Berlin Diary (59 page)

The feat of the German army in advancing more than two hundred miles north up the Osterdal and Gudbrandsdal valleys from Oslo to Trondheim, and at the same time easily holding Trondheim with a small force against Allied attacks from both the north and the south, is certainly a formidable one. The whole seizure of Norway, though aided by the basest treachery, has undoubtedly been a brilliant military performance. After three weeks the British, with all their sea power, have not even been able to take Narvik.

Chamberlain boasted that as a result of the partial destruction of the German fleet the Allies had been able to strengthen their naval forces in the Mediterranean. Mussolini’s bluff that he might hop into the war behind Hitler thus was taken seriously by the old man. It certainly wasn’t here. It seems incredible to us here that Britain would withdraw the naval forces which would have enabled it to take Trondheim and thus defeat Hitler in Norway in order to strengthen its position against the tin-pot strength of Italy in the Mediterranean.

B
ERLIN
,
May
4

The British have pulled pell-mell out of Namsos to the north of Trondheim, thus completing the debacle of Allied aid to the Norwegians in central Norway.

Where was the British navy which Churchill only a fortnight ago boasted would drive the Germans out of the Norwegian waters? I saw a German news-reel today. It showed the Germans landing tanks and heavy guns at Oslo. Except for the use of submarines, and apparently not many of these, the Allies made no serious effort to stop German supplies from reaching Norway through Oslo. They didn’t even risk destroyers in the Skagerrak and Kattegat, not to mention cruisers and battleships.

Is it that air power has shown in this short Norwegian campaign that it has superseded naval power? At least, within flying distance of your land bases? In 1914–18 such a German thrust as has now taken place would have been unthinkable. But with the Luftwaffe holding the flying fields in Denmark and Norway, the Allied fleet not only did not venture into the Kattegat to stop the German shipment of arms and men to Oslo, but has not even attempted action at Trondheim, Bergen, or Stavanger, with the exception of one eighty-minute shelling of the Stavanger airfield the first week of the war. The Germans now boast that air power has demonstrated its superiority over naval power.

To sum up: Göring’s planes accomplished four vital tasks in Norway: (1) They kept the sea route through the Kattegat to Oslo free of British warships and thus enabled the main German land force to be liberally supplied with men, artillery, tanks. (2) They prevented (or successfully discouraged) the British navy from attacking the vital German-held ports of Stavanger, Bergen, and Trondheim. (3) By continually bombing the Allied ports of debarkation, they made it almost impossible for the British to land heavy artillery and tanks, as Mr. Chamberlain admitted. (4) By
bombing and machine-gunning enemy positions, they made it fairly easy for the German land troops to advance through difficult country.

In other words, they revolutionized war in and around the North Sea.

I talked to my policeman friend today. He thinks the war will develop in a few weeks into bombing the big towns, and even gas. I agree. Hitler wants to finish the war this summer if he can. If he can’t, despite all the German victories, he’s probably lost.

A decree today explains that while there are plenty of oil supplies, consumption must be further reduced. Many cars and trucks still operating are to be taken out of circulation. Two questions pop up: (1) Supplies are not so big? (2) Available oil will be needed for further military action on a big scale now that the British have pulled out of Namsos and the Germans have won the war in Norway?

The German papers today are full of accusations that
Britain
now intends to “spread the war.” In the Mediterranean or Balkans or
somewhere else
, by which I take it they mean Holland.

As an escape, I suppose, I read some Goethe letters this afternoon. It was reassuring to be reminded of the devastation of Germany that Napoleon wrought. Apparently Jena, near Goethe’s Weimar, was pretty roughly handled by the French troops. But through it all the great poet never loses hope. He keeps saying that the Human Spirit will triumph, the European spirit. But today, where is the European spirit in Germany? Dead…. Dead…

Goethe harps on the theory that a writer can only get things done by retiring from the world when he has work to do. He complains that the world takes, but does
not give. Some of his letters on local administrative problems in Weimar are amusing. He had his small, bickering side. And—surprising—he is very subservient to his Prince Ruler!

