Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent 1934-1941

by William L. Shirer

this court, though most of them are in camera, and a man scarcely has a chance, four of the five judges being Nazi party boys (the fifth is a regular judge) who do what they’re expected to do. Actually, the Nazis had something on poor Hirsch. A student at Prague University, he was put up to the job either by Otto Strasser or some of Strasser’s followers or supposed followers in Prague. Among Strasser’s “followers” there was certainly a Gestapo agent, and Hirsch was doomed from the outset. As far as I can piece the story together, Hirsch was provided with a suitcase full of bombs and a revolver and dispatched to Germany to get someone. The Nazis claim it was Streicher. Hirsch himself never seems to have admitted who. The Gestapo agent in Prague tipped off Himmler’s people here, and Hirsch, with his incriminating suitcase, was nabbed as soon as he set foot in Germany. It may well be, as Hirsch’s lawyer in Prague suggests, that the young man was merely bringing the weapons to Germany for someone else, already here, to do the job, and that he may not have known, even, of the contents of his luggage. We shall never know. Perhaps he was simply framed by the Gestapo. He was arrested, tried, and, this morning, executed. I had