight—Hitler, Mussolini, Chamberlain, and Daladier signed a pact turning over Sudetenland to Germany. The German occupation begins tomorrow, Saturday, October 1, and will be completed by October 10. Thus the two “democracies” even assent to letting Hitler get by with his Sportpalast boast that he would get his Sudetenland by October 1. He gets everything he wanted, except that he has to wait a few days longer for all of it. His waiting ten short days has saved the peace of Europe—a curious commentary on this sick, decadent continent.

  So far as I’ve been able to observe during these last, strangely unreal twenty-four hours, Daladier and Chamberlain never pressed for a single concession from Hitler. They never got together alone once and made no effort to present some kind of common “democratic” front to the two Caesars. Hitler met Mussolini early yesterday morning at Kufstein and they made their plans. Daladier and Chamberlain arrived by separate planes and didn’t even deem it useful to lunch together yesterday to map out their strategy, though the two dictators did.

  Czechoslovakia, which is asked to make all the sacrifices so that Europe may have peace, was not consulted here at any stage of the talks. Their two representatives, Dr. Mastny, the intelligent and honest Czech Minister in Berlin, and a Dr. Masaryk of the Prague Foreign Office, were told at one thirty a.m. that Czechoslovakia would have to accept, told not by Hitler, but by Chamberlain and Daladier! Their protests, we hear, were practically laughed off by the elder statesman. Chamberlain, looking more like some bird—like the black vultures I’ve seen over the Parsi dead in Bombay—looked particularly pleased with himself when he returned to the Regina Palace Hotel after the signing early this morning, though he was a bit sleepy, pleasantly sleepy.

  Daladier, on the other hand, looked a completely beaten and broken man. He came over to the Regina to say good-bye to Chamberlain. A bunch of us were waiting as he came down the stairs. Someone asked, or started to ask: “Monsieur le President, are you satisfied with the agreement…?” He turned as if to say something, but he was too tired and defeated and the words did not come out and he stumbled out the door in silence. The French say he fears to return to Paris, thinks a hostile mob will get him. Can only hope they’re right. For France has sacrificed her whole Continental position and lost her main prop in eastern Europe. For France this day has been disastrous.

  How different Hitler at two this morning! After being blocked from the Führerhaus all evening, I finally broke in just as he was leaving. Followed by Göring, Ribbentrop, Goebbels, Hess, and Keitel, he brushed past me like the conqueror he is this morning. I noticed his swagger. The tic was gone! As for Mussolini, he pulled out early, cocky as a rooste
r.

  Incidentally, I’ve been badly scooped this night. Max Jordan of NBC got on the air a full hour ahead of me with the text of the agreement—one of the worst beatings I’ve ever taken. Because of his company’s special position in Germany, he was allowed exclusive use of Hitler’s radio studio in the Führerhaus, where the conference has been taking place. Wiegand, who also was in the house, tells me Max cornered Sir Horace Wilson of the British delegation as he stepped out of the conference room, procured an English text from him, rushed to the Führer’s studio, and in a few moments was on the air. Unable to use this studio on the spot, I stayed close to the only other outlet, the studio of the Munich station, and arranged with several English and American friends to get me the document, if possible immediately after the meeting itself, if not from one of the delegations. Demaree Bess was first to arrive with a copy, but, alas, we were late. New York kindly phoned about two thirty this morning to tell me not to mind—damned decent of them. Actually at eleven thirty p.m. I had gone on the air announcing that an agreement had been reached. I gave them all the essential details of the accord, stating that the occupation would begin Saturday, that it would be completed in ten days, et cetera. But I should have greatly liked to have had the official text first. Fortunately for CBS, Ed Murrow in London was the first to flash the official news to America that the agreement had been signed thirty minutes after midnight. He picked it up from the Munich radio station in the midst of a talk.

  LATER.—Chamberlain, apparently realizing his diplomatic annihilation, has pulled a very clever face-saving stunt. He saw Hitler again this morning before leaving and afterwards a joint communiqué was issued. Essential part: “We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval accord as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.” And a final paragraph saying they will consult about further questions which may concern the two countries and are “determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference and thus to contribute to the assurance of peace in Europe.”

  LATER. On Train, Munich-Berlin.—Most of the leading German editors on the train and tossing down the champagne and not trying to disguise any more their elation over Hitler’s terrific victory over Britain and France. On the diner Halfeld of the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, Otto Kriegk of the Nachtausgabe, Dr. Boehmer, the foreign press chief of the Propaganda Ministry, gloating over it, buying out all the champagne in the diner, gloating, boasting, bragging…. When a German feels big he feels big. Shall have two hours in Berlin this evening to get my army passes and a bath and then off by night train to Passau to go into Sudetenland with the German army—a sad assignment for me.