B
ERLIN
,
May
6

Bernhard Rust, Nazi Minister of Education, in a broadcast to schoolchildren today, sums up pretty well the German mentality in this year of 1940. He says: “God created the world as a place for work and battle. Whoever doesn’t understand the laws of life’s battles will be counted out, as in the boxing ring. All the good things on this earth are trophy cups. The strong win them. The weak lose them…. The German people under Hitler did not take to arms to break into foreign lands and make other people serve them. They were forced to take arms by states which blocked their way to bread and union.”

The crying problem of Europe, I am beginning to think, is not Communism or Fascism—is not therefore social. It is the problem of Germanism, of the mentality so clearly expressed by Rust. Until it’s solved, there will be no peace in Europe.

German schoolgirls today were asked to bring the combings from their hair to school. The combings will be collected to make felt.

B
ERLIN
,
May
7

For three or four days now the German newspapers have been carrying on a terrific campaign to convince somebody that the Allies, having failed in Norway, are about to become “aggressors” in some other part of Europe. Six weeks ago we had a similar campaign
to convince somebody that the Allies were about to become the “aggressors” in Scandinavia. Then Germany
, using the alleged Allied intention of aggression as an excuse, went in herself.

Where is Germany going in next? I’m suspicious of Holland, partly because it’s the one place not specifically mentioned in this propaganda campaign. Or are the Allies, having sucked the German army far from home bases into Norway, going to draw it far into the Balkans?

Amusing to read the headlines today:
“CHAMBERLAIN, THE AGGRESSOR. ALLIED PLANS FOR NEW AGGRESSION!”
If the German people were not so intellectually drunk themselves, or so stupid, they might see the humour in it.

My guess: the war in the next few weeks will be on all over Europe. And, finally, with all the weapons: bombing of open towns, gas, and all.

B
ERLIN
,
May
8

Could not help noticing a feeling of tension in the Wilhelmstrasse today. Something is up, but we don’t know what. Ralph Barnes, just in from Amsterdam, says the guards on his train pulled down the window-blinds for the first twenty-five miles of the journey from the Dutch-German frontier towards Berlin. I hear the Dutch and Belgians are nervous. I hope they are. They ought to be. I cabled New York today to keep Edwin Hartrich in Amsterdam for the time being. They wanted to send him off to Scandinavia, where the war is over.

Just before I went on the air today, Fred Oechsner telephoned to say that Webb Miller had been found dead on a railroad track at Clapham Junction, near
London. The news shocked me greatly. I have known him for twelve years, liked him, admired him. In my first years over here as a green newspaperman, he befriended and helped me. In the last decade our paths often crossed, in India, the Near East, the Balkans, Germany, Geneva, Italy, and of course in London, where he was U.P.’s star correspondent and European chief. Webb was an inordinately modest man, despite as distinguished a journalistic career as any American has had in our time. His success never went to his head. I remember him on many a big story being as excited and nervous, and if it were an interview, as shy, as the youngest and most inexperienced of us. His shyness was terrific and he never lost it. I wonder what killed him? Tired? Sleepy? I know it wasn’t suicide.

I went out to a suburb last night to see the film of havoc wrought by the German air force in Poland. It is called
Feuertaufe
—or
Baptism of Fire
. The wanton destruction of Polish towns and villages, but especially of Warsaw, is shown nakedly. The German audience took the film in dead silence.

L
ATER.—
My censors were quite decent today. They let me hint very broadly that the next German blow would fall in the west,—Holland, Belgium, the Maginot Line, Switzerland. Tonight the town is full of rumours. The Wilhelmstrasse is especially angry at an A.P. report that two German armies, one from Bremen, the other from Düsseldorf, are moving towards the Dutch frontier.

B
ERLIN
,
May
9

What an irony that Webb Miller, who had spent most of the last twenty-four years covering wars,
and was often under fire, should have escaped them all only to die by falling out of a railroad coach far from a field of battle! The German press full of absurd stories today that Webb was murdered by the British secret service. This is worse than nonsense. Contemptible. (What happens to the inner fabric of a people when they are fed lies like this daily?)