Berlin Embassy

by William Russell

And at exactly seven-fifteen, the straw boss staggered over to his radio and tuned in London. “This is the one time in the day when we can hear the truth,” he said. “All the rest is lies.”

Figures which remind one of von Papen’s famous remark: “Germans,” he said, “do not like to die in bed.”

So often in connection with Nazi Germany one comes across the word “total.” In the German language, this word is pronounced with the accent on the last syllable, instead of on the first as we pronounce it. Also, it has much more meaning. One hears about “total” war, “total” economy, “total” rationing. The Nazi government functions on a philosophy of “totality.” Anything which it undertakes must be done “totally,” or not at all.

Years ago, when I first crossed the Belgian-German border, I found that butter was strictly rationed. Other articles began to follow, and the closer the deadline for war approached, the tighter grew the supply of things. It was a systematic, a “total,” planning for war. Everything for the State.

In Germany, where “Heil Hitler” is expected of everybody, greetings are significant and revealing. If a Nazi says “Heil Hitler” to a non-Nazi, the latter may reply with the old Austrian “Grow Gott” (literally, “Greet God”) and still be safe from arrest. He has also let you know where he stands politically.

In format, most German newspapers are of tabloid size and have only twelve to sixteen pages. They don’t contain funny papers, personal columns, editorial pages, society news or department store advertisements. They all have their continued stories, because statistics show that the average German Hausfrau reads five continued novels at one time.

“I must tell you, Mein Fuehrer, that the author of this song was a Jew.” “Doesn’t matter,” answered Hitler expansively. “He must have had a good moment.”

The simple worker doesn’t care about Lebensraum. Realistic Germans have seen all too clearly that with every acquisition — Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland — their plight has become worse. Lebensraum sounds good on a speaker’s platform, but it doesn’t fill a stomach.

On the ninth of November, 1939, a terrific blast was set off in a simple Munich Bier Keller which was heard around the world with profound regret. The regret was caused by the fact that the blast came twenty minutes too late to accomplish its purpose.

He had spoken before a gathering of old Party faithfuls in the Nazi holy of holies — the Munich Burgerbrau Keller — the very place where the Nazi Party was founded only a few years after the end of the World War. Hitler usually speaks for three hours or more.

Many Germans put on a false appearance of joy at their Fuehrer’s narrow escape, to cover their glum thoughts as they remembered how close they had come to getting rid of That Man forever.

Richard and I headed for the Bavarian beer hall on the second floor, and as we swung open the doors to the large room a blast of singing and music and smoke and beer fumes hit us in our faces. Oh, how often in my life would I like to be hit by such a pleasant blow!

The Germans around us were as happy as only Germans can be when they are together and smoking and drinking beer and singing at the tops of their voices and not talking politics.

“This is the Germany I like,” I thought. “This is the Germany the whole world likes.”

In their show windows were displayed beautiful boxes of chocolates, and down at the right-hand side of the displays were small signs reading: “DISPLAYS ARE MADE UP OF EMPTY BOXES.” Berlin at war.

Most of them were Americans, but there were a few pathetic Germans who found these Thursday evenings their only outlet for the accumulated tension of living in Nazi Germany.

As I looked at the little shops which crowded together on either side of the street, at the blinking street lights, at the dim sharp rooftops of the residences, the weight of the war seemed to fall away from me. Could such quiet and beauty exist in a world of steel helmets and heavy boots and screaming propaganda?

They should have been drinking beer in pubs, attending church in a small village, buying bread and eggs at markets, listening to the women talk among themselves and walking out in the fields to hear what the farmers had to say.

Modern war is fought with the psychology of city people.

No man alive today could sit in a village pub with his genial neighbors and send out the order for war. A man in a city office could.

After dinner we sat around the big porcelain stove and drank coffee (which I had brought along as a present). Frau Maass beamed all over as she drank her first cup of real coffee in three months.

I carefully lighted every candle. Germans prefer candles on their Christmas trees to electric lights. They make a most beautiful picture: the branches bending and turning as they swing over the candle flames, crackling briskly; the soft drop of wax on the white paper underneath the trees; the reflection of the lights in the people’s eyes as they sit around and watch the flames blowing to and fro these are things surely never found in a string of eight colored lights on an electric cord.

I looked at Frau Maass. Her face was sad and her eyes were watching something in the distance. She was thinking about her boy, of course, and he was far away, dressed in a blue uniform, a cold steel helmet on his blond head.

The next morning, Christmas morning, we went early to church. We skied down to the Dorf and placed our skis with the others against the side of the little stone chapel.

The intense cold forced us to buy ear muffs and heavier clothes (from Denmark). We scurried around to dig up old electric heaters to help our apartments’ faltering radiators. People said that the new friends of Germany, the Russians, threw this cold in, gratis, along with the friendship pact. At any rate, it was the coldest winter Berlin has seen for twenty-five years. Coal was hard to get, and food harder.

