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January 3, 2017
Definite, however, is that Hitler has convoked the Reichstag for noon tomorrow and summoned the ambassadors of Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium for tomorrow morning. Since these are the four Locarno powers, it is obvious from that and from what little information I could pry out of party circles that Hitler intends to denounce the Locarno Treaty, which only a year ago this month he said Germany would “scrupulously respect.”
The proposal is a pure fraud, and if I had any guts, or American journalism had any, I would have said so in my dispatch tonight. But I am not supposed to be “editorial.”
Their hands are raised in slavish salute, their faces now contorted with hysteria, their mouths wide open, shouting, shouting, their eyes, burning with fanaticism, glued on the new god, the Messiah. The Messiah plays his role superbly. His head lowered as if in all humbleness, he waits patiently for silence.
In Cologne Cathedral Cardinal Schulte, he says, praised Hitler for “sending back our army.” Quickly forgotten is the Nazi persecution of the church.
Trouble in Spain. A right-wing revolt. Fighting in Madrid, Barcelona, and other places.
They had talked with Göring, they said, and he had told them that we American correspondents were unfair to the Nazis. “Did he tell you about Nazi suppression, say, of the churches?” I asked. “He did,” one of the men spoke up, “and he assured us there was no truth in what you fellows write about persecution of religion here.”
It has been more difficult to point out the sources of strength; to tell of the feverish efforts to make Germany self-sufficient under the Four-Year Plan, which is no joke at all, but a deadly serious war plan; to explain that the majority of Germans, despite their dislike of much in Nazism, are behind Hitler and believe in him.
The bankers and industrialists, not so enthusiastic now as when I arrived in Germany, go along. They must. It is either that or the concentration camp. The workers too. After all, six million of them have been re-employed and they too begin to see that Germany is going places, and they with it.
Hitler’s own newspaper, the Völkische Beobachter, on my lap here. Its screaming banner-line across page one: GERMAN-AUSTRIA SAVED FROM CHAOS. And an incredible story out of Goebbels’s evil but fertile brain describing violent Red disorders in the main streets of Vienna yesterday, fighting, shooting, pillaging. It is a complete lie. But how will the German people know it’s a lie?
Described how Vienna has been completely Nazified in a week—a terrifying thing.
The Nazi press full of hysterical headlines. All lies. Some examples: WOMEN AND CHILDREN MOWED DOWN BY CZECH ARMOURED CARS, or BLOODY REGIME—NEW CZECH MURDERS OF GERMANS. The Börsen Zeitung takes the prize: POISON-GAS ATTACK ON AUSSIG? The Hamburger Zeitung is pretty good: EXTORTION, PLUNDERING, SHOOTING—CZECH TERROR IN SUDETEN GERMAN LAND GROWS WORSE FROM DAY TO DAY!
France has lost something she had when I arrived here fourteen years ago: her taste, part of her soul, the sense of her historical mission. Corruption everywhere, class selfishness partout and political confusion complete. My decent friends have about given up. They say: “Je m’en fous (To hell with it).” This leads to the sort of defeatist, anarchistic je m’en fousism which a writer like Céline is spreading.
the whole life of Germany was now geared to war, but that there were signs of economic cracking. Iron was so short they were tearing down the iron fences of the Reich. And the nerves of the German people were becoming frayed and they were against going to war.
And so on in this sarcastic manner, from which, with a masterly touch—Hitler was a superb actor today—he drew every last drop of irony. America champions the conference method of settling disputes? he asked. But was it not the first nation to shrink from participation in the League? “It was not until many years later that I resolved to follow the example of America and likewise leave the largest conference in the world.”
Little awareness here or in New York of the European crisis, and Tess says I’m making myself most unpopular by taking such a pessimistic view. The trouble is everyone here knows all the answers. They know there will be no war. I wish I knew it.
How completely isolated a world the German people live in. A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it. Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland over Danzig, here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is being maintained.
For perverse perversion of the truth, this is good. You ask: But the German people can’t possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.
German cannot renounce vital things, but he expects the other fellow to.
Everybody against the war. People talking openly. How can a country go into a major war with a population so dead against it?
It has been a lovely September day, the sun shining, the air balmy, the sort of day the Berliner loves to spend in the woods or on the lakes nearby. I walked in the streets. On the faces of the people astonishment, depression. Until today they have been going about their business pretty much as usual.
Today, no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria.
But one thing—is it possible that if the British and French decide upon a long war of attrition, the mass of the German people will forget their feelings towards the regime and regard it as their duty to defend the Fatherland? Some things I’ve heard today from Germans make me think so.
The maid came in tonight to say how terrible war was. “Why do the French make war on us?” she asked. “Why do you make war on the Poles?” I said. “Hum,” she said, a blank over her face. “But the French, they’re human beings,” she said finally. “But the Poles, maybe they’re human beings,” I said. “Hum,” she said, blank again.
How dim in memory the time when there was peace. That world ended, and for me, on the whole, despite its faults, its injustices, its inequalities, it was a good one. I came of age in that one, and the life it gave was free, civilized, deepening, full of minor tragedy and joy and work and leisure, new lands, new faces—and rarely commonplace and never without hope. And now darkness. A new world. Black-out, bombs, slaughter, Nazism. Now the night and the shrieks and barbarism.
He called Churchill a liar a dozen times and kept shouting: “Your impudent lies, Herr Churchill! Your infernal lies!” From Goebbels!
