Berlin Diary (58 page)

B
ERLIN
,
April
19

An official communiqué today: “In view of the hostile attitude of the Norwegian King and the former Norwegian government, the Norwegian Minister
and the staff of the Norwegian Legation have been asked to leave German territory by today.” They have.

Hitler’s fifty-first birthday tomorrow, and the people have been asked to fly their flags. Said Dr. Goebbels in a broadcast tonight: “The German people have found in the Führer the incarnation of their strength and the most brilliant exponent of their national aims.” When I passed the Chancellery tonight, I noticed some seventy-five people waiting outside for a glimpse of the leader. In other years on the eve of his birthday there were ten thousand.

B
ERLIN
,
April
21

The secrecy of the Allies about
where
their troops have landed in Norway
was lifted by the High Command today. They have landed at Namsos and Aandalsnes, the two railheads north and south respectively of Trondheim, the key port half-way up the Norwegian coast occupied by the Germans. A friend of mine on the High Command tells me that the whole issue in Norway now hangs on the outcome of the battle for Trondheim. If the Allies take it, they have saved Norway, or at least the northern half. If the Germans, pushing northward up the two railway lines from Oslo, get there first, then the British must evacuate. The Germans today occupied Lillehammer, eighty miles north of Oslo, but they still have a hundred and fifty miles to go. What the Germans fear most, I gather, is that the British navy will go into Trondheim Fjord and wipe out the German garrison in the city before the Nazi forces from Oslo can possibly get there. If it does, the German gamble is lost.

I feel better tonight, after working this out, than at any other time since the war began.

B
ERLIN
,
April
22

Opposition to the German forces driving northward on Trondheim is stiffening. For the first time tonight the German High Command speaks of stubborn resistance in this sector. But the Luftwaffe is giving the British bases at Namsos, Aandalsnes, and Dombas a terrible pounding. General Milch, Göring’s right-hand man, has been dispatched to Norway to direct the air force. It’s Germany’s biggest hope there now.

B
ERLIN
,
April
23

Joseph Terboven, the tough young Nazi
Gauleiter
of Cologne, who was more than a match for Fritz Thyssen there, has been named Reich’s commissar for Norway. In other words, if Hitler wins, Norway will be just another Nazi province.

Off to Lausanne to a meeting of the International Broadcasting Union. Spring along the lake under the Alps will be good.

B
ERLIN
,
April
29

Returned this morning from Switzerland. The crucial battle for Trondheim will probably be fought this week. The Germans, I find, are much more confident than a week ago when I left. Apparently the British expeditionary force is not so strong as they had expected. It seems evident from what I heard in Switzerland and here today that the first British troops thrown into the fighting around Lillehammer a week ago were few in numbers and miserably equipped—no tanks, no artillery, few anti-tank guns.

Fred N., the best-informed man we have on this campaign
at the Embassy, shocked me today by saying he still doubted whether the British were really taking the Norwegian campaign seriously. To cheer myself up I recalled to him that in the last war it took the British two years to get within striking distance of Bagdad, and then their main army and their commander-in-chief were captured by the Turks. A year or two later, however, the British took Bagdad and drove the Turks and Germans out of Mesopotamia. What the British army and navy need is a reverse or two. Then perhaps they will become serious.

I heard just now that the original British force embarked in central Norway has been decimated.

B
ERLIN
,
May
1

Two days ago, for the fourth or fifth time since the war began, I travelled down the Rhine from Basel towards Frankfurt. The first twenty miles or so out of Basel, you skirt the Rhine where it divides France and Germany. Actually you ride through a sort of no-man’s land, as the main German lines are behind the railroad tracks on the slopes that form the high ground of the Black Forest. Two great armies stand divided by the river. Yet, all was quiet. In one village playground—it was Sunday—German children were playing in full sight of some French soldiers loitering on the other side of the river. In an open meadow, not two hundred yards from the Rhine and in full sight of a French block-house, some German soldiers were frolicking about, kicking an old football. Trains on both sides of the Rhine, some loaded with those very articles which are working such deadly havoc in Norway, chugged along undisturbed. Not a shot was fired. Not a single airplane could be seen in the skies.

Last night I said in my broadcast: “What kind of war, what kind of game, is this? Why do airplanes bomb communications behind the lines in Norway, as they did in Poland, as they did everywhere in the World War, and yet here on the western front, where the two greatest armies in the world stand face to face, refrain completely from killing?”

Is gas getting short? In Berlin 300 out of 1,600 taxis stopped running today and some twenty-five per cent of the private cars and trucks still allowed to circulate have been suddenly ordered to cease circulating.

It’s clear that the Germans, with all the air bases in the north, have complete superiority in the air in Norway. Will this in itself be enough to allow them to advance victoriously to Trondheim? I’m afraid it will. It is this threat of the Luftwaffe that is making the British navy hold back. How otherwise explain the failure of the British to attack Trondheim from the sea, as they attacked Narvik, which is out of the reach of most German planes? But unless the British do go in from the sea, they’ll probably never get it. It’s a race, and the Germans are moving fast.

L
ATER.—
Today, which is German Labour Day and a holiday for all but munition workers, has seen Hitler issuing a grandiose order of the day to his troops in Norway. Last night the High Command announced that German troops coming north from Oslo and a German detachment coming south from Trondheim had made contact just south of the latter town. The battle for Trondheim has been won by Hitler. Where the Allies are, and what they’re doing, are not clear. But it doesn’t make much difference. They had
a wonderful opportunity to stop Hitler and they’ve muffed it. One’s worst suspicions seem to be confirmed—namely, that the British never went into the fight for Trondheim (read Norway) seriously.

“The intention of the Allies,” cries Hitler triumphantly, “to force us to our knees by a tardy occupation of Norway has failed.” Hitler addresses his order to the “Soldiers of the Norwegian Theatre of War.” Three weeks ago Ribbentrop told us that the Führer had prevented Norway from becoming a “theatre of war.”

So this May Day turns out to be a day of victory for the Germans. Hitler, for the first time since he came to power, did not speak or make a public appearance. His deputy, Rudolf Hess, spoke in his place—from the Krupp munition works at Essen. He kept referring to Mr. Hambro as “that Jew, Mr. Hamburger.”

Judging from the looks of the good burghers who thronged the Tiergarten today, the one wish in their hearts is for peace, and to hell with the victories. Still, I suppose this triumph in Norway will buck up morale, after the terrible winter. S., a veteran correspondent here, thinks every man, woman, and child in this country is a natural-born killer. Perhaps so. But today I noticed in the Tiergarten many of them feeding the squirrels and ducks—with their rationed bread.

B
ERLIN
,
May
2

A blue day for the Allies. In Joe’s room we listened to the six p.m. BBC broadcast for the bad news. Chamberlain had just announced in Commons the awful reverse. The British force which had been landed south of Trondheim, and which for the past ten days had been resisting the Germans moving towards Trondheim from
Oslo, has been evacuated from Aandalsnes, their coastal base. Thus the British abandon southern and central Norway—the most important parts. The Norwegians in that considerable area, who have been putting up an epic fight, are left to their fate. Chamberlain admitted that it was the German air force that had prevented the British from landing tanks and artillery at Aandalsnes. But what about Churchill’s boast of April 11? What about the British navy?