Berlin at War (7 page)

14

berlin at war

(‘The Merciful Lie’) – a peculiar tale of a love triangle set during a

German expedition to Mongolia – was scheduled for that evening in

the UFA cinema on Kurfürstendamm. German cinema’s darling, Olga

Tschechowa, meanwhile, was appearing in a stage production of the

comedy
Aimée
at the Künstlertheater. Wagner’s
Meistersinger
was being staged at the Volksoper. In sport, a report on practice for the Belgrade

Grand Prix noted with satisfaction that a German driver in a Mercedes

had posted the fastest lap time.4

Yet, at some point, the realisation would have dawned that this was

not just another day. For some, word might have come from their

neighbours, perhaps only a shouted and half-understood exchange

across a stairwell. For those in the city centre, raised voices might have

drifted up to them from the streets below. Hungry for information or

clarification, they would have switched on their radios. The same

announcements were broadcast across all stations – an official procla-

mation containing a flurry of phrases, such as ‘frontier violations’,

‘defence of German honour’, ‘duty to the last’ and ‘force being met

with force’.5 Berliner Günter Grossmann was sixteen at the time. His

description of hearing the news that morning was typical:

7 a.m., I wake and turn our ‘Volksempfänger’ on to listen to the early

concert. But, instead of that, I hear the voice of the Reich Chancellor,

Adolf Hitler; a declaration of the Reich Government, that since 4 o’clock

that morning German troops have crossed the Polish frontier and are

on the advance . . . With that, our worst fears are realised: It is war! . . .

I wake my parents and tell them what I have heard. There is

consternation.6

The dawning day would be one that few Berliners would ever forget.

Heinz Knobloch remembered with particular clarity how he had heard

the news. When he arrived at school that morning, he had been told

that there would be no lessons and that he was to return home.

‘Fantastic!’ he recalled thinking, but neither he nor his classmates asked

why.7 On arriving home, he was still none the wiser and was happily

anticipating a day off school when a family friend called down from

the next floor: ‘You should turn on the radio’, he was told. ‘There is

something going on. The
Führer
is giving a speech.’8

* * *

faith in the führer

15

At that very moment, Hitler was delivering one of the most import -

ant speeches of his life. He was ill prepared; he had not slept well

and looked tired and drawn, despite receiving a stimulant injection

from his personal physician.9 The stresses of recent weeks had taken

their toll, and, as was usual, he had been up late the previous night,

dictating the text of his speech to his secretaries. His usual ailments

were also affecting him that morning: stomach pains, headaches,

insomnia. His halitosis had been so bad, one member of his entourage

recalled, that those around him had struggled not to step backwards

in revulsion.10

Shortly before ten o’clock that morning, Hitler had climbed into a

Mercedes limousine and had been driven the short distance from the

Reich Chancellery to the Kroll Opera House, where the Reichstag had

been called for a special sitting. From the Chancellery, Hitler’s convoy

would have wound its way north onto Wilhelmstrasse, before turning

west onto Unter den Linden, heading for the Brandenburg Gate.

Hitler’s mood would scarcely have been lightened by the sights that

greeted him on the way. From around eight o’clock that morning,

units of SS and SA had been dispatched to hold back the crowds that

were expected to line the route after hearing the news. But there were

no crowds. Almost all of those who witnessed the scene testified to

the peculiar emptiness that echoed around Berlin’s central district.

The Swede Birger Dahlerus recalled that ‘the streets seemed rather

deserted and as far as we could see . . . the people with few excep-

tions stared in silence as Hitler passed by’.11 Even Albert Speer conceded

that the area of the Chancellery, which was usually besieged by people

whenever Hitler was there, was ‘strikingly quiet’.12

Passing through the Brandenburg Gate, Hitler’s car would have

turned north and skirted around the Reichstag building – now largely

abandoned after being burnt out in the infamous fire of 1933 – before

entering the manicured lawns and parkland of the Königsplatz. To

the south, the tree-lined Siegesallee, or ‘Victory Avenue’, disappeared

into the Tiergarten, flanked with white marble statues of the Prussian

kings. Ahead stood the Kroll Opera House.

Originally constructed in 1844 to provide Berlin with a venue for

diverse cultural and festive events, the Kroll was a most impressive

building. Looking like an elegant Roman
palazzo
, it had once boasted

three large halls, fourteen function rooms, a generous veranda and a

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berlin at war

resident orchestra of sixty musicians. In its heyday, it was said, there

was space to accommodate fully five thousand Berliners.13 The Kroll

had earned its greatest fame in the late 1920s for producing challenging

contemporary works, such as those of Hindemith, Stravinsky and

Schönberg, but had been closed in 1931 by those conservative forces

who despised its modernistic licence. Thereafter, the building had stood

empty for two years until 1933, when Hitler needed a replacement

venue for the Reichstag. After the necessary alterations had been made,

the Kroll Opera became the new home of the German parliament.

Yet, in this capacity, the Kroll served as little more than the back-

drop for the death throes of an ailing democracy. It was there, in

March 1933, that a cowed Reichstag passed the ‘Enabling Act’, which

empowered the Nazi government to legislate without its consent –

thereby providing Hitler with, in effect, dictatorial power. After that,

the Kroll Opera saw only sporadic Reichstag meetings, in which the

deputies – shorn of their communist and socialist contingents –

dutifully passed whatever legislation was put before them. As one

historian has written, the formula for such meetings was always the

same: ‘Göring, as President, greeted the members; there was a moment

of silence for the Nazi martyrs; Hitler spoke; Göring thanked the

Führer; laws were rubber-stamped; the ‘
Horst Wessel Lied
’ was sung.

