Berlin Diary (98 page)

Nowadays he rarely dines with his chief aides, preferring the easier company of his party cronies of the early “fighting” days, men like Wilhelm Brückner, his adjutant, Hess, his first private secretary—the only man in the world he fully trusts—and Max Amann, his top sergeant during the World War, whom he has made czar of the highly remunerative Nazi publishing house, the Eher Verlag.
³⁰
The really big shots in the Nazi world, Göring, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, Ley, and the heads of the armed services, see Hitler either at appointments during the day, or after dinner in the evening, when he often invites them to see a private showing of a film. Hitler has a passion for movies—including the
products of Hollywood. (Two of his favourites were
It Happened One Night
and
Gone with the Wind
.)

Hermann Göring
is very definitely the Number Two man in Germany and the only Nazi who could carry on the present regime were Hitler to pass on. The fat, bemedalled Reichsmarschall enjoys a popularity among the masses second only to Hitler’s—but for opposite reasons. Where Hitler is distant, legendary, nebulous, an enigma as a human being, Göring is a salty, earthy, lusty man of flesh and blood. The Germans like him because they understand him. He has the faults and virtues of the average man, and the people admire him for both. He has a child’s love for uniforms and medals. So have they. He has a passion for good food and drink in Gargantuan quantities. They too. He loves display—palaces, marble halls, great banqueting rooms, gay costumes, servants in livery. They love them too. And despite the efforts of Goebbels to stir up popular criticism of his rival, they display no envy, no resentment of the fantastic, mediaeval—and very expensive—personal life he leads. It is the sort of life they would lead themselves, perhaps, if they had the chance.

No other henchman of Hitler has the popularity or the strength or the ability to keep the Nazi regime in power.

Hitler always hoped that his protégé Hess might be his successor and in his will has named him to take over after Göring. But Hess lacks the strength, the ambition, the driving force and imagination for the job of top man. Goebbels, who used to be Number Three, has lost ground since the war, partly because he has been swept aside by the military and the secret police, partly because he has bungled his propaganda job at crucial moments, as when he ordered the press and radio to
celebrate the victory of the
Graf Spee
the day before it was scuttled.

Goebbels’s place as the third man in Germany has been taken by Heinrich Himmler, the mild-mannered little fellow who looks like a harmless country school-teacher, but whose ruthlessness, brutality, and organizing talents have landed him in a key position in the Third Reich. He’s important because he has whipped the Gestapo into an organization which now watches over almost every department of life in the country and which keeps for Hitler and the politicians a watchful eye on the army itself. Himmler, alone among Hitler’s lieutenants, has power of life and death over all citizens of Germany and the occupied lands, and it is a rare day when he does not take advantage of it. The evidence you find buried daily in the back pages of the newspapers in the little notices which read: “S.S. Chief Himmler announces that Hans Schmidt, a German (or Ladislav Kotowski, a Pole), has been shot while offering resistance to the police.”

There are two other “big men” around Hitler, Joachim von Ribbentrop
and Dr. Robert Ley. Ribbentrop, a vain and pompous man, thoroughly disliked in the party and by the public, is still in favour with the Führer because he guessed right about England and France (Göring guessed wrong and as a result suffered a temporary eclipse) at Munich. The fact that he guessed wrong in September 1939, when he assured Hitler the British wouldn’t fight, has not affected, for some reason, his standing at the Chancellery. Hitler recently has taken to calling him a “second Bismarck,” though men like Göring, who despises him, can’t understand why.

Dr. Robert Ley is boss of the Nazi party machine and
of German Labour, a tough, brawling, hard-drinking, able administrator, fanatically loyal to his chief.

These men—Göring, Himmler, Hess, Ribbentrop, and Ley—comprise the “Big Five” around Hitler. They are called in for consultation. All but Göring give their advice very carefully and with some timidity. In every case the decision is always Hitler’s.

There are lesser men in the hierarchy, some Nazi chiefs who have been given big jobs, some men who hold their posts because Hitler thinks they are competent technicians. The most important are: Walther Darre, an able and enterprising Minister of Agriculture, Bernhard Rust, who as Minister of Education has revolutionized and degraded the schools of Germany, Wilhelm Frick, a lifelong civil servant who owes his present position as Minister of Interior to his betrayal of the Bavarian government, of which he was a permanent official, Dr. Walther Funk, who ousted Dr. Schacht to become president of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics, and Dr. Todt, a brilliant and imaginative engineer who built Hitler’s great network of superhighways and the fortifications of the Westwall.

Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s mentor in early party days and formerly one of the chief men in the party, has entirely lost out and today has no importance in the party or the country. He was too much of a dreamer to be practical, and in the jungle struggle with the more ruthless men who make up the Nazi firmament he failed miserably. Since the Nazi alliance with Moscow in August 1939, which he alone opposed, he has been little heard of. To assuage his feelings Hitler has given him a magnificent title:
Beauftragter des Führers zur Überwachung der Nationalsozialistischen Bewegung
(Commissioner of the Leader for the Supervision of the
National Socialist Movement). He has also managed to hold on as editor of Hitler’s daily newspaper,
Völkische Beobachter
, though he has little to say about its policy.

