Despite Hitler’s increasingly belligerent tone, there were still plenty of Americans who wanted to believe he was no threat to them. It was hardly surprising that those who desperately wanted to keep their country out of another global conflagration should feel that way, and some American envoys could be counted among them. Shortly after the Munich Pact, Joseph Kennedy, the American ambassador in London, had floated the idea that democracies and dictatorships “could advantageously bend their energies toward solving common problems by an attempt to re-establish good relations on a world basis.” But it was surprising when Wiegand, Hearst’s veteran correspondent who had covered Germany since World War I, produced a major two-part article that encouraged exactly those kinds of illusions.
Writing in the April and May 1939 editions of Cosmopolitan, Wiegand offered a lengthy profile of Hitler, examining his personality and politics. The magazine claimed the author was “the undisputed dean of American foreign correspondents and one of the greatest reporters of our time,” citing as evidence Wiegand’s early contacts with Hitler, dating back to 1921. In particular, it explained how the correspondent was “more than a little psychic himself” to recognize so early that Hitler had to be taken seriously. “It takes genius to know genius,” it declared, with no trace of irony. “And a genius indeed is Karl von Wiegand.”
Wiegand’s first installment in the April issue described how Hitler had become “a veritable human meteor streaking the dark political skies of Europe—an ill omen to millions, a sign to other millions.” Like a meteor, Hitler “is being consumed by fires of his own being,” including “his unbelievably deep hatred for the Jews” and “his insatiable greed for ruthless power.” But Wiegand was also clearly in awe of what this strange figure he had first met in Munich had achieved. “Measuring his personal achievements, future historians may record Adolf Hitler as the political genius of this era, perhaps of this century,” he wrote. Nonetheless, he indicated that Hitler was acutely conscious that a climax was coming soon and his own life could be cut short. As a result, his actions were marked by “a fever of impatience, haste, hurry, drive,” which is “a state of mind in which any man may stumble.”
In his second installment in the May issue, however, Wiegand delivered an oddly reassuring message to his American readers: “Adolf Hitler is no physical menace to the United States except (1) in an agreement or alliance with Great Britain; (2) in the event that England should turn Fascist, or (3) if Nazi Germany should conquer England. The probability of any of these eventualities is remote.”
Hitler had demonstrated his own near psychic qualities by predicting that neither Britain nor France would fight to save Czechoslovakia, he added. When it came to what the German leader would do next, Wiegand declared that he was no prophet—but that didn’t prevent him from making a sweeping prediction. “Hitler has achieved without war what no other man has accomplished for centuries,” he wrote. “As I know Der Führer, he will not in his senses stake those achievements and his unique place in history on the uncertain gamble of a deliberately planned aggressive war.”
Suddenly, just as war was looming, Wiegand was sounding less like a seasoned correspondent and more like one of those naïve American visitors to Germany that Howard K. Smith had written about—stuck in stage-one or stage-two thinking about what Hitler and his movement truly represented.
10
“On Our Island”
On April 20, 1939, AP bureau chief Lochner dutifully set out to observe the lavish celebration of Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. “I sat for four hours in the reviewing stand watching the biggest military display in German history,” he wrote his daughter and son back in Chicago on April 26. “You can imagine how a pacifist like myself falls for that stuff!” Among the troops on parade was Wolfgang Wosseng, who had worked as an “office boy” for Lochner and was then called up as a Potsdam grenadier. While everyone else was wildly cheering, Lochner couldn’t help thinking that Wosseng could be forced to shoot at similar young men in different uniforms very soon. “If that parade is a sample, I tell you the next war will be more terrible than anything the world has known,” he continued in his letter. “The war of 1914 will have been child’s play compared to this.”
