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

by William L. Shirer

Berlin was cut off for several hours today, but late this afternoon telephone communication was re-established. And what a story! Hitler and Göring have purged the S.A., shooting many of its leaders. Röhm, arrested by Hitler himself, was allowed to commit suicide in a Munich jail, according to one agency report. The French are pleased. They think this is the beginning of the end for the Nazis. Wish I could get a post in Berlin. It’s a story I’d like to

cover.

One had almost forgotten how strong sadism and masochism

They looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, their faces transformed into something positively inhuman.

I’m beginning to comprehend, I think, some of the reasons for Hitler’s astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman church, he is restoring pageantry and colour and mysticism to the drab lives of twentieth-century Germans.

In such an atmosphere no wonder, then, that every word dropped by Hitler seemed like an inspired Word from on high. Man’s—or at least the German’s—critical faculty is swept away at such moments, and every lie pronounced is accepted as high truth itself.

Hitler sprang his Arbeitsdienst, his Labour Service Corps, on the public for the first time today and it turned out to be a

highly trained, semi-military group of fanatical Nazi youths. Standing there in the early morning sunlight which sparkled on their shiny spades, fifty thousand of them, with the first thousand bared above the waist, suddenly made the German spectators go mad with joy when, without warning, they broke into a perfect goose-step. Now, the goose-step has always seemed to me to be an outlandish exhibition of the human being in his most undignified and stupid state, but I felt for the first time this morning what an inner chord it strikes in the strange soul of the German people.

You have to go through one of these to understand Hitler’s hold on the people, to feel the dynamic in the movement he’s unleashed and the sheer, disciplined strength the Germans possess.

Rust is not without ability and is completely Nazifying the schools. This includes new Nazi textbooks falsifying history—sometimes ludicrously.

until he appeared at a window and saluted. Today’s creation of a conscript army in open defiance of Versailles will greatly enhance his domestic position, for there are few Germans, regardless of how much they hate the Nazis, who will not support it wholeheartedly. The great majority will like the way he has thumbed his nose at Versailles, which they all resented, and, being militarists at heart, they welcome the rebirth of the army.

the comedy of “non-intervention” goes on in London. For two years now the policies of London and Paris have ceased making sense to me, judged by their own vital interests. They did nothing on March 16, 1935 and on March 7 this year, and they’re doing nothing about Spain now. Is my judgment becoming warped after two years in this hysterical Nazi land? Is

it absurd or isn’t it absurd to conclude that Blum and Baldwin don’t know their own interests?

April here and no Hitler surprise this spring yet. This may be a year of Nazi consolidation, building up the armed forces, assuring Franco victory in Spain, cementing relations with Italy (support for the Duce in Spain and the Mediterranean in return for his giving Germany a free hand in Austria and the Balkans), and giving the nerves of the German people a little rest.

I have rarely seen such indignation in the Wilhelmstrasse as today. Every official I saw was fuming. The Spanish republicans yesterday bombed the pocket-battleship Deutschland at Ibitza with good result, killing, according to the Germans, some twenty officers and men and wounding eighty. One informant tells me Hitler has been screaming with rage all day and wants to declare war on Spain. The army and navy are trying to restrain him.

I feel like screaming with rage myself. The Germans this day have done a typical thing. They have bombarded the Spanish town of Almería with their warships as reprisal for the bombing of the Deutschland. Thus Hitler has his cheap revenge and a few more Spanish women and children are dead. The Wilhelmstrasse also announced Germany’s (and Italy’s) withdrawal from the Spanish naval patrol and from the non-intervention talks. Dr. Aschmann called us to the Foreign Office about ten a.m. to give us the news. He was very pious about it all. I was too outraged to ask questions, but Enderis and Lochner asked a few. Perhaps today’s action will end the farce of “non-intervention,” a trick by which Britain and France, for some strange reason, are allowing Hitler and Mussolini to triumph in Spain.