Germans, accustomed to being led with a strong hand, felt this hesitation in Berlin, this indecision, this lack of leadership. They began to revolt, the workers, the women and the soldiers.

Whatever weaknesses the Nazis have, lack of leadership is not one of them. They will rule with an iron hand as long as they can force the German nation to obey their orders.

Not in all of Germany, even in what they called their slums, did I see anything approximating the shacks which people in my native Mississippi call houses. This well-being of the Germans had nothing to do with the Nazis; it had been built up over hundreds of years.

Not all Germans like Adolf Hitler. Many — I do not know how many — do not like him. But most of them will support him until the war is finished. Many — I do not know how many — German soldiers are fighting simply because their country is at war. They were not asked to decide whether or not their country should go to war; they do not even ask themselves whether their cause is just or unjust. The simple fact is there: their country is at war, and they have been called to fight.

Germans owning stoves instead of having central heating had one advantage: they could scurry around and get enough coal and wood to keep one stove burning.

This afternoon I went to visit a friend, who has four children and whose husband is at the front. She answered the front door herself and brought me into the kitchen, where she and the children had been trying to keep warm by the kitchen stove. She had been cooking supper in her fur coat and — gloves!

“It wasn’t for me,” I objected. She fixed it, anyway, and we sat around the kitchen, stove, dressed as though for a park bench, drinking the steaming coffee from tiny Meissen cups. “Beautiful cups,” I admired. “Beautiful coffee,” my friend said simply.

In a room just off the grand lobby of the former Bluecher Palace, we eagerly bought soap, flashlights, chocolate, sardines, coffee, dried fruits, milk, matches and anything else the Embassy was able to import from Denmark and the United States.

And as the food shortage got more serious, a barbed joke went the rounds: “What is the difference between India and Germany?” “Well, in India one man starves for everybody.” “In Germany, everybody starves for one man.”

One reason for such harsh action lies in the fact that the Nazis lay so much emphasis on appearance. They don’t want foreigners in Berlin to see the pathetic lines of hungry people waiting in front of shops which are such a common sight in Russia.

We heard so often this comment made to us by hungry Germans: “Oh, you foreigners have all the food you want, don’t you?” And they said it in a tone which implied, “While we don’t have anything at all.” There was no answer to that but a rude answer, or perhaps a dangerous one. We usually did not answer.

I don’t know why fish was so scarce, but it was nowhere to be bought. The same system of registration and waiting lists which was used with fats, meat and fowl was in force with fish.

Many German business men made extra trips to Prague just to buy those articles which were unavailable in Germany. Flashlights for use in the blackouts were the most popular item, and shoes and blankets.

The paradox lay in the fact that German stores still displayed those articles which were not for sale. Show windows were loaded with good things, boxes of chocolates lay untouched on the counters. But they could not be sold. The displays were mainly for the benefit of the many foreigners still in Berlin. Also, they were intended to keep the Germans believing their government’s claim that there were unlimited supplies in the Reich, all stored away for eventual use.

Paul asked me the following question: “If you had a thousand dollars in reichsmarks to spend in two days, what would you buy?” I thought it over very carefully and came to the conclusion that there was nothing left in Germany on which one could spend a thousand dollars in two days, unless he bought property. One could not buy clothing, he couldn’t buy food, he couldn’t even spend that much money on a spree. Money had completely lost its meaning as a unit of purchase.

Our cop, who double-dutied for our Embassy and Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry next door, held back traffic on the Hermann Goering Strasse, and several Germans on the sidewalk stopped to watch us go by. They were obviously envious and resentful of anybody lucky enough to have permission to drive an automobile and to have some gasoline to boot.

Germans always have time to gape at American cars, because ours are about twice as big as theirs and much more beautiful.

She had a husky voice, heavily Southern-accented. “Alabama,” she explained. “I never expected to be so far away from home in my life.”

but such is the strange character of the German that he prefers to believe in sweet fiction rather than be doused with the chilling waters of truth.

The only people who see good movies in Germany these days are the censors.

The long-suffering German movie public, on the other hand, ardently likes American films.

No films on political subjects. The director can never be certain that Hitler will not change his political policy toward the foreign country concerned in the middle of the filming. No large-scale musical films. They are likely to give the population lush ideas.

No movies about America. As bad as they paint American life, it is still attractive enough to make the average German want to go to America.

The one exception is the Fuehrer, and he is sincere in his beliefs.

Ordinarily, members of our Embassy who were sent on courier trips had first-class tickets. But since the beginning of this war, first-class has been abolished in German trains operating in the interior of the Reich.