Berlin Diary (33 page)

“Have you a right to a Czech city like Prague?” I asked. Silence. No answer. That vacant stare you get on Germans.

“Why didn’t the Poles accept the generous offer of the Führer?” he began again.

“Because they feared another Sudetenland, Captain.”

“You mean they don’t trust the Führer?”

“Not much since March 15,” I said, looking carefully around before I spoke such blasphemy to see I was not being overheard. Again the vacant German stare.

Lunch with Major Eliot and his wife. He has just come from London and Paris and thinks highly of the French army and the British air-force, which was good
news to me. Met Joe Barnes (
Herald Tribune
) at the Taverne at midnight. He just back from Danzig and Poland. His theory is that if Hitler waits nine months he’ll have Danzig and perhaps more without much trouble and certainly without war. He thinks Polish resistance to Hitler’s demands would collapse, that Poland simply couldn’t afford to stay mobilized any longer than that. I argued that Britain and France could afford to foot the bill for the Poles. Joe didn’t think they would. I won’t say he’s dead wrong, but think he underestimates the change in France and Britain. Joe’s description of the backwardness of the Poles very impressive. He and Maurice Hindus visited the villages. Only two million people in Poland read any kind of newspaper, he reports, and many villages are without a single radio.

B
ERLIN
,
August
10

How completely isolated a world the German people live in. A glance at the newspapers yesterday and today reminds you of it. Whereas all the rest of the world considers that the peace is about to be broken by Germany, that it is Germany that is threatening to attack Poland over Danzig, here in Germany, in the world the local newspapers create, the very reverse is being maintained. (Not that it surprises me, but when you are away for a while, you forget.) What the Nazi papers are proclaiming is this: that it is Poland which is disturbing the peace of Europe; Poland which is threatening Germany with armed invasion, and so forth. This is the Germany of last September when the steam was turned on Czechoslovakia.

“POLAND? LOOK OUT!”
warns the
B.Z.
headline, adding:
“ANSWER TO POLAND, THE RUNNER-AMOK
(AMOKLÄUFER) AGAINST PEACE AND RIGHT IN EUROPE!”

Or the headline in
Der Führer
, daily paper of Karlsruhe, which I bought on the train:
“WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG—UNBELIEVABLE AGITATION OF THE POLISH ARCH-MADNESS (POLNISCHEN GRÖSSENWAHNS)!”

For perverse perversion of the truth, this is good. You ask: But the German people can’t possibly believe these lies? Then you talk to them. So many do.

But so far the press limits itself to Danzig. Will the Germans keep their real designs under cover until later? Any fool knows they don’t give a damn about Danzig. It’s just a pretext. The Nazi position, freely admitted in party circles, is that Germany cannot afford to have a strong military power on her eastern frontier, that therefore Poland as it is today must be liquidated, not only Danzig, which is Poland’s life-line, taken, but also the Corridor, Posen, and Upper Silesia. And Poland left a rump state, a vassal of Germany. Then when Hungary and Rumania and Yugoslavia have been similarly reduced (Hungary practically is already), Germany will be economically and agriculturally independent, and the great fear of Anglo-French blockade, which won the last war and at the moment probably could win the next, will be done away with. Germany can then turn on the West and probably beat her.

Struck by the ugliness of the German women on the streets and in restaurants and cafés. As a race they are certainly the least attractive in Europe. They have no ankles. They walk badly. They dress worse than English women used to. Off to Danzig tonight.

D
ANZING
,
August
11

For a place where the war is supposed to be about to break out, Danzig
does not quite live up to its part. Like the people in Berlin, the local inhabitants don’t think it will come to war. They have a blind faith in Hitler that he will effect their return to the Reich without war. The Free City is being rapidly militarized, German military cars and trucks—with Danzig licence plates!—dash through the streets. My hotel, the Danzigerhof, full of German army officers. The roads leading in from Poland are blocked with tanktraps and log-barriers. They remind me of Sudetenland just a year ago. The two strategic hills of Bischofsberg and Hagelberg have been fortified. And a lot of arms are being run under cover of night across the Nogat River from East Prussia. They are mostly machine-guns, anti-tank and air-guns and light artillery. Apparently they have not been able to bring in any heavy artillery. Most of the arms are of Czech manufacture.

