Berlin Diary (78 page)

Count Ciano, who was rushed up from Rome to put the seal of Axis authority on Hitler’s “offer” of peace to Britain, was the clown of the evening. In his grey and black Fascist militia uniform, he sat in the first row of the diplomatic box, and jumped up constantly like a jack-in-the-box every time Hitler paused for breath, to give the Fascist salute. He had a text of the speech in his hand, but it was probably in Italian, so that he was not following Hitler’s words. Without the slightest pretext he would hop to his heels and expand in a salute. Could not help noticing how high-strung Ciano is. He kept working his
jaws
. And he was not chewing gum.

Saddest figure to me in the Assembly—I do not count the wooden automatons who as “deputies” sat below on the main floor—was General Halder, chief of the German General Staff. Most people think that he is the brains of the German army, that it was he who made the final plans for the Polish campaign and the great offensive in the west and executed them in such an astonishingly successful manner. But he has never kowtowed to Hitler. It is widely reported that he has on occasions
talked very sharply to the Great Man. And that, as a result, Hitler
hates him. At any rate, he was not made a field-marshal tonight, but merely promoted one grade. (After the Polish campaign Hitler also skipped over him in bestowing honours, but the army kicked so hard that Hitler had belatedly to make amends.) I watched him tonight, his classically intellectual face, and he seemed to be hiding a weariness, a sadness, as he warmly congratulated his younger generals who were now raised over him as field-marshals.

Alexander Kirk, our chargé, was there too. The Nazis put him in the back row with the small fellows, but he didn’t seem to mind. He sat there all evening, his face like a sphinx, breaking only occasionally into an ironic smile when some of his diplomatic colleagues from the Balkans popped up to give the new slave salute. Quisling, a pig-eyed little man, crouched in a corner seat in the first balcony, drinking the amazing scene in.

B
ERLIN
,
July
20

No official British reaction to Hitler’s “peace offer,” but Goebbels had the local press tonight break the news gently to the German people that apparently the Britons aren’t having any. The Germans I talk to simply cannot understand it. They want peace. They don’t want another winter like the last one. They have nothing against Britain, despite all the provocative propaganda. (Like a drug too often given, it is losing what little force it had.) They think they’re on top. They think they can lick Britain too, if it comes to a showdown. But they would prefer peace.

Roosevelt has been renominated at Chicago for a third term. This is a blow to Hitler which the Wilhelmstrasse
scarcely hid today. Goebbels gave orders to the Berlin press not to comment, but he did allow the DNB to publish a brief dispatch from its Washington correspondent stating that the methods by which Roosevelt’s nomination was achieved “have been sharply condemned by all eyewitnesses.”

Hitler will now hope that Roosevelt is defeated in the election by Willkie. The point is that Hitler fears Roosevelt. He is just beginning to comprehend that Roosevelt’s support of Great Britain is one of the prime reasons why the British decline to accept his kind of peace. As Rudolf Kircher, editor of the
Frankfurter Zeitung
, will be allowed to put it tomorrow: “Roosevelt is the father of English illusions about this war. It may be that Roosevelt’s shabby tactics are too much for the Americans, it may be that he will not be reelected, it may be that, if he is re-elected, he will stick closely to the non-intervention program of his party. But it is also clear that while he may not intervene with his fleet or his army, he will intervene with speeches, with intrigues, and with a powerful propaganda which he will put at the disposal of the English.”

B
ERLIN
,
July
21

Holland is beginning to feel the Nazi yoke. Mass arrests, we hear.

B
ERLIN
,
July
22

Hitler has given Mussolini a birthday present. It’s an anti-aircraft armoured train.

Halifax broadcast Britain’s answer to Hitler’s “peace proposal.” It was an emphatic No. A poor speech though, I thought while listening to it at the
Rundfunk
—for America. He sounded awfully pious. He appealed too much to God. I remember him in India as a very religious man. But God’s been pretty good to Hitler so far….

B
ERLIN
,
July
23

The die seems cast, as the papers put it this evening. Halifax’s speech has jolted official circles. There were angry Nazi faces at the noon press conference. Said the spokesman with a snarl: “Lord Halifax has refused to accept the peace offer of the Führer. Gentlemen, there will be war.”

The press campaign to whip up the people for the war on Britain started with a bang this morning. Every paper in Berlin carried practically the same headline:
“CHURCHILL’S ANSWER—COWARDLY MURDERING OF A DEFENCELESS POPULATION!”

The story is that since Hitler’s Reichstag “appeal for peace” the British have answered by increasing their night attacks—on helpless women and children. Details not previously given us as to the extent of the British bombings are suddenly hauled out. Bombings of Bremen, Hamburg, Paderborn (where there’s a big tank works), Hagen, and Bochum (all teeming with military objectives). But according to Goebbels’s lies—only women and children have been hit. Afraid the German people will swallow this. They are very depressed that Britain will not have peace. But they now pin their hopes on a quick victory which will be over by fall and therefore save them from another war winter.

B
ERLIN
,
July
25

Today we get the first glimpse of how Hitler intends to break up France. A special German governor
named Weyer has been appointed for the five French departments which comprise Brittany, and a Breton “National Committee” formed and made to proclaim a new Breton national state.

Today in Alsace French signs were removed and German substituted.

From Dr. Walther Funk, president of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics, who showed up at our evening press conference, we also received a first glimpse into Hitler’s “new order.” Funk, a shifty-looking little man who, they say, drinks too much, but who is not unintelligent and not devoid of humour, admitted quite frankly that the purpose of the “new order” was to make Germany
a richer land. He put it this way: “It must guarantee Germany a maximum of economic security and a maximum also of goods consumption. This is the goal of the new European economy.” Later the censor cut this part out of my report.

Funk also said that gold would be abandoned as the basis of the new European currency, and the now worthless Reichsmark substituted. Gold would also lose most of its importance, he claimed, as a means of international payment. Thus America’s great gold supply would lose most of its value. The Reichsbank, he went on, would act as clearing house for the new European system. In other words, any trade, say, that America might want to carry on with a European country would have to be done through Berlin. On the other hand Funk belligerently attacked what he called America’s “intervention” in Germany’s trade with South America. “Either we will trade directly with the sovereign South American states or we won’t trade at all,” he shouted. Just one more example of the Germans wanting one standard for themselves and a worse one for others.

Funk’s enmity to Dr. Schacht, whom he chased out
of the Reichsbank and the economics ministry, cropped out when we asked him about the widespread reports that Schacht, too, had worked out a plan for the “new order.” “I haven’t heard of it,” he snapped. Then on second thought: “Oh, I did read something in the foreign press about it, but I only believe half of what I read in the papers.” Then seriously: “The Führer entrusted
me
with the economic plans for the ‘new order.’”

B
ERLIN
,
July
28

More about the “new order.” Dr. Alfred Pietzsch, president of the Reich Economic Chamber, says the Continent under the “new order” will have a population of 320,000,000 people and cover 1,500,000 square miles of space. It will grow annually 160,000,000 tons of potatoes and 120,000,000 tons of grain and will be practically self-supporting in foods. Dr. Pietzsch admits something which most Nazis won’t. He says the Hitler-dominated Continent will be far from self-sufficient in raw materials. For example, it will grow little wool and practically no cotton. At the present time, he says, the Continent imports annually a billion and a half dollars’ worth of raw materials.