Berlin Diary (66 page)

I note that over the front all afternoon hover two or three reconnaissance planes, German, obviously directing artillery fire. They cruise above the battlefield unmolested. But there are no planes directing Allied artillery fire, which seems to be aimed exclusively against the German forward positions, at no time against German artillery, which is strange. The lack of observation planes alone puts the Allies in a hole. In fact we do not see an Allied plane all day long. Once or twice we get an alarm, but no planes show up. How England and France are paying now for the criminal neglect of their aviation!

As the afternoon wears away to the pounding of the guns, artillery units near us get orders to take up new positions forward. The advance, you suppose, is going ahead according to schedule. Immediately from all around us in the woods, men and motors, which we have not even seen, limber up, the men toss off some of the tree-limbs which have so completely camouflaged them, and get off. We take a last look at the Scheldt Valley,
at the smoke rising from the bursting shells on the other side of the river. Probably it all has meaning for these German officers around us. Each whistling shell has a certain errand. Each gun and truck rushing down the road is going to some place assigned to it. Each of the thousands upon thousands. The whole chaos (to me) of the battlefield is in reality a picture of a well-oiled machine of destruction in action.

We drive back to Brussels. German dive-bombers fly past us, going up to do a little late-afternoon work. At Brussels German fighters and bombers demonstrate over the city. This is the German idea of how to impress the population….

It is midnight before we reach Aachen. At Maastricht the Germans are expecting British bombers. A quarter of a mile from the repaired bridge, a soldier stops us. All lights must be put out. We drive along in the moonlight—it’s almost full moon tonight; lovely—across the bridge. A quarter of a mile away, a soldier stops us; says we can put on our dim lights. Efficiency.

Most of the boys in the party have looted Brussels for the second time, and are worried that the Germans (who still keep up a customs shed at the old Dutch-German border!) will take away their booty. But they do not.

Too late to broadcast, so I write a story to be phoned to Berlin, cabled to New York, and there read over the air. I’ve hardly sat down to write when the British come over Aachen. I leave my room, which is on the next to the top floor (having moved out of the attic), and write my piece in the dining-room on the ground floor. The anti-aircraft of all calibres keeps thundering away. Now and then you feel the concussion of a bomb and hear it exploding. Our little hotel is a hundred yards from the station. The British are obviously trying to
get the station and the railroad yards. You hear the roar of their big planes; occasionally the whirr of German night chasers….

My call comes through about one twenty a.m. I can hardly make myself heard for the sound of the guns and the bombs.

While writing my story, I keep notes on the air-raid.

It went on for four hours, until just after four a.m. But after my call to Berlin, being a little sleepy, I went up to bed and fell immediately to sleep.

B
ERLIN
,
May
24

Two weeks ago today Hitler unloosed his
Blitzkrieg in the west
. Since then this has happened: Holland overrun; four fifths of Belgium occupied; the French army hurled back towards Paris; and an Allied army believed to number a million men, and including the élite of the Franco-British forces, trapped and encircled on the Channel.

You have to see the German army in action to believe it. Here are some of the things, so far as I could see, that make it good:

It has absolute air superiority. It seems incredible, but at the front I did not see a single Allied plane during the day-time. Stuka dive-bombers are softening the
Allied defence positions, making them ripe for an easy attack. Also, they’re wrecking Allied communications in the rear, bombing roads filled with trucks, tanks, and guns, wiping out strategic railroad stations and junctions. Furthermore, reconnaissance planes are giving the German command a perfect picture of what is going on. Against this, the Allies have no eyes; few of their reconnaissance planes get over. Also, Allied bombers have completely failed to disturb German lines of communications by
day-time
attacks. One of the sights that overwhelms you at the front is the vast scale on which the Germans bring up men, guns, and supplies unhindered. Because of the thorough manner in which the Belgians and French destroyed their railroad bridges, the German command decided to use exclusively motor transport. All day long at the front, driving along at forty or fifty miles an hour, you pass unending mechanized columns. They stretch clear across Belgium, unbroken. And they move fast—thirty or forty miles an hour. You wonder how they are kept fed with gasoline and oil. But they are. Gas supplies come forward with everything else. Every driver knows where he can tank up when he runs short.