The town completely Nazified. Supreme boss is Albert Forster, the Nazi
Gauleiter
, who is not even a Danziger, but a Bavarian. Herr Greiser, the President of the Senate, is a more moderate man, but takes his orders from Forster. Among the population, much less tension than I’d expected. The people want to be joined to Germany. But not at the cost of war or the loss of their position as an outlet for Polish trade. Without the latter, reduced though it is since the building of the purely Polish port of Gdynia, twelve miles west of here, they starve, unless Germany conquers Poland. Like all Germans they want it both ways.

Danzig is a pleasing town to look at. I like the heavy Baltic-German towers, the Gothic Hanseatic steep-gabled
houses with the heavily ornamented façades. Reminds me of the other Hanseatic towns—Bremen, Lübeck, Bruges. Walked around the port. Very dead-looking. Few ships. More drunkenness here in Danzig than I’ve seen outside of America. The
Schnapps
—they call it “Danzig goldwater” because of the little golden particles floating in it—is right good and strong.

Lunch with our consul, Mr. Kuykendahl, who is helpful and aware of his key position. John Gunther turns up from nowhere for lunch. Afterwards John and I taxi over to Zoppot, the Baltic’s leading summer resort, whiling away the afternoon and evening on the pier, the beach, in the gaming rooms of the Casino (where we both lose at roulette), talking a blue streak, settling the world’s problems. Towards midnight he dashes off for Gdynia to catch the night express for Warsaw.

D
ANZIG
,
August
12

I have more and more the feeling that Danzig is not the issue and I’m wasting my time here. The issue is the independence of Poland or German domination of it. I must push on to Warsaw. Have been on the phone to Berlin several times today. The Berlin radio people are stalling on facilities for my broadcast from here tomorrow. Will phone
Polskie Radio
in Warsaw to see if they have a microphone at Gdynia. I could do my talk from there. I don’t like the idea of the Germans keeping me from talking altogether since I’ve come all this way and have something to say. The local Nazis very cool to me.

I
N A WAGONLIT
, G
DYNIA—
W
ARSAW
,
August
13,
midnight

I did my broadcast to New York from Gdynia instead of Danzig. The Germans in Berlin wouldn’t say yes or no. The Poles in Warsaw pitched in gallantly. Pleased at defeating Nazi efforts to silence me. I had planned to drive the twelve miles from Danzig to Gdynia, but my German chauffeur got cold feet, said we’d be shot at by the Poles in a Danzig car. I dashed down to the station and caught a train. A devil of a time finding the radio studio in Gdynia. No one knew where it was. It was not in the phone book. The telephone central didn’t know. The army—the navy—the police—none knew. Finally, after I’d given up hope of broadcasting at all, we discovered it in the Post Office building. The radio telephone circuit with London, from where the talk was short-waved to New York, was completed only at the last minute. But reception, London said, was good. Chatted with two Polish radio engineers who had driven over from Thurn to do the broadcast. They were calm, confident. They said: “We’re ready. We will fight. We were born under German rule in this neighbourhood and we’d rather be dead than go through it again.”

After dinner, waiting for the Warsaw Express, I had time to look at this port town. The Poles, with French backing, have done a magnificent job. Fifteen years ago, Gdynia was a sleepy fishing village of 400 souls. Today it’s the largest port in the Baltic, with a population of over 100,000. Lacking natural facilities, the Poles have simply pushed piers out into the sea. The city itself looks like a mushroom growth, much like some of our Western towns thirty-five years ago. It is one of the promises of Poland.

L
ATER.—
A point about the Danzig situation: Hitler is not yet ready for a showdown. Otherwise the Danzig Senate would not have backed down a week ago when, after informing Poland that the Polish customs officials in Danzig must cease their functions, it gave in to a Polish ultimatum and withdrew the order. But this may be only a temporary German setback.

W
ARSAW
,
August
16

Much excitement in official Polish circles today. Conferences between Smigly-Rydz, Beck, and the generals. A Polish soldier has been shot on the Danzig frontier. Result: an order tonight instructing Polish troops to shoot anyone crossing the Danzig border on sight and without challenge. Lunch at Ambassador Biddle’s. He is full of enthusiasm for his job and chock-full of good information, though I do not always agree with his conclusions. He is very pro-Polish, which is natural, and all right with me. Biddle is afraid the French and British are going to try appeasement again and suggests that Professor Burkhardt, the League High Commissioner in Danzig, and a Swiss, who saw Hitler at Berchtesgaden last week-end, may turn out to be another Runciman.