Berlin Diary (60 page)

Hitler, in ordering the release of some Norwegian prisoners, proclaims today: “Against the will of the German people and its government, King Haakon of Norway and his army staff brought about war against Germany
”!

L
ATER.—
The shouting headlines increased in size tonight, all thundering the accusation that
England
plans a big act of aggression, somewhere.
“BRITAIN PLOTS TO SPREAD THE WAR,”
they roar.

All of which moved me to say in my broadcast tonight. “Regardless of who spreads it, there seems little doubt that it will spread. And it may well be, as many people over here think, that the war will be fought and decided before the summer is over. People somehow seem to feel that the Whitsuntide holidays this week-end will be the last holidays Europe will observe for some time.”

My censors didn’t like the paragraph, but after some argument they let it pass. Their line was that there was no question of Germany spreading the war.

B
ERLIN
,
May
10

The blow in the west has fallen. At dawn today the Germans marched into Holland, Belgium, Luxemburg. It is Hitler’s bid for victory now or never. Apparently it was true that Germany could not outlast
the economic war. So he struck while his army still had supplies and his air force a lead over the Allies’. He seems to realize he is risking all. In an order of the day to the troops he begins: “The hour of the decisive battle for the future of the German nation has come.” And he concludes: “The battle beginning today will decide the future of the German nation for the next thousand years.” If he loses, it certainly will.

As I see it, Hitler had three choices: to wait and fight the war out on the economic front, as was done all winter; to meet the Allies in some easy spot, say the Balkans; to seek a decision in the west by striking through neutral Holland and Belgium. He has chosen the third, and the biggest risk.

I can’t boast that I was prepared for it. In fact, after broadcasting as usual last night at twelve forty-five a.m., I was sound asleep when the phone rang at seven this morning. It was one of the girls at the
Rundfunk
. She broke the news.

“When do you want to broadcast?” she asked.

“As soon as I can get there,” I said.

“Ribbentrop has a press conference at the Foreign Office at eight,” she offered.

“I’ll skip it,” I said. “Tell New York—send them an urgent—to monitor DJL—and that I’ll be on the air in an hour.”

Actually it was two hours or so before I could get on the air. Time dressing, time getting out to the
Rundfunk
, time getting the whole story. There was considerable excitement at the
Rundfunk
, and it was some time before I could wrest the various communiqués from the hands of the German announcers. Fortunately, the censors, who must have been tipped during the night, were on the job and did not hold me up long. Except I could not call in my lead what the Germans were doing
in Holland and Belgium “an invasion.” They denied it was. I flamed up, but finally decided that since the censors had overlooked the word “invasion” three times in the script, it might be worth while to substitute “march in” in the lead in order to give radio listeners in America a story from Berlin. I didn’t like the compromise. It was a question of sacrificing the whole important story for one word. And anyway, America knew an invasion when it happened.

L
ATER.—
The people in Berlin, I must say, have taken the news of the battle which Hitler says is going to decide the future of their nation for the next thousand years with their usual calm. None of them gathered before the Chancellery as usually happens when big events occur. Few bothered to buy the noon papers which carried the news. For some reason Goebbels forbade extras.

The German memorandum “justifying” this latest aggression of Hitler’s was handed to the ministers of Holland and Belgium at six a.m., about an hour and a half after German troops had violated their neutral soil. It sets up a new record, I think, for cynicism and downright impudence—even for Hitler. It requests the two governments to issue orders that no resistance be made to German troops. “Should the German forces encounter resistance in Belgium or Holland,” it goes on, “it will be crushed with every means. The Belgian and Dutch governments alone would bear the responsibility for the consequences and for the bloodshed which would then become unavoidable.”

The memorandum, which Ribbentrop also read to the correspondents at the eight a.m. press conference, argues that Britain and France were about to attack Germany through the two Low Countries and that the
Reich therefore deemed it necessary to send in its own troops to “safeguard the neutrality of Belgium and Holland.” This nonsensical hypocrisy is “backed up” by a spurious “document” from the High Command claiming that it has proofs that the Allied troops were about to march into Belgium and Holland in an effort to seize the Ruhr.

It’s evident that the German army has struck with everything it has. The air force has gone all out and is obviously going to take full advantage of its superiority over the Allies. The High Command says that at dawn the Luftwaffe bombed scores of airfields in Holland, Belgium, and France as far south as Lyon. And then this is news: a communiqué speaks of German troops having been landed
by air
at many airports in Belgium and the Netherlands. The Germans claim they seized the airfields and occupied surrounding territory. Apparently, though the High Command censor would not let me say it in my talks today, they’ve been dropping thousands of parachutists. A report that the German parachutists have already occupied part of Rotterdam is not confirmed. It sounds inconceivable, but after Norway anything can happen.

