Berlin Diary (47 page)

B
ERLIN
,
December
7

Caught Bill White by telephone in Stockholm and got him off to Helsinki to cover the Finnish war for
us.
¹⁴
Amusing note: Some of our people in New York thought one of his broadcasts from here the other night was very unneutral and cabled that while they personally agreed with Bill’s personal anti-Nazi bias, he should strive to be more objective. When I got to the Hundfunk House on my return day before yesterday, Diettrich approached me with Bill’s manuscript in his hand. I thought he was going to make an angry scene.

“Read this,” he said.

“What’s the matter with it?” I said, determined to defend it, though it had gone rather far in its biting irony against the Nazis.

“Why, it’s wonderful! We here thought it was a wonderful broadcast, witty but fair—the kind you might do some time if you could forget your personal antipathy to Nazism,” he said.

If I live in Germany a hundred years I shall never understand these people.

B
ERLIN
,
December
10

Ed [Murrow] and I on this Sabbath evening have just had the first telephone conversation to take place between Berlin and London since the telephone lines were cut at the beginning of the war. It was broadcast. Paul White’s idea, I believe, he being a fiend for “features.” Our voices actually travelled a long way. I heard Ed’s after it had gone by short-wave from London to New York, from where it was short-waved back to Berlin. Mine travelled the same route in the opposite direction. So that we would not give information of benefit to the enemy, we worked out our conversation in advance, I submitting my questions and Ed’s answers as
well as his questions and my answers beforehand to the Germans and he doing the same with the British. Both sides proved very decent about the whole script. It was good to hear Ed’s voice. Once or twice he faded out and I couldn’t hear the cue to cut in, but on the whole it was great fun.

It seems that Eleanor K. was arrested by the Gestapo at Bentheim near the Dutch border on her way from Amsterdam to Berlin and jumped out of the top storey of the local hotel where she had been confined. By a miracle she was not killed, though she broke her back, both legs, and an arm. She has now been released and has left for New York, I hear. Must get to the bottom of this. I am positive the secret police had nothing on her.

B
ERLIN
,
December
13

The liner
Bremen
has successfully run the British blockade and made its way back from Murmansk along the Norwegian coast to a German port. The British navy hasn’t looked very good on this one. Jordan and I scrapping as to who shall have the radio interview with Commodore Ahrens, the
Bremen
’s skipper. I do not like this kind of competition. By scrapping we play right into Nazi hands. The Propaganda Ministry is now insisting that Lothrop Stoddard, the American author who once skyrocketed himself to fame with the book
The Rising Tide of Color
and whose writings on racial subjects, I’m told, are featured in Nazi school textbooks, do the interview for both of us. I can’t have the Propaganda Ministry name my speakers, and have rejected the proposal even if CBS loses the broadcast.

Ribbentrop’s White Book entitled
Documents on the
Origins of the War
, published by the Foreign Office, is out today in several languages. From a first hasty perusal, I conclude it is about as dishonest as the man himself and the master he serves. Somewhere in
Mein Kampf
Hitler criticizes the old Imperial government for its lukewarm propaganda between 1914 and 1918 as to the origins of the war. Berlin at that time, it seems, took the stand that Germany in 1914 was no more to blame for the war than any other nation. Hitler thought
that
was bad propaganda. He says the Imperial government should have dinned it into the ears of all Germans that the Allies were exclusively responsible for the war. He’s doing that now.

In an introduction Ribbentrop repeats an old lie which Hitler has assiduously built up as a gospel truth in this country: namely, that after Versailles Great Britain opposed every attempt by Germany to free herself from the chains of the peace treaty by peaceful means. Did Britain oppose German conscription in 1935? The occupation of the Rhineland in 1936? The
Anschluss
in 1938? The ceding to Germany of the Sudetenland, which had never belonged to it, in 1938?