Unlike Wiegand, Lochner was far from convinced that Hitler would stop with the easy conquests, avoiding the fatal step that would trigger a new conflagration. “I fear the Germans make one big mistake: they completely underestimate the potential forces arrayed against them,” he explained to his children. Warning that it is always dangerous to underestimate one’s opponents, he added: “Queer that the top leaders in Germany should repeat that mistake of 1914–1918! Remember how they used to scoff at the possibility that America could ship troops across the ocean? Now they drill into the German people that England is decrepit and won’t fight; that France is torn with domestic strife; that the U.S.A. is a big bag of wind, etc., etc. A great pity!”
But Hitler and his entourage weren’t the only ones to indulge in wishful thinking. The reports by Truman Smith and others in the U.S. Embassy in Berlin about the rapidly growing strength of the German military were often greeted with skepticism in Washington, and the authors viewed as alarmists. Still, there was a realization that war was a growing possibility. By early summer, Moffat, the State Department’s Chief of the Division of European Affairs, put the chances of a new conflict at 50-50.
For American correspondents and officials, the key question was how well prepared were the countries Germany was most likely to attack—first of all, Poland. Knickerbocker, the former Berlin correspondent who was still traveling around Europe, recalled that everyone wanted to know whether the Poles could hold out long enough for the French to mobilize an offensive and come to their rescue. “Optimistic Poles said they could hold out for three years; pessimistic Poles said one year,” he wrote. “The French thought the Poles could hold out for six months.”
On August 18, Moffat noted in his diary: “The Polish ambassador called. He had little to offer other than to reiterate the belief of his Government that German strength was overrated . . . He said that the German army was not the army of 1914. The officers had insufficient training and had not been allowed to remain long enough with the same units of troops. The best generals had been liquidated, and the remaining generals were merely ‘Party hacks.’ !! The German people did not want to fight, and it would be suicidal to start a war when conditions were already so bad that people were being rationed as to foodstuffs.”
Moffat concluded, “The whole conversation represented a point of view of unreasonable optimism and still more unreasoning underrating of one’s opponent, that, if typical of Polish mentality in general, causes me to feel considerable foreboding.”
As he continued to cover the unfolding drama in Europe for CBS, Shirer was beyond foreboding. He was deeply pessimistic. Even his good friend John Gunther, the former Chicago Daily News reporter who had launched what would prove to be a highly successful career as an author with his 1936 bestseller Inside Europe, was more reserved in his judgments after the sellout of Czechoslovakia. In the introduction to the new edition of the book that was published near the end of 1938, he noted “the death of the Czechoslovak nation in its present form,” but declared, “There is a chance—just a chance but a chance—that the Munich Agreement may bring a European settlement.” As late as July 28, 1939, when Shirer met Gunther in Geneva, the CBS man wrote in his diary, “John fairly optimistic about peace.”
Returning to Berlin in early August, Shirer found his darkening mood turning into open anger. On the train from Basel, he observed that the passengers “looked clean and decent, the kind that made us like Germans, as people, before the Nazis.” In a discussion with someone he identified as Captain D—“a World War officer of proved patriotism”—Shirer recorded that the German, who had earlier professed to be against a new war, “became violent today at the very mention of the Poles and the British,” taking his cue from Hitler’s attacks on both. His diary entry on August 9
chronicles their heated exchange:
He thundered: “Why do the English butt in on Danzig and threaten war over the return of a German city? Why do the Poles [sic] provoke us? Haven’t we the right to a German city like Danzig?”
“Have you the right to a Czech city like Prague?” I asked. Silence. No answer. That vacant stare you get on Germans.
“Why didn’t the Poles accept the generous offer of the Führer?” he began again.
“Because they feared another Sudetenland, Captain.”
“You mean they don’t trust the Führer?”
“Not much since March 15,” I said, looking carefully around before I spoke such blasphemy to see I was not being overheard. Again the vacant German stare.
March 15, 1939, was the date when German troops had marched into Prague and Hitler declared, “Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist!”
