Berlin Diary (56 page)

B
ERLIN
,
March
30

The Nazis launched last night what they thought would be a bomb-shell in America. Today it looks more like a boomerang. And a fine example of clumsy German diplomatic blundering.

The Foreign Office released a new White Book containing what is purported to be sixteen documents discovered by the Germans in the Warsaw Foreign Office. Ribbentrop says they are secret reports of various Polish envoys. The most important are from the Polish ambassadors in London, Paris, and Washington. They “implicate” American ambassadors Kennedy, Bullitt, and Biddle, and the point of them is that these diplomats, backed by Roosevelt, were leading conspirators in forcing this war on Germany!

Though it seems incredible that even the Germans could be so stupid, my friends in the Foreign Office say that Ribbentrop actually thought these “revelations” would make Roosevelt’s position so untenable that his defeat in the next election—or the defeat of his candidate, should he not run—would be assured. Having got wind of the strong sentiment in America to stay out of war, Ribbentrop thought these “documents” would greatly strengthen the hand of the American isolationists by convincing the American people that Roosevelt and his personally appointed ambassadors had not only had a hand in starting the war but had done everything to get us in. Happily, first American reactions are good and the New York press is suggesting the documents are fakes. They may not be faked; probably only doctored.

L
ATER.—
One of the most amusing Nazi fakes I’ve seen in a long time appears in the evening
press. It tells the German people that the publication of the Polish “documents” has hit America like a bombshell. The implication is that Roosevelt has been dealt a staggering blow. Secretary Hull issues an official denial of the allegations in the “documents.” The DNB twists it around and heads it:
“HULL DISAVOWS USA AMBASSADORS!”
A crude piece of faking!

The only trouble is that men like Ham Fish and Senator Rush Holt may snatch at Nazi propaganda such as this to help fight Roosevelt. The DNB cables flatly that Senator Holt “agrees with the German White Book.”

B
ERLIN
,
April
2

I broadcast tonight: “Germany is now waiting to see what the Allies intend to do in stopping shipments of Swedish iron ore down the Norwegian coast to the Reich. It’s accepted here as a foregone conclusion that the British will go into Scandinavian territorial waters in order to halt this traffic. It’s also accepted as a foregone conclusion here that the Germans will react…. Germany imports ten million tons of Swedish iron a year. Germany cannot afford to see these shipments of iron stopped without fighting to prevent it.”

But how? S. whispers about Nazi troops being concentrated at the Baltic ports. But what can Germany do against the British navy?

B
ERLIN
,
April
7

The
V.B
. today: “Germany is ready. Eighty million pairs of eyes are turned upon the Führer…”

B
ERLIN
,
April
8

The British announce they have mined Norwegian territorial waters in order to stop the German iron ships coming down from Narvik. The Wilhelmstrasse says: “Germany will know how to react.” But how? There are two rumours afloat tonight, but we can confirm nothing. One, that the German fleet has sailed into the Kattegat, north of Denmark, west of Sweden and south of Norway
, and is heading for the Skagerrak. Two, that a German expeditionary force is forming at the Baltic ports and that dozens of passenger ships have been hurriedly collected to transport it to Scandinavia.

B
ERLIN
,
April
9

Hitler this spring day has occupied a couple more countries. At dawn Nazi forces invaded the two neutral states of Denmark and Norway in order, as an official statement piously puts it, “to protect their freedom and independence.” After twelve swift hours it seems all but over. Denmark, with whom Hitler signed a ten-year non-aggression pact only a year ago, has been completely overrun, and all important military points in Norway, including the capital, are now in Nazi hands. The news is stupefying. Copenhagen occupied this morning, Oslo this afternoon, Kristiansand this evening. All the great Norwegian ports, Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, captured. How the Nazis got there—under the teeth of the British navy—is a complete mystery. Obviously the action was long prepared and longer planned and certainly put into operation
before
the British mined Norwegian territorial waters day before yesterday. To get to Narvik from
German bases would have taken at least three days.

At ten twenty this morning we were urgently convoked to a special press conference at the Foreign Office to begin at ten thirty. We waited a half-hour. At eleven a.m. Ribbentrop strutted in, dressed in his flashy field-grey Foreign Office uniform and looking as if he owned the earth. Schmidt, his press chief, announced the news and read the text of the memorandum addressed in the early hours of this morning to Norway and Denmark, calling on them to be “protected” and warning that “all resistance would be broken by every available means by the German armed forces and would therefore only lead to utterly useless bloodshed.”