The Christmas trees are in and being snapped up. No matter how tough or rough or pagan a German may be, he has a childish passion for Christmas trees. People everywhere bravely trying to make this Christmas seem like the old ones in the time of peace. I did a little Christmas shopping today, and it was a bit sad. There were so many nice things in the windows which you couldn’t buy because they were only there for show, on the orders of the authorities. Germans usually give wearing apparel and soaps and perfumes and candy to one another for Christmas, but this year, with these articles rationed, they must find something else. In the shops, which were crowded, they were buying today mostly
books, radios, gramophones, records, and jewelry. I tried to buy some gramophone records for the four girl secretaries at the
Rundfunk
who have been most friendly and helpful to me, but found you could only buy new records if you turned in your old ones. Having none, I was out of luck. The government is loosening up a little on rations over Christmas. Everyone will get a quarter of a pound of butter and a hundred grams of meat extra, and four eggs Christmas week instead of one.

New title for Churchill in the Nazi press these days:
Lügenlord
—“lying lord.” Most common reference to Churchill in the Nazi press is simply by his initials W.C., the letters painted on every water-closet in Germany, which is why the Nazis use them.

B
ERLIN
,
December
14

The German papers tonight celebrate a great sea victory of the pocket-battleship
Graf Spee
over three British cruisers off Montevideo. On the radio I heard London hailing it as a British victory, which reminds one of Jutland, it, too, having been celebrated as a triumph by both Britain and Germany. The German papers claim the British cruisers used mustard-gas shells, though in German naval circles this charge is not taken seriously. Dr. Goebbels is certainly going to town on this story.

B
ERLIN
,
December
18

The populace is still a little bit puzzled about how the big victory of the
Graf Spee
suddenly ended by the pocket-battleship scuttling itself off Montevideo yesterday afternoon. But Goebbels and Göring have pulled a neat one to make them forget it as soon as possible.
The attention of the German people tomorrow morning will be concentrated by the press and radio on something else, an alleged victory—this time in the air—off Helgoland. An official statement which the papers and radio have been told to bang for all it’s worth says that thirty-four out of forty-four British bombers were shot down this afternoon north of Helgoland. A very
timely
victory. We had just left the evening press conference after firing embarrassing questions about the
Graf Spee
and were putting on our overcoats downstairs when Dr. Boehmer rushed in breathlessly and said he had some big news and would we please return upstairs to the conference room. Then he read us in breathless tones the communiqué about the thirty-four British planes being shot down. Suspect it is eyewash.

Hear that the navy is fuming to Hitler about the way Goebbels bungled the propaganda on the
Graf Spee
. The admirals are especially sore because the day before it sank itself, Goebbels had the press play up a dispatch (and radioed photographs) from Montevideo saying the pocket-battleship had suffered only superficial damage and that British reports that it had been badly damaged were pure lies.

More astute propaganda is that which tries to whip up the support of the people for this war by telling them of the dire consequences should the Allies win. Tomorrow the
Völkische Beobachter
will publish a map showing how Germany will look in case of a Franco-British victory. Newspapers in the Allied lands have already published it, the
V.B
. claims, though I doubt not that the Nazi editors have done some neat touching-up. According to this map, France has the Rhineland, Poland has eastern Germany, Denmark has Schleswig-Holstein, Czechoslovakia has Saxony, and to the south there is a huge Habsburg Empire which includes most
of southern Germany. What is left of Germany is labelled “Occupied Territory.” Clever propaganda, and the German people will fall for it.

L
ATER.—
When I mentioned the above story in my broadcast I commented: “I have seen no map of how Europe will look if Germany wins the war.” My censors held this was unfair and cut it out.

B
ERLIN
,
December
21

A curious communiqué from the German navy today: “The High Command of the Navy announces: The commander of the
Graf Spee
, Captain Hans Langsdorff, did not want to survive the sinking of his ship. True to old traditions and in the spirit of the training of the Officers Corps of which he was a member for thirty years, he made this decision. Having brought his crew to safety he considered his duty fulfilled, and followed his ship. The navy understands and praises this step. Captain Langsdorff has in this way fulfilled like a fighter and a hero the expectations of his Führer, the German people, and the navy.”