Berlin Diary (18 page)

We wait for the baby, due in seven weeks now, arguing the while over names.

V
IENNA
,
February
5, 1938

Doings in Berlin. Today’s papers say Blomberg and Fritsch, the two men who have built up the German army, are out. Hitler himself becomes a sort of “Supreme War-Lord,” assuming the powers of the Minister of Defence. Two new generals appear: Wilhelm Keitel as chief of the High Command, and Walther von Brauchitsch as commander-in-chief of the army in place of Fritsch. Neurath is out as Foreign Minister, replaced by Ribbentrop. Schacht is out, replaced by Walther Funk. Göring—strange!—is made a field-marshal. What’s back of all this? The meeting of the Reichstag which had been set for January 30 and then postponed is now to be held February 20, when we shall probably know.

V
IENNA
,
February
7

Fodor tells me a strange tale. He says Austrian police raided Nazi headquarters in the Teinfalt-strasse the other day and found a plan initialled by Rudolph Hess, Hitler’s deputy, for a new
Putsch
. Idea was, says Fodor, to organize a riot in front of the German Embassy in the Metternichstrasse, have someone shoot Papen and the German military attaché, and thus give Hitler an excuse to march in.

V
IENNA
,
February
13

Much tension here this Sabbath. Schuschnigg has had a secret meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden, but we don’t know what happened.

V
IENNA
,
February
16

A terrible thing has happened. We learned day before yesterday about Berchtesgaden. Hitler took Schuschnigg for a ride, demanded he appoint several Nazis led by Seyss-Inquart to the Cabinet, amnesty all Nazi prisoners, and restore the political rights of the Nazi Party—or invasion by the Reichswehr. President Miklas seems to have balked at this. Then yesterday Hitler dispatched an ultimatum: Either carry out the terms of the Berchtesgaden “agreement,” or the Reichswehr marches. A little after midnight this morning Schuschnigg and Miklas surrendered. The new Cabinet was announced, Seyss-Inquart is in the key post of Minister of the Interior, and there is an amnesty for all Nazis. Douglas Reed when I saw him today so indignant he could hardly talk. He’s given the London
Times
the complete story of what happened at Berchtesgaden. Perhaps it will do some good. I dropped by the Legation this evening. John Wiley was pacing the floor.

“It’s the end of Austria,” he said.

V
IENNA
,
February
20

Tess, Ed Taylor, and I sat glumly around the radio on this Sunday afternoon listening to Hitler thunder before his Reichstag in Berlin. Today he came out in the open with his theory that Germany will herself protect the ten million Germans living outside the
Reich’s borders—meaning, though he did not say so, the seven millions in Austria and the three million Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia. He even proclaimed their right to “racial self-determination.” His words: “There must be no doubt about one thing. Political separation from the Reich may not lead to deprivation of rights—that is, the general rights of self-determination. In the long run it is unbearable for a world power to know there are racial comrades at its side who are constantly being afflicted with the severest suffering for their sympathy or unity with the whole nation, its destiny, and its
Weltanschauwng
. To the interests of the German Reich belong the protection of those German peoples who are not in a position to secure along our frontiers their political and spiritual freedom by their own efforts.”

L
ATER.—
A New York broadcast says Eden has resigned. It almost seems as though at the bidding of Hitler, who singled him out for attack in his speech this afternoon. The Ballhausplatz very worried.

V
IENNA
,
February
22

The baby is due, but has not yet come. I must leave tonight for a broadcast in Sofia. My bad luck to miss the event, but perhaps I shall get back in time.

V
IENNA
,
February
26

When I stepped off the train at four p.m., Ed Taylor was on the platform and I could tell by his face it had happened.

“Congratulations!” he said, but I could see he was forcing his smile.

“And Tess?”

He hesitated, swallowed. “She had a bit of a hard time, I’m afraid. Caesarean. But she’s better now.”

I told the taxi-driver to hurry to the hospital.

“Aren’t you going to ask the sex?” Ed said.

“What is it?”

“A girl,” he said.

It was a sweet girl I saw a few minutes later, not discoloured and deformed as in the books, but white-skinned and well-shaped and full of beans, but her birth had almost cost the life of her mother. In the nick of time, the operation, early this morning.

“The danger is past. Your wife will recover. And the baby is fine,” the doctor said. A little resentful, he seemed, that I had taken so long in showing up.

A bit too excited tonight to sleep, I fear.

V
IENNA
,
March
2

Tess and the baby doing well considering everything. I spending most of my time at the hospital. Tension growing here daily. Hear Schuschnigg is now negotiating with the workers, whom his colleague Dollfuss shot down so cold-bloodedly just four years ago. They are asking for little, but the negotiations with these stupid reactionaries go slowly. Still the workers prefer what they can undoubtedly get now from Schuschnigg to the Nazis. I feel a little empty, being here on the scene but doing no actual reporting. Curious radio doesn’t want a first-hand report. But New York hasn’t asked for anything, being chiefly concerned with an educational broadcast I must do from Ljubljana in a few days—a chorus of schoolchildren or something! Göring made a nice gentle speech yesterday, according to the local press. He said:” We [the
German air force] will be the terror of our enemies…. I want in this army iron men with a will to action…. When the Führer in his Reichstag speech said that we would no longer tolerate the suppression of ten million German comrades beyond our borders, then you know as soldiers of the air force that, if it is to be, you must back these words of the Führer to the limit. We are burning to prove our invincibility.”