Shirer could see that the same fate awaited Poland. The next day, he marveled: “How completely isolated a world the German people live in.” German newspapers were trumpeting headlines like “Poland? Look Out!” and “Warsaw Threatens Bombardment of Danzig—Unbelievable Agitation of the Polish Archmadness.”
“For perverse perversion of truth, this is good,” Shirer noted. “You ask: But the German people can’t possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.”
Convinced that Hitler and the Germans were about to plunge the continent into a new war, he used his diary as a way to release his frustration, not sparing anyone. “Struck by the ugliness of German women on the streets and cafés,” he wrote. “As a race they are certainly the least attractive in Europe. They have no ankles. They walk badly. They dress worse than English women used to.”
From Berlin, Shirer went to Danzig, finding the city “completely Nazified,” but he quickly concluded the real issue was not the status of that purportedly “Free City.” In a broadcast from the neighboring Polish port city of Gdynia on August 13, he talked about the relative calm in Danzig, despite all the speculation that “this powder-keg of Europe” was about to ignite a new war. He concluded that Hitler might not be pushing for a confrontation over the status of that city as quickly as generally believed. But Danzig, he warned, “is only a symbol—for both sides. The issue, of course, for the Poles, is the future of Poland as an independent nation with a secure outlet to the sea. For the Germans it’s the future of East Prussia cut off from the motherland, the future of the whole German stake in the East. And for most of the rest of Europe the issue is that of German domination on the continent.”
Taking the train from Gdynia to Warsaw right after making that broadcast, Shirer chatted with two Polish radio engineers who expressed confidence about their country’s ability to resist Hitler. “We’re ready. We will fight,” they told him. “We were born under German rule in this neighborhood and we’d rather be dead than go through it again.” In the Polish capital, he was further impressed by how “calm and confident” the inhabitants seemed, despite the relentless propaganda onslaughts from Berlin. His worry, though, was that the Poles were “too romantic, too confident” and they were ignoring the signals that the Soviet Union might also have designs on them.
By the time he left Warsaw to return to Berlin a week later, Shirer had formed a judgment about how the Poles would react to any attempted takeover of their country. “I think the Poles will fight,” he concluded. “I know I said that, wrongly, about the Czechs a year ago. But I say it again about the Poles.”
On August 23, 1939, German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his counterpart Vyacheslav Molotov signed the Nazi-Soviet Pact in a Kremlin ceremony, with Stalin looking on. Two days earlier, Anthony Biddle, the American ambassador to Poland, had asked for permission from Washington to begin evacuating the families of his staffers. The news of Ribbentrop’s imminent mission to Moscow was already out, and, as Moffat wrote in his diary that day, it came as a “bombshell.” The senior State Department official concluded: “There is no doubt that Germany has pulled off one of the greatest diplomatic coups for many years . . . It looks to me as though Germany had promised Russia no objection to the latter taking over Estonia and Latvia and, in effect, agreeing to some form of new partition of Poland.” In his own mind, Moffat had already upped the odds of war breaking out to 60–40 in midsummer, and now he raised them further to 75–25.
In Berlin, many of the American correspondents were as usual keeping late hours at their favorite restaurant, Die Taverne, on the night of August 23–24, when they heard the official news about the pact. “It goes much further than anyone dreamed,” Shirer wrote in his diary. “It’s a virtual alliance and Stalin, the supposed arch-enemy of Nazism and aggression, by its terms invites Germany to go in and clean up Poland.”
Several German editors who had been writing virulently anti-Soviet articles up till then came into the restaurant and ordered champagne, Shirer observed, and they were suddenly presenting themselves “as old friends of the Soviets!” The seemingly hardened American reporter was stunned by the enormity of the agreement between the two totalitarian systems. While Shirer knew what it meant, he clearly didn’t understand the Soviet leader as well as he did Hitler. “That Stalin would play such crude power politics and also play into the hands of the Nazis overwhelms the rest of us,” he wrote.
