Berlin Diary (53 page)

B
ERLIN
,
March
1

Sumner Welles arrived this morning. He’s supposedly over here on a special mission from the President to sound out the European leaders on their respective standpoints. He saw Ribbentrop and State Secretary Weizäcker today and will see Hitler tomorrow. Much talk around town that the Nazis will pull a fast one on him and suggest a peace that
sounds
good. Possible; not probable.

Because the offensive seems imminent. Troop trains pouring through Berlin every day west-bound. Many men called up for active service in the last few days. All air-wardens have been warned to be ready for duty after March 15. One hears—you never
know
here—of big troop concentrations against Holland.

From what I saw in the Netherlands, the Dutch will be easy pickings for the Germans. Their army is miserable. Their famous defensive water-line is of doubtful worth. Switzerland will be tougher to crack, and I doubt if the Germans will try.

Welles received us in the Embassy after lunch. A taciturn fellow, he said he could say nothing. I gathered from what little he did say that he was interested in seeing Göring. Is it because in the end he thinks Göring may lead a conservative government?

B
ERLIN
,
March
3

Welles left tonight, his lips sealed to the last. Those of the Wilhelmstrasse were not, however. They gave the American correspondents front-page copy. They told us Hitler had made it plain to Welles:

1. That there is no chance for an immediate, negotiated peace. The war must be fought out to the bitter end. Germany is confident of winning it.

2. That Germany must be given a free hand in what she considers her
Lebensraum
in eastern Europe. She will never consent to restore Czechoslovakia, Poland, or Austria.

3. A condition of any peace must be the breaking of Britain’s control of the seas, including not only her naval disarmament but the abandonment of her great naval bases at Gibraltar, Malta, and Singapore.

I doubt if this tall talk impressed Welles, who struck me as sufficiently cynical. At any rate, the Germans did not, as some expected, offer a nice-sounding but meaningless peace proposal. My spies report Hitler is in a confident mood these days and thinks he can win the war outright and quickly.

Touching how the German people have had a naïve
hope that Welles’s visit might pave the way to peace. Several Germans dropped in today to inquire whether “Welles had any luck.”

B
ERLIN
,
March
4

Last night, by request, I broadcast a piece about the actual routine of broadcasting from here in war-time. Had never stopped to think of it before. Some extracts, for the record: The daily broadcast at six forty-five p.m., New York time, means our talking from here at a quarter to one on the following morning. If I could get gasoline for my car I could drive to the studio in twelve minutes. As it is, I have a ten-minute walk down the completely blacked-out Wilhelmstrasse to the subway. It is a rare night that I do not collide with a lamp-post, a fire-hydrant, or a projecting stairway, or flop headlong into a pile of snow. Safely in the subway, I have a half-hour’s ride to the Rundfunk House. As half of the route is above ground, the train is plunged in darkness for fifteen minutes. My pockets are stuffed full of passes. If I cannot find the right one I must wait in the vestibule on arriving at the station and fill out a paper permitting me to enter. Finally arrived, I go to an office and write my script. Two offices down I can hear Lord Haw-Haw attacking his typewriter with gusto or shouting in his nasal voice against “that plutocrat Chamberlain.” A half-hour before my broadcast I must have my script in the hands of the censors. Follows a half-hour battle with them. If they leave enough to make it worth while to do the broadcast, as they usually do, I must then, in order to reach the studio and microphone, dash through winding corridors in the Broadcasting House, down many stairs, and out into a pitch-dark vacant lot in the middle
of which are hidden steps—the lot being terraced—being careful not to bump into several sheds lurking in the way or to fall into a snow-drift. In the course of this journey through the lot, I must get past at least three steel-helmeted S.S. guards whom I cannot see in the darkness, but who I know are armed with sawed-off automatic rifles and have orders to shoot anyone not halting at their challenge. They must see my pass. I search for it with my frozen fingers, and if I’m lucky and find it, I arrive at the studio in time and not too much out of breath, though not always in the sweetest of tempers. If the censors keep me, or the guards keep me, I arrive late, out of breath, sore and sour. I suppose listeners wonder why we pant so often through our talks.

B
ERLIN
,
March
8

Diplomatic circles buzzing with talk of a secret peace parley in Stockholm to end the Russo-Finnish war. A decree today orders all persons and firms who possess old metal or scrap iron to deliver it to the state. Lack of iron may lose Germany the war.

B
ERLIN
,
March
10

Today is Memorial Day in Germany, a day to remember the dead who’ve been slain in all the wars. In former years the Germans remembered the two million men slaughtered between 1914 and 1918. Today the Nazis ask the people not to think too much of the World War dead, but to concentrate their thoughts on those who have been done to death or will die in this war. How perverse human beings can be! A front-page editorial in the
Lokal Anzeiger
says: “This is no time
for being sentimental. Men are dying for Germany day and night. One’s personal fate now is unimportant. There is no asking why if one falls or is broken.”

That’s the trouble. If the Germans asked why, the flower of their youth might not always be condemned to be butchered on the battlefield. General von Rund-stedt, one of the leading military figures in the conquest of Poland, writes in the
Völkische Beobachter
: “Memorial Day—1940: Certainly we think earnestly of the dead, but we do not mourn.” And this paper bannerlines in red ink across Page one:
“OVER THE GRAVES FORWARD!”

Hitler spoke today in a courtyard in the Zeughaus, the War Museum. There amidst the museum pieces—the arms and weapons Europeans have used to kill one another in all the wars of the past, he orated. His voice was full of hatred, which he might have been expected to avoid on Memorial Day. Has the man no other emotion? He promised his people that the end of this war would give Germany the most glorious military triumph in history. He thinks only of arms. Does he understand the economic role in this war?

Ribbentrop off to Rome to make sure what Mussolini will do when the German offensive starts and also to see the Pope. Talk of a new concordat. Monsignor Cesare Orsenigo, the Papal Nuncio, has been quietly paying visits to the Wilhelmstrasse for weeks. Germany didn’t observe the last concordat, persecuting the church whenever it pleased. But they will probably sign a new one. It will mean prestige for Hitler at home and abroad.

All Germans I talk to afraid hell will break loose this month.

B
ERLIN
,
March
11

A talk today with General von Schell, a wizard who is responsible for oil and automobiles. He claimed he would have enough oil for a ten-year war. He said his factories were now producing only 20 types of trucks as compared with 120 last year.

Beginning April 20, all German youths between ten and eighteen will be compelled to join the Hitler
Youth. Conscription of youth was laid down in a law dated 1936, but only goes into effect now. Boys between seventeen and eighteen will receive preliminary military training.

B
ERLIN
,
March
13

In Moscow last night peace was made between Russia and Finland. It is a very hard peace for Finland and in Helsinki today, according to the BBC, the flags are at half-mast. Berlin, however, is delighted. For two reasons: (1) It releases Russia from the strain of war, so that she now may be able to furnish some badly needed raw materials to the Reich. (2) It removes the danger of Germany having to fight a war on a long northern front, which she would have had to supply by sea and which would have dispersed her military forces now concentrating in the west for the decisive blow, which may begin any day now.