Berlin Diary (27 page)

B
ERLIN
,
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.

B
ERLIN
,
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.

B
ERLIN
,
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.

M
UNICH
,
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 rooster.

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.

L
ATER.—
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.”

L
ATER
.
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.

[L
ATER.—
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.]