Then they all went home.’14 With that ignominious development, the

Kroll Opera House should perhaps finally have faded into obscurity.

But its most famous – or infamous – hour was yet to come.

Hitler arrived outside the Kroll in bright sunshine. Stepping from

his car, he was met by members of his entourage – Heinrich Himmler,

Martin Bormann and his adjutant Julius Schaub. He briefly inspected

an SS guard of honour before walking the fifty or so yards to the front

steps. Entering the main hall, he passed the ranks of Reichstag deputies,

all now standing in silence with their right arms raised in the ‘Hitler

greeting’. There were no dissenters. All those of independent or

oppositional mind had long since been intimidated, co-opted or other-

wise removed from the chamber. Even those deputies who had been

unable to get to the capital at short notice had been replaced by

members of Hitler’s bodyguard.

In its Nazi incarnation, the main hall of the Kroll was little changed

and the Reichstag deputies were seated, like the opera audiences before

them, in the stalls and in the two grand tiers above. The only real

faith in the führer

17

changes were on the former stage, where an enormous stylised eagle

rose – its outstretched wings reaching the full width of the fire curtain

– with the rays of the sun seemingly emanating from the swastika

held in its claws. On either side were two massive swastika banners.

Beneath that, in the area once inhabited by the orchestra and choir,

members of Hitler’s cabinet were arranged in seated banks facing out

into the hall itself. In the centre, Göring – as Reichstag President – sat

in a high leather-backed chair, overseeing proceedings. Below him

stood the lectern with a bank of microphones, where Hitler would

speak – standing – flanked by seated Gauleiters and ministers.

After a brief introduction from Göring, Hitler arrived at the podium

and composed himself. As a hush descended, he began to speak. Sounding

hoarse and tired, even hesitant at the outset, he nevertheless quickly

warmed to his task, presenting a masterful portrait of feigned innocence.

He outlined his spurned proposals for ‘peaceful discussions’ with the

Poles, his attempts to find mediation and his ‘patient endurance’. He

railed against Polish ‘provocations’ – border incidents and acts of terror

allegedly perpetrated against innocent German civilians – before speaking

of the perfidy of the Poles and their unwillingness to commit to a nego-

tiated settlement of the crisis. In response, he warned that ‘no honourable

Great Power could calmly tolerate such a state of affairs’ and stated that

his ‘love of peace and endless forbearance’ should not be mistaken for

‘weakness or even cowardice’. He was resolved, he said, ‘to speak to

Poland in the same language that Poland has employed towards us in

the months past’. Hitler then revealed what most people already knew:

We have now been returning fire since 5.45 a.m.* Henceforth, bomb

will be met with bomb. He who fights with poison gas shall be fought

with poison gas. He who distances himself from the rules for a humane

conduct of warfare can only expect us to take like steps. I will lead this

struggle, whoever may be the adversary, until the security of the Reich

and its rights have been assured.15

He went on to outline the sacrifice that he was demanding of the

German people; a sacrifice that he, too, had been ready to make in

* Whether by accident or design, Hitler had misrepresented the time at which his forces had opened fire. The first shots had actually been fired an hour earlier, at 4.45 a.m.

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berlin at war

the Great War. ‘I am from now on’, he proclaimed, ‘just the first

soldier of the German Reich.’ Referring to the field-grey tunic he had

donned for the occasion, he said, ‘I have once more put on that coat

that was most sacred and dear to me. I will not take it off again until

victory is secured, or I will not survive the outcome.’16 After the

requisite chorus of
Sieg Heil
s, Hitler left the chamber.

If he had been hoping to convince the people of Berlin and the wider

Reich through the force of his delivery, Hitler was mistaken. Though

the Nazi Gauleiters and Party men had given their predictably enthu-

siastic verdict, the general public was not so easily swayed. A young

diplomat in the American Embassy recalled watching workmen from

his office window that morning, while Hitler’s speech was being

broadcast. ‘They were unimpressed by the fact that their Führer was

speak-ing’, he recorded; ‘they did not even stop their work to listen.’

The end of the speech, with its admission that the war against Poland

had begun, was met with similar apathy. Even the lusty rendition of

the national anthem left them unmoved. ‘The workers across the

street had almost finished’, he recalled. ‘They were undisturbed by the

declaration of war. After all, nobody had asked their opinion about it.’17

A depressed atmosphere greeted Hitler as he returned to the Reich

Chancellery that morning, where a small, somewhat grim-faced crowd

had gathered on the Wilhelmstrasse and on the Wilhelmplatz. His

arrival was met not with the usual chorus of cheers and slogans, but,

rather, with an eerie silence; with some silently raising their right arm

in a Nazi salute. The Gauleiter of Swabia, Karl Wahl, who had been

present at Hitler’s Kroll Opera speech, confirmed this negative mood

in the capital. ‘I have not seen a trace of that which I experienced in

1914’, he wrote in his memoir, ‘no enthusiasm, no joy, no cheering.

Everywhere, one encountered an oppressive calm, not to say depres-

sion. The entire German people seemed seized by a paralysing horror

that made it incapable of expressing either approval or disapproval.’18

As Hitler dismounted from his car, the band of the
Leibstandarte

did their best to maintain a martial air, but the mood was distinctly

downcast. Before he disappeared behind the heavy doors of the

Chancellery, Hitler cast a perplexed glance towards the hushed crowd.

Watching the scene, one eyewitness remembered hearing the distinc-

tive sound of women weeping.19

* * *

faith in the führer

19

In spite of the momentous events unfolding at the Kroll Opera, most

commentators noted the sheer ordinariness of the day. A little less

traffic on the streets, perhaps, and a few more uniforms in evidence

on the pavements, but otherwise the buses, trams and trains were full,