“The Reich government,” Schmidt, a fat, lumpy young man, droned on, “therefore expects the Norwegian government and the Norwegian people to have full understanding for Germany’s procedure and not to resist in any way…. In the spirit of the good German-Norwegian relations which have existed so long, the Reich government declares to the Royal Norwegian government that Germany has no intention now or in the future of touching upon the territorial integrity and political independence of the Kingdom of Norway.”

Ribbentrop sprang up, snake-like, and said: “Gentlemen, yesterday’s Allied invasion of Norwegian territorial waters represents the most flagrant violation of the rights of a neutral country. It compares with the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807. However”—showing his teeth in a smug grin—“it did not take Germany by surprise…. It was the British intention to create a base in Scandinavia from which Germany’s flank could be attacked. We are in possession, gentlemen, of incontestable proof. The plan included the occupation of all Scandinavia—Denmark, Norway,
Sweden. The German government has the proofs that French and British General Staff officers were already on Scandinavian soil, preparing the way for an Allied landing.

“The whole world can now see,” he went on, somehow reminding you of a worm, “the cynicism and brutality with which the Allies tried to create a new theatre of war. A new international law has now been proclaimed which gives one belligerent the right to take unlawful action in answer to the unlawful action of the other belligerent. Germany has availed itself of that right. The Führer has given his answer…. Germany has occupied Danish and Norwegian soil in order to protect those countries from the Allies, and will defend their true neutrality until the end of the war. Thus an honoured part of Europe has been saved from certain downfall.”

The little man, the once successful champagne salesman who had married the boss’s daughter, who had curried Hitler’s favour in the most abject fashion, who had stolen a castle near Salzburg by having the rightful owner sent to a concentration camp, stopped. Glancing over the room, he essayed another grin—inane, vapid.

“Gentlemen,” he shouted, “I thank you again and wish you a good-morning.” Followed by his uniformed lackeys, he strode out.

I was stunned. I shouldn’t have been—after so many years in Hitlerland—but I was. I walked up the Wilhelmstrasse and then through the Tiergarten to cool off. At noon I drove out to the
Rundfunk
to do my regular broadcast. The people in the streets, I noticed, were taking the news calmly. Few even bothered to buy the extras which the newsboys were beginning to shout. From a score of rooms at the RRG, Goebbels’s unpleasant voice came roaring out over the loud-speakers. He
was reading the various memorandums, proclamations, news bulletins—all the lies—with customary vehemence. I noticed for the first time a swarm of censors. They warned me to “be careful.” I glanced over the late German dispatches. A special communiqué of the High Command said Copenhagen had been completely occupied by eight a.m. The German forces, it said, had been transported in ships from Baltic ports during the night, landed at Copenhagen at dawn, and had first occupied the citadel and the radio station.
¹⁹
It was clear that the Danes had offered no resistance whatsoever. The Norwegians, it appeared, had, though the Germans were confident it would cease by nightfall. I phoned a couple of friends. The Danish Minister here had protested in the Wilhelmstrasse early this morning, but had added quickly that Denmark was not in a position to fight Germany. The Norwegian Minister—a man notorious in Berlin for his pro-Nazi sympathies, I recalled—had also protested, but had added that Norway would fight. I wrote my sad little piece, and spoke it.

L
ATER.—
Apparently something has gone wrong with the Norwegian part of the affair. The Norwegians were not supposed to fight, but apparently did—at least at one or two places. There are reports of German naval losses, but the Admiralty keeps mum. All the Danish and Norwegian correspondents were fished out of their beds at dawn this morning and locked up at the Kaiserhof. It was the first they knew that their countries had been protected.

The Nazi press has some rare bits tonight: The
Angriff
: “The young German army has hoisted new glory to its banners…. It is one of the most brilliant
feats of all time.” A feat it is, of course. The
Börsen Zeitung
: “England goes coldbloodedly over the dead bodies of the small peoples. Germany protects the weak states from the English highway robbers…. Norway ought to see the righteousness of Germany’s action, which was taken to ensure the freedom of the Norwegian people.”

Tomorrow the
Völkische Beobachter
, Hitler’s own pride (and money-maker) will bannerline in red ink:
“GERMANY SAVES SCANDINAVIA!”
The exclamation point is not mine.