  [LATER.—And Chamberlain will go back to London and from the balcony of 10 Downing Street that night will boast: “My good friends, this is the second time in our history” (do the crowds shouting: “Good old Neville” and singing “For he’s a jolly good fellow” remember Disraeli, the Congress of Berlin, 1878?) “that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time.” Peace with honour! And Czechoslovakia? And only Duff Cooper will resign from the Cabinet, saying: “It was not for Serbia or Belgium we fought in 1914… but… in order that one great power should not be allowed, in disregard of treaty obligations and the laws of nations and against all morality, to dominate by brutal force the continent of Europe…. Throughout these days the Prime Minister has believed in addressing Herr Hitler with the language of sweet reasonableness. I have believed he was more open to the language of the mailed fist….” Only Winston Churchill, a voice in the wilderness all these years, will say, addressing the Commons: “We have sustained a total, unmitigated defeat…. Do not let us blind ourselves. We must expect that all the countries of central and eastern Europe will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Nazi power…. The road down the Danube… the road to the Black Sea and Turkey, has been broken. It seems to me that all the countries of Mittel Europa and the Danube Valley, one after the other, will be drawn into the vast system of Nazi politics, not only power military politics, but power economic politics, radiating from Berlin.” Churchill—the lone, unheeded prophet in the British land.]

  ON TRAIN, REGENSBURG-BERLIN, October 2

  At Regensburg before dawn yesterday, then by bus to Passau on the Danube, and from there by car with a German General Staff major following the troops picnic-marching into Zone I of the Sudetenland. Back after dark last night in a pouring rain to Passau, where the military censors refused to let me broadcast; a train to Regensburg arriving there at midnight and filing my story by telephone to Press Wireless in Paris to be read in New York, since the RRG in Berlin says the military have put a Verbot on all broadcasts, including their own, of the occupation. No plane to Berlin, so this train and will broadcast from there tonight.

  BERLIN. LATER.—Military had not yet lifted their Verbot, so had to read another piece I had written on train on the political significance of Hitler’s great victory at Munich, quoting an editorial by Rudolf Kircher, the only intelligent and courageous editor left in Nazi Germany, in this morning’s Frankfurter Zeitung wherein he frankly states the advantages of threatening force and war and how Hitler knew all the time that the democracies were afraid of war. When I returned to the hotel, some general in charge of the military censorship at the German radio was on the phone saying he had just read my piece on the occupation, that he liked it, that he had had to suppress all the accounts of the German radio reporters so far, but that I could now broadcast mine. Called Paul White in New York, but he said the crisis was over and that people at home wanted to forget it and to take a rest. Which is all right with me. Can stand some sleep and a change from these Germans, so truculent and impossible now.

  BERLIN, October 3

  Phoned Ed Murrow in London. He as depressed as am I. We shall drown our sorrows in Paris day after tomorrow. From my window in the Adlon I see them dismantling the anti-aircraft gun on the roof of the I. G. Farben company across the Linden. Thus ends the crisis. Little things to remember: the characters in the drama: the dignity of Beneš throughout; Hitler the five times I saw him; the bird, Chamberlain; the broken little man, Daladier, who seems destined to fall down (as on February 6, 1934) each time he is in a hole. To remember too: the mine at a bridge over a little creek near Krumau which might have blown us to bits had our German army car gone two feet farther; the bravery of the Czechs in Prague the night war and bombs at dawn seemed certain; the look of fear in the faces of the German burghers in the Wilhelmstrasse the night the motorized division swept by and war seemed certain to them, and then the delirious joy of the citizens in Munich—and Berlin—when they learned on Friday that it was not only peace but victory; the beaten look of the Sudeten Germans after the Czechs put down their uprising, and the change in their faces a fortnight later when the Reichswehr marched in; and the burgomaster of the Sudeten town of Unterwaldau, Herr Schwarzbauer (Mr. Black Peasant), taking me aside from the German officers and my saying: “What is the worst thing the Czechs did to you, Herr Burgomaster?” and his saying it was frightful, unbelievable, that the Czechs had taken away his radio so he couldn’t hear the Führer’s words and could any crime be more terrible!

  PARIS, October 8

  Paris a frightful place, completely surrendered to defeatism with no inkling of what has happened to France. At Fouquet’s, at Maxim’s, fat bankers and businessmen toasting Peace with rivers of champagne. But even the waiters, taxi-drivers, who used to be sound, gushing about how wonderful it is that war has been avoided, that it would have been a crime, that they fought in one war and that was enough. That would be okay if the Germans, who also fought in one war, felt the same way, but they don’t. The guts of France—France of the Marne and Verdun—where are they? Outside of Pierre Comer, no one at the Quai d’Orsay with any idea at all of the real Germany. The French Socialists, shot through with pacifism; the French Right, with the exception of a few like Henri de Kerillis, eithe
r fascists or defeatists. France makes no sense to me any more.

  Ed Murrow as gloomy as I am. We try to get it out of our systems by talking all night and popping champagne bottles and tramping the streets, but it will take more time, I guess. We agree on these things: that war is now more probable than ever, that it is likely to come after the next harvest, that Poland is obviously next on Hitler’s list (the blind stupidity of the Poles in this crisis, helping to carve up Czechoslovakia!), that we must get Warsaw to rig up a more powerful short-wave transmitter if they want the world to hear their side, and that we ought to build up a staff of American radio reporters. But honestly we have little head for business. Ed says American radio has done a superb job in reporting this crisis, but we don’t much care—about anything—and soon even the champagne becomes sickening. We depart.

  Run into Gallico. He is off on a tour of the capitals for material for his stories. I give him letters to the correspondents in each place, we dine at Maxim’s, but I cannot stand it any longer. Off in the morning for Geneva. Almost the first chance in a year to get reacquainted with Tess and Eileen. But they are off in America.