Helmut Hirsch, a Jewish youth of twenty who was technically an American citizen though he had never been to America, was axed at dawn this morning. Ambassador Dodd fought for a month to save his life, but to no avail. It was a sad case, a typical tragedy of these days. He was convicted by the dreaded People’s Court, a court of inquisition set up by the Nazis a couple of years ago, of planning to murder Julius Streicher, the Nuremberger Jew-baiter. What kind of trial it was—no American or outside representatives were present—can only be imagined. I’ve seen a few trials before

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

a long talk with Dodd this morning about the case. He told me he had appealed to Hitler himself to commute the sentence and read me the text of his moving letter. The Führer’s reply was a flat negative. When Dodd tried to get a personal interview with Hitler to plead the case in person, he was rebuffed. This afternoon I received from Hirsch’s lawyer in Prague a copy of the last letter the young man wrote. He wrote it in his death cell and it was addressed to his sister, for whom he obviously had a deep attachment. I have never read in all my life braver words. He had just been informed that his final appeal had been rejected and that there was no more hope. “I am to die, then,” he says. “Please do not be afraid. I do not feel afraid. I feel released, after the agony of not quite knowing.” He sketches his l...

Five more Protestant pastors arrested yesterday, including Jacobi from the big Gedächtniskirche. Hardly keep up with the church war any more since they arrested my informant, a young pastor; have no wish to endanger the life of another one.

The Austrian Minister tells me that the new British Ambassador here, Sir Nevile Henderson, has told Göring, with whom he is on very chummy terms, that Hitler

can have his Austria so far as he, Henderson, is concerned. Henderson strikes me as being very “pro.”

Jay also gave me a card to Ed Murrow, who, he said, was connected with CBS, but I shall not have time to see him as Knick and I leave tomorrow morning for Salcombe, where Tess and Agnes already are installed at Gallico’s. From there Tess and I cross to France without returning to London.

On the desk I noticed a wire that had come in ten minutes before the fatal one. It was from Salzburg, a baroque town of great charm where I used to go to hear some Mozart. It was signed: “Murrow, Columbia Broadcasting.” I dimly remembered the name, but could not place it beyond his company. “Will you have dinner with me at the Adlon Friday night?” it said. I wired: “Delighted.”

It has been quite an evening. I met Edward R. Murrow, European manager of CBS, in the lobby of the Adlon at seven

o’clock.

“Just a minute before we order,” Murrow broke in. “I’ve got something on my mind.” That’s the way it was. He said he had something on his mind. He said he was looking for an experienced foreign correspondent to open a CBS office on the Continent. He could not cover all of Europe from London. I began to feel better, though I said nothing.

“Are you interested?” he asked. “Well, yes,” I said, trying to down my feelings. “How much have you been making?” I told him. “Good. We’ll pay you the same.” “Fine,” I said.

Murrow called and said I’m hired. Start

October 1.

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.

(Four hours after midnight).—Great excitement at the Taverne tonight. About two a.m. we get the terms of the Russian-German pact. It goes much further than anyone dreamed. It’s a virtual alliance and Stalin, the supposed arch-enemy of Nazism and aggression, by its terms invites Germany to go in and clean up Poland.

That Stalin

would play such crude power politics and also play into the hands of the Nazis overwhelms the rest of us. The correspondents, especially the British, take to champagne or cognac to drown their feelings. Stalin’s step should kill world Communism. Will a French Communist, say, who has been taught for six years to hate Nazism above all else, swallow Moscow’s embracing of Hitler? Maybe, though, Stalin is smart. His aim: to bring on a war between Germany and the West which will result in chaos, after which the Bolsheviks step in and Communism comes to these countries or what is left of them. Maybe, too, he’s not smart. Hitler has broken every international agreement he ever made. When he has used Russia, as he once used Poland, with whom in 1934 he made a similar agreement, then good-bye Russia.

did everything possible to avoid it. The V.B. ends by saying that Germany, however, will not renounce her demands. “The individual, as well as the nation, can renounce only those things which are not vital.” There you have German character stripped to the bone. A German cannot renounce vital things, but he expects the other fellow

