Berlin Diary (88 page)

8. He said the German night bombers go over in squadrons of seven. He also insisted that each Luftwaffe base reports its correct losses and that any doctoring of figures is done either at headquarters or in Berlin.

He confirms that the Luftwaffe has failed so far to gain air supremacy over Britain, though when I was on the Channel five weeks ago the Germans said this would be a matter of but a fortnight.

It’s a fact that since about a fortnight the Germans have given up large-scale day attacks on England and have gone over largely to night bombing. This in itself is an admission of defeat.

B
ERLIN
,
September
24

The British really went to work on Berlin last night. They bombed heavily and with excellent aim for exactly four hours. They hit some important factories in the north of the city, one big gas works, and the railroad yards north of the Stettiner and Lehrter stations.

But we couldn’t tell the story. The authorities said no damage of military importance was done and the Propaganda Ministry, suddenly very nervous over last night’s destruction, warned all of us correspondents that we could only report what the military said. Goebbels’s Ministry even cancelled its usual post-raid conducted tour of the city, giving as an excuse that there was so much to see and so little time to see it in.

The German press and radio have never been made to lie quite so completely about a raid as today. Even the stolid Berliners, judging by their talk, appear to be stirred at the lies of their own newspapers. Said the official account: “In spite of violent anti-aircraft fire a few British bombers succeeded in reaching the northern and eastern suburbs of Berlin last night and dropped a number of bombs. The position of the bombs, far away from all military or industrial objectives, provides fresh evidence of the fact that the British airmen deliberately attack residential quarters. There was no damage of military importance.”

Even the High Command, in whose veracity many Germans still believe, repeated the lie later in its daily
war communiqué. The hundreds of thousands of commuters from the northern suburbs who had to get off their trains today three times and be conveyed by bus over three stretches of one main railway line where British bombs had blown up the tracks were somewhat surprised by what they read in their papers.

The British just missed twice blowing up the elevated Stadtbahn railroad running east-west through the centre of Berlin. In both places the bomb missed the tracks by a few yards, damaging adjacent houses. This line not only carries the bulk of the suburban electric traffic, but a large number of passenger trains. It’s the most important line within the city limits. The debris from buildings which were hit held up traffic last night, but today the line was running.

Serrano Suñer, Franco’s brother-in-law and Minister of Interior, returned from a visit to the western front just in time to experience his first British bombing attack. This may have been helpful. We correspondents kept imagining Suñer returning to Madrid, and Franco, who is under tremendous pressure from Berlin and Rome now to hop on the Axis band-wagon, asking him about those British attacks on Berlin, and Suñer replying: “What attacks? I saw no attacks. I was in Berlin ten days. The British couldn’t get over even once. The British are finished, generalissimo, and now is the time for Spain to get in on the Axis spoils.”

Goebbels and most of the other luminaries of the Nazi Party were dining Suñer at the Adlon last night when the bombing began. The banquet was brought to an abrupt close before the dessert had been served and all present made for the Adlon’s spacious air-raid cellar next to the barber-shop. When I returned at four a.m. from the radio, they were just leaving.

I learn Ciano is coming here Thursday. A deal is
on between Berlin and Rome to finish the war in Africa this winter and divide up the Dark Continent. But they must be sure of Spain first and are insisting that Franco either take Gibraltar or let the Germans take it.

Berlin pleased tonight that the French, who have practically turned over Indo-China to the Japs without a blow and daily make new concessions to the Axis without a murmur, today opened fire on de Gaulle and the British, who want to have Dakar.

Last night’s bombing reminds me that the best airraid shelter in Berlin belongs to Adolf Hitler. Experts doubt that he could ever be killed in it. It is deep, protected by iron girders and an enormous amount of reinforced concrete, and is provided with its own ventilating and lighting plant, a private movie and an operating room. Were British bombs to blow the Chancellery to smithereens, cutting off all apparent escape from the cellar, the Führer and his associates could emerge safely by simply walking through one of the tunnels that run from his shelter to points several hundred yards away. Hitler’s cellar also is fitted out with spacious sleeping-quarters, an important consideration, but one utterly neglected in most shelters, since the loss of sleep is hurting the German people far more than British bombs.

If Hitler has the best air-raid cellar in Berlin, the Jews have the worst. In many cases they have none at all. Where facilities permit, the Jews have their own special
Luftschutzkeller
, usually a small basement room next to the main part of the cellar, where the “Aryans” gather. But in many Berlin cellars there is only one room. It is for the “Aryans.” The Jews must take refuge on the ground floor, usually in the hall leading from the door of the flat to the elevator or stairs. This is fairly safe if a bomb hits the roof, since the chances are that it will not penetrate to the ground floor. But
experience so far has shown that it is the most dangerous place to be in the entire building if a bomb lands in the street outside. Here where the Jews are hovering, the force of the explosion is felt most; here in the entry-way where the Jews are, you get most of the bomb splinters.

