Berlin Diary (52 page)

G
ARMISCH
-P
ARTENKIRCHEN,
February
3

A little ludicrous, broadcasting from here. Winter sport competitions are on, with all the German satellite nations participating, but they have no interest for us and I’m supposed to confine my daily broadcasts to the more serious subject of the terrible war. The trouble with that is that the only microphone in town is in the ice stadium. Yesterday on my two ten p.m. broadcast I had just launched into a deep discussion of the possibilities that lie before these unhappy people at war when someone scored a goal on the rink just below me, bedlam broke loose in the stadium, and it proved difficult to keep my mind on Hitler’s next move. Tonight broadcasting at fifty minutes past midnight, the hockey games were over and in fact the stadium was so deserted that I had to wait a long time in the snow before I could arouse the night watchman to let me in. In the little studio atop the stadium it was so cold my teeth chattered with loud clicks and I had to blow on my fingers to keep them nimble enough to turn the pages of my script. I fear CBS listeners may not have appreciated the strange noises.

I feel sorry for Bob X, a young American correspondent who came down with us. He just couldn’t take the strain of association with the Nazis since the war began, which is understandable. Arriving here, he let himself go—a plain case of nerves—drank more than he should have, expressed his honest thoughts, which alcohol sometimes releases, but unfortunately also made a general nuisance of himself. I gather the Nazis, on his return to Berlin, will ask him to leave. Two of our leading American correspondents today refused to sit at the same table in the dining-room with him, which I
thought was a little uncalled for. They are the two who court the Nazis the most.

Hitler decreed today that henceforth babies must have ration cards for clothing. A country is hard up when it has to save on diapers.

O
N THE
T
RAIN
M
UNICH
—L
AUSANNE
,
February
4

Three stories I must put down:

1. In Germany
it is a serious penal offence to listen to a foreign radio station. The other day the mother of a German airman received word from the Luftwaffe that her son was missing and must be presumed dead. A couple of days later the BBC in London, which broadcasts weekly a list of German prisoners, announced that her son had been captured. Next day she received
eight
letters from friends and acquaintances telling her they had heard her son was safe as a prisoner in England. Then the story takes a nasty turn. The mother denounced all eight to the police for listening to an English broadcast, and they were arrested.

(When I tried to recount this story on the radio, the Nazi censor cut it out on the ground that American listeners would not understand the heroism of the woman in denouncing her eight friends!)

2. The parents of a U-boat officer were officially informed of their son’s death. The boat was overdue and had been given up by the German Admiralty as lost. The parents arranged a church funeral. On the morning of the service the butcher called and wanted a few words with the head of the house in private. Next came the grocer. Finally friends started swarming in. They had all heard the BBC announce that the son was among those taken prisoner from a U-boat. But how to call
off the funeral without letting the authorities know that someone in the confidence of the family had listened to a foreign station? If the parents wouldn’t tell, perhaps they themselves would be arrested. A family council was held. It was decided to go through with the funeral. After it was over, the mourners gathered in the parents’ home, were told the truth if they already didn’t know it, and everyone celebrated with champagne.

3. A big German film company completed last summer at the cost of several million marks a movie based on the exploits of the German Condor Legion in Spain. It was a super-film showing how German blood had been shed in the holy war in Spain against Bolshevism. Hitler, Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, saw it, praised it. Then came the Nazi-Soviet pact last August. The film is now in storage. It was never shown to the public.

V
ILLARS-SUR
-O
LLON
, S
WITZERLAND
,
February
20

Across the valley from the window, the great sweep of the Dents du Midi Alpine peaks. Towards evening in the setting sun these snowy mountain-sides take on a magnificent pink. Down in bed with my annual flu for ten days. Must start back to Berlin tomorrow. Spring will soon be here. Action. The offensive. The war. Far away it has seemed here. Tess coming in at dusk with flushed cheeks after a four-mile ski run down the mountain behind the hotel, Eileen coming in with redder cheeks after playing around all day in the snow. In the evening—before I got sick—an excellent, unrationed dinner and then talk and dancing in the bar with people who still retain their senses. At first, and the last three days after I got out of bed, skating on the rink below with Wellington Koo, Chinese
Ambassador in Paris, himself recovering from the grippe and just learning to skate. Koo, who looks thirty and is probably over fifty, trying to impart to me the long view which the Chinese have learned to take, and I never patient nor wise enough to take. He sees the China war and this war as just chapters in a long story, places where men stop and pause on a long hard road, and he speaks softly and trudges along on his faltering skates.

B
ERLIN
,
February
23

My birthday. Thought of being thirty-six now, and nothing accomplished, and how fast the middle years fleet by.

Disagreeable experience at the Swiss border yesterday: the Swiss relieved me of all my provisions—chocolate, soap, canned food, coffee, and a bottle of whisky which Winant had given me. I see their point. They are cut off from the outside world and want to keep what they have and not let it get into the hands of the Germans. But I was sore. On the German side the Gestapo stripped two thirds of the passengers, including all the women. For some reason, possibly because I was the last to get my passport okayed and the train was late, they let me off.

Arrived here this morning (Friday) to find it a meatless day. The food
is
abominable. Because of the cold spell, no fish. Even at the Adlon I could get only potatoes and some canned vegetables, and my friends said I was lucky because for several days there had not been even potatoes, the city’s supply having been spoiled by freezing. The newspapers seem inane after the Swiss. But the Germans swallow the fare, the lies. After this terrible winter their morale is lower, but they seem to
be in the same cow-like mood. It’s hard to see the limit of what they will take.

Much talk here of the spring offensive. But where?

B
ERLIN
,
February
25

X told me a fantastic story today. He claims a plan is afoot to hide S.S. shock troops in the bottom of a lot of freighters, have them put in at ports in Scandinavia, Belgium, and Africa, and seize the places. I don’t get the point. Even if they got into the ports, which is doubtful, how could they hold them? I suspect this story is a plant and that the Nazis would like us to put it out as part of their nerve war. I shan’t.

B
ERLIN
,
February
27

Marvin has been digging out some interesting side-lights on life in war-time Germany. She visited one of the nine Nazi Brides’ Schools where the wives or prospective wives of S.S. men are taught to be good
Hausfrauen
and fruitful producers of cannon-fodder for the next war.
¹⁸
They are also taught how to read Nazi newspapers and listen to the radio. Marvin noticed only two books in the girls’ dormitories,
The Belief in the Nordic State
and
Men
…. Because of the
shortage of soap, which curtails laundering, Marvin found that German clergymen had taken to wearing clerical collars made of paper. They cost eight cents, can be worn inside out the second day, and are then thrown away…. Marvin says many public buildings have been quietly closed for lack of coal, including the Engineering College of the University, the State Library, and most of the schools. Churches are not allowed to burn coal until further notice. She relates that when she called on an elderly German woman the other day, the old lady met her wearing two sweaters, a fur coat, and overshoes. The temperature in her drawing-room was 46 degrees Fahrenheit…. Though the quota of Germans allowed entrance into America annually is 27,000, Marvin found a waiting-list of 248,000 names at the American consulate. Ninety-eight per cent were Jews—or about half the Jewish population left in Germany
.