A typical Hitler swindle was sprung this evening. At nine p.m. the German radio stopped its ordinary program and broadcast the terms of German “proposals” to Poland. I was taken aback by their reasonableness, and having to translate them for our American listeners immediately, as we were on the air, I missed the catch. This is that Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary be sent to Berlin to “discuss” them by last night, though they were only

given to Henderson the night before.7 An official German statement (very neat) complains that the Poles would not even come to Berlin to discuss them. Obviously, they didn’t have time. And why should Hitler set a time limit to a sovereign power? The “proposals”—obviously never meant seriously—read like sweet reason, almost. They contain sixteen points, but the essential ones are four: (1) Return of Danzig to Germany. (2) A plebiscite to determine who shall have the Corridor. (3) An exchange of minority populations. (4) Gdynia to remain Polish even if the Corridor votes to return to Germany.

The war is on!

BERLIN, September 1, later It’s a “counter-attack”! At dawn this morning Hitler moved against Poland. It’s a flagrant, inexcusable, unprovoked act of aggression. But Hitler and the High Command call it a “counter-attack.”

Tomorrow Britain and France probably will come in and you have your second World War. The British and French tonight sent an ultimatum to Hitler to withdraw his troops from Poland or their ambassadors will ask for their passports. Presumably they will get their passports.

Hitler’s “counter-attack” on Poland has on this Sabbath day become a world war! To record the date: September 3, 1939. The time: eleven a.m. At nine o’clock this morning Sir Nevile Henderson called on the German Foreign Minister and handed him a note giving Germany until eleven o’clock to accept the British demand that Germany withdraw her troops from Poland. He returned to the Wilhelmstrasse shortly after eleven and was handed the German reply in the form of a memorandum. The extras are out on the streets now. The newsboys are giving them away. The D.A.Z. here. Its headlines: BRITISH ULTIMATUM TURNED DOWN ENGLAND DECLARES A STATE OF WAR WITH GERMANY BRITISH NOTE DEMANDS WITHDRAWAL OF OUR TROOPS IN THE EAST THE FÜHRER LEAVING TODAY FOR THE FRONT A typical headline over the official account: GERMAN MEMORANDUM PROVES ENGLAND’S GUILT.

Last night I heard Germans talking of the “Polish thing” lasting but a few weeks, or months at the most. Few believed that Britain and France would move. Ribbentrop was sure they wouldn’t and had told the Führer, who believed him. The British and French had been accommodating before. Another Munich, why not? Yesterday,

when it seemed that London and Paris were hesitating, everyone, including those in the Wilhelmstrasse, was optimistic.

On the feedback from New York tonight I heard the story of the sinking of the Athenia with 1,400 passengers, including 240 Americans, aboard. The English said it was a German U-boat. The Germans promptly denied it, though the German press and radio have been forbidden to mention the matter until tomorrow. I felt lousy talking from here at all tonight

after that story and went out of my way to explain my personal position as an American broadcaster—that I had been assigned to give the news from Germany, that official statements such as the denial that a German submarine had torpedoed the Athenia were part of that news, and that my orders from home were to refrain from expressing my personal opinions. The High Command has installed military censorship of everything I say, but fortunately the chief censor is a naval officer, an honourable and decent man. I have had some warm words with him the last couple of days, but within the limits of his job he has been reasonable.

The faces of the Germans when word came in late tonight that the British had bombed Cuxhaven and Wilhelmshaven for the first time! This was bringing the war home, and nobody seemed to like it.

It’s just a week since the “counter-attack” began and tonight I learn from an army friend that the Germans are within twenty miles of Warsaw. A new decree today providing the death penalty for anyone “endangering the defensive power of the German people”—a term which will give Gestapo chief Himmler plenty of leeway. Another decree forces workers to accept new jobs even if they pay lower wages than jobs previously held.

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.

Example of how our isolationists are appreciated in Naziland: Headline in the Börsen Zeitung: “SENATOR BORAH WARNS AGAINST THE WAR AGITATORS IN U.S.A.”