B
ERLIN
,
September
25

Dr. Boehmer, the Propaganda Ministry foreign-press chief, who is a typical Nazi except that he is intelligent and has travelled widely, especially in America, is peeved from time to time over our “lack of appreciation” of such Nazi favours as giving the correspondents extra food. If the way to a correspondent’s heart is through his stomach, then Dr. Goebbels certainly tries hard. In the first place he classifies us as “heavy labourers,” which means we get double rations of meat, bread, and butter. Every other Thursday, after our press conference, we line up for a fortnight’s extra food cards. Moreover, Dr. Goebbels not only permits us, but actually encourages us to import each week, against a liberal payment in dollar exchange, a food packet from Denmark. This latter is a life-saver. It enables me to have bacon and eggs at breakfast four or five times a week. Ordinarily I do not eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, but on the short war rations now available, I find it fortifies one for the entire day. I also got in enough coffee from Holland before the western campaign to provide me for the next six months. In a word, we correspondents are hardly affected by the war-time rationing. We have plenty to eat. And the Germans see to it that we do have enough, not because they like us, but because—quite rightly, I suppose—they think we’ll be more kindly disposed to them if we
operate on full stomachs, we being human beings after all.

Moreover, the Propaganda Ministry and the Foreign Office, which fight each other over many things, have set up a fierce rivalry to see which one can establish the best dining club for the foreign press. Ribbentrop’s establishment, the Ausland Presse Club, off the Kurfürstendamm, is at the moment more sumptuous than Goebbels’s Ausland Club on the Leipzigerplatz. But the
Doktor
, I hear, has just appropriated several million marks to modernize
his
club and make it more gaudy than Ribbentrop’s. I used to eat a couple of nights a week at the Ausland Club, it being conveniently located for me, and the prospect of a real beefsteak and real coffee proving a great temptation. Moreover, it was a place to chew the rag with the Nazis and see what was in their minds, if anything. Since the wanton aggression against Holland and Belgium I have not gone there, being unable any more to stomach Nazi officials with my dinner.

If we eat well, that is not to say that the German people do. But reports abroad about the people here starving are greatly exaggerated. They are not starving. After a year of the blockade they are getting enough bread, potatoes, and cabbage to keep them going for a long time. Adults get a pound of meat a week and a quarter of a pound of butter. Americans could hardly subsist on this diet. But Germans, whose bodies have become accustomed for a century to large amounts of potatoes, cabbage, and bread, seem to do very well on it. The meat and fat ration, though considerably under what they are used to, is enough to keep them tolerably fit.

The shortage of fruit is acute and last winter’s severe cold has ruined the German fruit crop. We saw no
oranges or bananas last winter and are not likely to see any this winter. The occupation of Denmark and Holland helped temporarily to augment the stocks of vegetables and dairy products, but Germany
’s inability to furnish fodder to these countries will shortly make them liabilities in the matter of food. There’s no doubt that the Germans looted all the available food in Scandinavia, Holland, Belgium, and France, though it’s true they paid for it—in paper marks which cost them nothing. Only Mr. Herbert Hoover’s representative here doubts that.

The important thing is that Britain will not win the war, say, in the next two or three years by starving the German people. And Hitler, who is never sentimental about non-Germans, will see to it that every one of the hundred million people in the occupied lands dies of hunger before one German does. Of that the world may be sure.

B
ERLIN
,
September
26

We had the longest air-raid of the war last night, from eleven p.m. to four o’clock this morning. If you had a job to get to at seven or eight a.m., as hundreds of thousands of people had, you got very little sleep. The British ought to do this every night. No matter if not much is destroyed. The damage last night was not great. But the psychological effect was tremendous.

No one expected the British so early, and thousands were caught in subways, on the Stadtbahn, in buses and street-cars. They hastily made for the nearest public shelter and spent most of the night there. The first result of the early arrival of the British last night—theoretically they can arrive at ten p.m., two hours
after dark—is that all the theatres today announce a new opening hour: six p.m., instead of seven thirty or eight p.m. And the Ministry of Education sends out word that in case of air-raids lasting after midnight, grade schools will remain closed the following morning in order to allow the children to catch up on their sleep.

It burns me up that I cannot mention a raid that is going on during my broadcast. Last night the anti-aircraft guns protecting the
Rundfunk
made such a roar while I was broadcasting that I couldn’t hear my own words. The lip microphone we are now forced to use at night prevented the sound of the guns from accompanying my words to America, which is a pity. Noticed last night too that instead of having someone talk to New York from the studio below to keep our transmitter modulated for the five minutes before I began to talk, the RRG substituted loud band music. This was done to drown out the sound of the guns.