Berlin Diary (26 page)

O
N THE TRAIN
, B
ERLIN-
G
ODESBERG
,
September
20

A weird broadcast we’ve just done. Paul White phoned from New York at six p.m. just as I was packing my bags. I told him he’d have to cancel my regular talk at ten thirty tonight as our train for Godesberg left at ten thirty. He suggested a broadcast from the train, interviewing the correspondents on the chances for peace or war at Godesberg. A phone call to the
Reichs Rundfunk
. Impossible to do it from the train. How about doing it from the Friedrichstrasse station, I asked. Will do, said Dr. Harald Diettrich, youthful, enterprising acting-head of the German short-wave department. A telephone call to New York. White delighted. When I arrived at the station five minutes before ten, when the broadcast was due to begin, the microphone was there and working.

But there were no American correspondents. The platform was empty. At ten I started to chat away ad lib. The only news I had was that the Hungarians and the Poles had been down to Berchtesgaden during the day to demand, like jackals, their share of the Czech spoils. This subject exhausted, I took to reading the headlines from the evening papers. The usual lies, but if I said so, the Nazis would cut me off. Headlines like this:
CZECH SOLDIERS ATTACK GERMAN EMPIRE!
I looked around. Still no correspondents. I hoped they would all miss the train. I talked along about the Czech minorities, I think it was. Finally Huss showed up. I grabbed him by the coat-tails and before he knew it he was on the air. The rest of the newspapermen finally arrived, but they seemed busy sorting out their luggage. Huss began to make frantic signs. God knows how the rest of the show sounded. I put on two or three Englishmen, then Sigrid Schultz, Webb Miller, Ralph Barnes. Philippo Boiano of the
Popólo d’Italia
motioned he wanted to speak. I knew how secretly he hated the Nazis, but I wasn’t sure of his English. It was wonderful. No stage accent could have been half so good. Jouve of Havas wanted to talk too. Before I could ask him if he spoke English he was talking—in French. I started to translate what he had said, and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the train moving. My finishing sentence was not smooth, but I made the train. Fear the show was a flop at home, but there are more important things to think of now.

G
ODESBERG
,
September
22

The Swastika and the British Union Jack flying side by side in this lovely Rhine town—very appropriate, I find. Very appropriate, too, to hold your
meeting in a Wagnerian town, for it is here, they say, that Wotan, Thor, and the other gods of the early Teutons used to frolic.

This morning I noticed something very interesting. I was having breakfast in the garden of the Dreesen Hotel, where Hitler is stopping, when the great man suddenly appeared, strode past me, and went down to the edge of the Rhine to inspect his river yacht. X, one of Germany’s leading editors, who secretly despises the regime, nudged me: “Look at his walk!” On inspection it was a very curious walk indeed. In the first place, it was very ladylike. Dainty little steps. In the second place, every few steps he cocked his right shoulder nervously, his left leg snapping up as he did so. I watched him closely as he came back past us. The same nervous tic. He had ugly black patches under his eyes. I think the man is on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And now I understand the meaning of an expression the party hacks were using when we sat around drinking in the Dreesen last night. They kept talking about the “
Teppichfresser
,” the “carpet-eater.” At first I didn’t get it, and then someone explained it in a whisper. They said Hitler has been having some of his nervous crises lately and that in recent days they’ve taken a strange form. Whenever he goes on a rampage about Beneš or the Czechs he flings himself to the floor and chews the edges of the carpet, hence the
Teppichfresser
. After seeing him this morning, I can believe it.

Chamberlain and Hitler had a three-hour talk this afternoon and will have another tomorrow. Just as I was broadcasting from a little studio we’ve fixed up in the porter’s lodge of the hotel, the two men after their conference stepped out right before my window. Hitler was all graciousness indeed and Chamberlain, looking the image of an owl, was smiling and apparently highly
pleased in his vain way with some manufactured applause by a company of S.S. guards before the door. Chamberlain, I hear, proposed an international commission to superintend the withdrawal of the Czechs from Sudetenland and an international guarantee for what is left of Czechoslovakia. New York cables our Friedrichstrassebahnhof show last night was a knockout. Strange. New Cabinet in Prague. New Premier: one-eyed, hard-boiled General Jan Syrovy, Inspector-General of the army. The Czechs may fight yet.

G
ODESBERG
,
September
23–4, 4
a.m
.

War seems very near after this strange day. All the British and French correspondents and Birchall of the New York
Times
, who is an English subject, scurrying off at dawn—in about an hour now—for the French, Belgian, or Dutch frontier. It seems that Hitler has given Chamberlain the double-cross. And the old owl is hurt. All day long he sulked in his rooms at the Petershof up on the Petersberg on the other side of the Rhine, refusing to come over and talk with the dictator. At five p.m. he sent Sir Horace Wilson, his “confidential” adviser, and Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin (both of whom, we feel, would sell out Czecho for five cents), over the river to see Ribbentrop. Result: Chamberlain and Hitler met at ten thirty p.m. This meeting, which is the last, broke up at one thirty a.m. without agreement and now it looks like war, though from my “studio” in the porter’s lodge twenty-five feet away I could not discern any strain or particular displeasure in Chamberlain’s birdy face as he said his farewell to Hitler, who also was smiling and gracious. Still the Germans are plunged in deep gloom tonight, as if they really are afraid of war now
that it’s facing them. They are gloomy and yet feverishly excited. Just as I was about to go on the air at two a.m. with the day’s story and the official communiqué, Goebbels and Hadamovsky, the latter Nazi boss of German radio, came rushing in and forbade Jordan and me to say anything over the air except to read the official communiqué. Later I grabbed a bit of supper in the Dreesen lobby. Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Göring, Keitel, and others walked in and out, all of them looking as if they had been hit over the head with a sledgehammer. This rather surprised me, since it’s a war of
their
making. The communiqué merely says that Chamberlain has undertaken to deliver to Prague a German memorandum containing Germany’s “final attitude” concerning the Sudeten question. The point is that Chamberlain came here all prepared to turn over Sudetenland to Hitler, but in a “British” way—with an international commission to supervise the business. He found Hitler’s appetite had increased. Hitler wants to take over
his
way—that is, right away, with no nonsense of an international commission. Actually, it’s not an important point for either, but they seem to have stuck to their positions.
³

In meantime, word that the Czechs have
at last
ordered mobilization.

Five a.m. now. Shall lie down on a table here in the lobby, as I must be off at six for Cologne to catch the Berlin plane.

B
ERLIN
,
September
24

Today’s story is in my broadcast made at midnight tonight. I said: “There was some confusion among us all at Godesberg this morning… but tonight, as seen from Berlin, the position is this: Hitler has demanded that Czechoslovakia
not later than Saturday, October 1, agree to the handing over of Sudetenland to Germany. Mr. Chamberlain has agreed to convey this demand to the Czechoslovak Government. The very fact that he, with all the authority of a man who is political leader of the British Empire, has taken upon himself this task is accepted here, and I believe elsewhere, as meaning that Mr. Chamberlain backs Hitler up.

“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

B
ERLIN
,
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.