First German reports claim they’ve crossed the river Maas (Meuse) and captured Maastricht, and have also driven through Luxemburg and into Belgium. Tonight the German army lies before Liège, which held it up for several days in 1914, and where Ludendorff first attracted attention.

War on civilians started too. The other side reported German planes had killed many. Tonight the Germans claimed three Allied planes dropped bombs in the middle of Freiburg, killing twenty-four civilians. As a taste of what this phase of the war is going to be like, a German communiqué tonight says that “from now on,
every enemy bombing of German civilians will be answered by five times as many German planes bombing English and French cities.” (Note Nazi technique there. (1) The statement is part of the nerve war on the enemy. (2) It is designed to make German civilians stand up to bombings by assuring them the English and French are getting five times worse.)

That’s one taste. Here’s another: When the Belgian and Dutch ministers called for their passports at the Wilhelmstrasse today and at the same time lodged strong protests at the ruthless violation of their neutrality, an official statement was promptly published here saying that “an official on duty [at the Foreign Office] after reading the contents, which were arrogant and stupid, refused to accept them, and asked the two ministers to request for their passports in the usual manner”! The Germans are out of their minds.

Tired, after broadcasting all this day, and sick in the pit of the stomach.

B
ERLIN
,
May
11

The German steamroller sweeps on through Holland and Belgium. Tonight the Germans claim to have captured what the High Command claims is Liege’s most important fort, Eben-Emael, which commands the junction of the Meuse (Maas) River and the Albert Canal. The High Command, which under Hitler’s leadership is missing no opportunities for propaganda, makes it look mysterious by saying that the fort was taken by a “new method of attack.” Is history repeating itself? In 1914, when Liége held up the Germans for twelve days, the German army also had a surprise—the new 42-centimetre howitzer, which smashed the Belgian forts as if they were made of wood.

The Germans are keeping mum about their troops landed behind the Dutch lines at The Hague and Rotterdam by parachute and by plane. But the High Command, stung by Allied reports, did deny today that the Dutch had recaptured the airfields at The Hague or Rotterdam. The parachutists, then, carry portable radio transmitters too!

Strange, the apathy of the people in the face of this decisive turn in the war. Most Germans I’ve seen, outside of the officials, are sunk deep in depression at the news. The question is: How many Germans support this final, desperate gamble that Hitler has taken? Discussing it at the Adlon today, most of the correspondents agreed: many, many. And yet I can’t find any Germans who actually believe Hitler’s excuse that he went into the neutral countries, whose integrity he had guaranteed, to counter a similar move which the Allies were about to begin. Even for a German, it’s an obvious lie.

Goebbels’s propaganda machine, shifting into high gear, discovers today, twenty-four hours after the official announcement that twenty-four persons had been killed by the bombing at Freiburg, that thirteen of the twenty-four were children who were peacefully frolicking on the municipal playground. What were a lot of children doing on a playground in the midst of an airraid? This particular Goebbels fake is probably produced to justify German killings of civilians on the other side.

The Berlin papers have great headlines today about the “shameful” protests of the two Low Countries against being invaded.

The Nazis locked up in the Kaiserhof yesterday all the Dutch journalists who were not Nazis, including Harry Masdyck, who did not quite believe it would
come when it did. A Dutch woman reporter for the Nazi Dutch paper has been sitting at the
Rundfunk
since dawn yesterday broadcasting false news to the Dutch people in their own language. A sort of Lady Haw-Haw.

Have one more broadcast at four thirty a.m., which is only ten thirty p.m. last night in New York. On the job since eight a.m.

B
ERLIN
,
May
12

Sunday, and got a little sleep. Hill took the noon broadcast.

After a mere two days of fighting the High Command claims to have occupied all of northeastern Holland east of the Zuider Zee, broken through the first and second defence lines in the heart of the Netherlands, and pierced the eastern end of the Belgian line of defence along the Albert Canal. A year or so ago I had a look at that canal, which the Belgians had fortified with bunkers. It looked like a very formidable tank-trap with its deep and very steep, paved sides. Can it be that the Belgians didn’t blow up the bridges?

A typical Sunday in Berlin today, with no evidence that the Berliners, at least, are greatly exercised at the battle for their thousand-year existence. Cafés have been ordered to close at eleven p.m. instead of one a.m. That will get the folk home before the night air-raids start, though we’ve had none yet. Also, dancing has been
verboten
for the time being.

The radio warned tonight that if Germans were mistreated in Holland, there is “ample opportunity of retaliating on the numerous Dutch nationals living in Germany.”