Julius Streicher, once a sinister power in the country, the man who terrorized his
Gau
of Franconia with a horsewhip, has also, as previously noted, passed out of the picture because he couldn’t keep his finances straight.

If Hitler makes the political decisions, be it noted that he also calls the tune in the army. General von Brauchitsch, the able but not brilliant commander-in-chief of the army, occasionally speaks up, though not often. Keitel is little more than liaison man between Hitler and the General Staff. General Halder, chief of the General Staff, is probably the most brainy man in the army, but is allowed no credit by Hitler, who encourages talk that he himself personally directs both the tactics and the strategy of the great campaigns. General von Reichenau has told me personally that this is true, but I doubt it. On the other hand Hitler no doubt makes the major decisions of where the next blow will fall and when. One of his chief military advisers, very powerful in the army—though completely unknown to the German public—is General Alfred Jodi, chief of Hitler’s own military staff.

There is one final question to be tackled in these rambling conclusions: does Hitler contemplate war with the United States? I have argued this question many hours with many Germans and not a few Americans here and have pondered it long and carefully. I am firmly convinced that he does contemplate it and that if he wins in Europe and Africa he will in the end launch it
unless we are prepared to give up our way of life and adapt ourselves to a subservient place in his totalitarian scheme of things.

For to Hitler there will not be room in this small world for two great systems of life, government, and trade.
³¹
For this reason I think he also will attack Russia, probably before he tackles the Americas.

It is not only a question of conflict between the totalitarian and democratic ways of life, but also between Pan-German imperialism, whose aim is world domination, and the fundamental urge of most of the other nations on the earth to live as they please—that is, free and independent.

And just as Hitler’s Germany can never dominate the continent of Europe as long as Britain holds out, neither can it master the world as long as the United States stands unafraid in its path. It is a long-term, fundamental conflict of dynamic forces. The clash is as inevitable as that of two planets hurtling inexorably through the heavens towards each other.

As a matter of fact, it may come sooner than almost all Americans at home imagine. An officer of the High Command somewhat shocked me the other day while we were discussing the matter. He said: “You think Roosevelt can pick the moment most advantageous to America and Britain for coming into the war. Did you ever stop to think that Hitler, a master at timing, may choose the moment for war with America—a moment which he thinks will give him the advantage?”

I must admit I never did.

As far as I can learn, Hitler and the High Command
do not contemplate any such move within the next few months. They still hold that they can bring Britain
to her knees before American aid becomes really effective. They talk now of winning the war by the middle of next summer, at the latest. But there are a few in high places who argue that if Hitler actually declares war (he hasn’t
declared
any wars yet) against America, he can reap decided advantages. First, it would be the signal for widespread sabotage by thousands of Nazi agents from coast to coast, which would not only demoralize the United States but greatly reduce its shipments to Britain. Second, in case of an actual declaration of war, they argue, our army and especially our navy, alarmed at what Japan might do (according to the tripartite pact it would have to go to war against us), would hold all war supplies at home, supplies that otherwise would go to Britain. Third, they believe that there would be a great increase in American internal strife, with the isolationists blaming Roosevelt for the state of things, as they blamed him for the Three-Power pact. The third point obviously is false thinking, as a war declaration by Germany would destroy American isolationist sentiment in America in ten seconds.

The Lindberghs and their friends laugh at the idea of Germany ever being able to attack the United States. The Germans welcome their laughter and hope more Americans will laugh, just as they encouraged the British friends of the Lindberghs to laugh off the very idea that Germany would ever turn on Britain.

How would Germany ever attack the United States? I have no authoritative information of German military plans. But I have heard Germans suggest the following possibilities:

If they got all or part of the British navy or have time to build in Europe’s shipyards (whose total capacity
is far beyond ours) a fairly strong navy, they would attempt to destroy in the Atlantic that part of our fleet which was not engaging the Japanese in the Pacific. This done, they could move an army and air force in stages across the North Atlantic, basing first on Iceland, then Greenland, then Labrador, then Newfoundland and thence down the Atlantic seaboard. As the bases were moved westward, the air armada would penetrate farther, first towards and then into the United States. This sounds fantastic, perhaps, but at the present time we have no great air force to oppose such a move.

Most Germans talk more convincingly of a move across the South Atlantic. They assume that Germany will have the French port of Dakar from which to jump off for South America. They assume too that the main United States fleet will be engaged in the Pacific. From Dakar to Brazil is a much shorter distance than from Hampton Roads to Brazil. A German naval force based on the African port could feasibly operate in Brazilian waters, but these waters are almost too far for an American fleet to be effective in. Transports could get there from Dakar before transports from America arrived. Fifth-column action by the hundreds of thousands of Germans in Brazil and Argentina would paralyse any defence which those countries might try to put up. South America could thus, think these Germans, be taken fairly easily. And once in South America, they argue, the battle is won.

B
ERLIN
,
December
2

Only three more days!