Shirer and an American colleague he only identified as Joe sat down with the German editors and promptly got into a heated argument. “They are gloating, boasting, sputtering that Britain won’t dare to fight now, denying everything that they have been told to say these last six years by their Nazi lords [about the Soviet Union],” Shirer recorded. The two Americans pushed back, reminding them of how they had written about the Bolsheviks until then. “The argument gets nasty,” Shirer concluded. “Joe is nervous, depressed. So am I. Pretty soon we get nauseated. Something will happen if we don’t get out.” The Americans made their excuses and left, walking through the Tiergarten to cool off in the night air.
As news of the Nazi-Soviet Pact sank in, Britain and France reaffirmed their commitments to Poland. In the wake of the takeover of Czechoslovakia in March, both countries had pledged to defend Poland, and on August 25, British and Polish officials formally signed the Anglo-Polish military alliance in London. But Hitler was still counting on outmaneuvering Britain, as he continued to exchange messages with Prime Minister Chamberlain’s government in London and meet with its ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson. Shirer was convinced that war was coming, but he pointed out: “The people in the streets are still confident Hitler will pull it off again without war.”
The State Department urged Americans not to travel to Europe unless absolutely necessary. American diplomats in Berlin could monitor the war preparations firsthand, making them even less likely to see a chance for avoiding a conflict than their bosses back in Washington. Jacob Beam recalled: “From about the middle of August, searchlights pierced the Berlin skies, pin-pointing planes at what seemed to be very great heights. Troop convoys crossed the city escorted by roaring motorcycle brigades manned by goggled riders looking like men from Mars.” On August 26, he added, the government issued a new long list of items to be rationed, including food, shoes and soap. Those who owned automobiles were instructed to turn in any backup batteries they had.
As Hitler and his entourage saw it, Germany was now fully prepared to strike.
Recalling the final days of August 1939 seventy years later, Angus Thuermer still felt somewhat sheepish about how he handled his assignment at the time. Lochner, his bureau chief, had instructed the junior AP reporter to travel to Gleiwitz, along the Polish border, since he knew “something was going to happen.” That proved to be quite an understatement.
One evening, Thuermer took a taxi outside of town and promptly found himself in the midst of a Wehrmacht regiment marching along the border. Realizing that he had better leave before he got into trouble, Thuermer ordered the taxi to take him back to Gleiwitz. A couple of evenings later—August 31, to be exact—he was awa
kened by sounds outside his hotel. He looked out of his seventh-floor window and saw German troops in a field car followed by countless others marching. Then a band suddenly appeared. That convinced him it was only an exercise. “You don’t take a band to go to war,” he said, recalling his thinking at the time. So he went back to sleep. The next morning, September 1, he looked out the window again and saw trucks bringing back wounded German soldiers from Poland. The German invasion of Poland was under way.
Alarmed that he had slept through the first night of the conflagration that would become World War II, Thuermer rushed to find the press officer of a German Army unit that had moved into his hotel. Introducing himself, he explained that he was eager to accompany German troops into Poland, since it was normal practice for AP reporters to do so. They had been allowed to accompany German troops into Austria and the Sudetenland, he pointed out. “Yes, Herr Thuermer, but this time it is different,” the German press officer replied. “You go back to Berlin and to the Propaganda Ministry and they will tell you what is happening.”
The German officer was right, of course: This time was different. This was really war.
Back in Berlin, some American diplomats had received almost as clear signals on the eve of the German invasion. Walking to work on August 31, William Russell, a twenty-four-year-old clerk in the embassy’s consular section, had already seen the morning headlines in the German papers: “Last Warnings” and “Unendurable Outrages” and “Murderous Poles.” He jumped as a siren shrieked nearby, evidently a test of the air raid warning system, and he observed the traffic jam in Potsdamer Platz caused by army trucks full of soldiers, along with motorcycles and cannon transporters. He could also see aircraft circling above Berlin. “The excitement of a city preparing for war pounded in my veins,” he recalled.
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