What magnificent targets these endless columns would make if the Allies had any planes!

And what a magnificent machine that keeps them running so smoothly. In fact that is the chief impression you get from watching the German army at work. It is a gigantic, impersonal war machine, run as coolly and efficiently, say, as our automobile industry in Detroit. Directly behind the front, with the guns pounding daylight out of your ears and the airplanes roaring overhead, and thousands of motorized vehicles thundering by on the dusty roads, officers and men alike remain cool and business-like. Absolutely no excitement, no
tension. An officer directing artillery fire stops for half an hour to explain to you what he is up to. General von Reichenau, directing a huge army in a crucial battle, halts for an hour to explain to amateurs his particular job.

Morale of the German troops fantastically good. I remember a company of engineers which was about to go down to the Scheldt River to lay a pontoon bridge under enemy fire. The men were reclining on the edge of the wood reading the day’s edition of the army daily paper, the
Western Front
. I’ve never seen men going into a battle from which some were sure never to come out alive so—well, so nonchalantly.

The contention of the BBC that these flying German columns—such as the one that broke through to the sea at Abbeville—are weak forces which cannot possibly hold what they get, is a myth. The Germans thrust not only with tanks and a few motorized infantry, but with
everything
. Light and heavy motorized artillery goes right up behind the tanks and infantry.

B
ERLIN
,
May
25

German military circles here tonight put it flatly. They said the fate of the great Allied army bottled up in Flanders is sealed.

B
ERLIN
,
May
26

Calais has fallen. Britain is now cut off from the Continent.

B
ERLIN
,
May
28

King Leopold has quit on the Allies. At dawn the Belgian army, which with the British and French has been caught in an ever narrowing pocket for a week in Flanders and Artois, laid down its arms. Leopold during the night had sent an emissary to the German lines asking for an armistice. The Germans demanded unconditional surrender. Leopold accepted. This leaves the British and French in a nice hole. High Command says it makes their position “hopeless.” Picked up a broadcast by Reynaud this morning accusing Leopold of having betrayed the Allies. Churchill, according to BBC, was more careful. Said, in a short statement to Commons, he would not pass judgment.

Great jubilation in the press here over the capitulation of the Belgians. After eighteen days, the Berlin papers remind us. It took the Germans just eighteen days to liquidate the Poles. They’ll probably have the rest of the Allied army in their pocket before the week-end. Churchill, according to the BBC, warned the House to expect bad news soon.

For the first time, communiqués today kept pouring out of the “Führer’s Headquarters.” All of them sounded as if they’d been dictated by Hitler himself. For example this typical attempt to sound generous: “DNB. Führer’s Headquarters, May 28. The Führer has ordered that the King of the Belgians and his army be given treatment worthy of the brave, fighting soldiers which they proved to be. As the King of the Belgians expressed no personal wishes for himself, he will be given a castle in Belgium
until his final living-place is decided upon.”

Decided upon by whom?

Nazi propaganda is doing its best to show that Leopold did the decent, sensible thing. Thus the wording of a special communiqué which the German radio tells its listeners will “fill the German nation with pride and joy”:

“From the headquarters of the Führer it is announced: Impressed by the destructive effect of the German army, the King of the Belgians has decided to put an end to further senseless resistance and to ask for an armistice. He has met the German demands for unconditional capitulation. The Belgian army has today laid down its arms and therewith ceased to exist. In this hour we think of our brave soldiers…. The entire German nation looks with a feeling of deep gratitude and unbounded pride upon the troops… which forced this capitulation…. The King of the Belgians, in order to put an end to the further shedding of blood and to the completely pointless devastation of his country, reached his decision to lay down arms, against the wishes of the majority of his Cabinet. This Cabinet, which is mainly responsible for the catastrophe which has broken over Belgium
, seems to be willing even now to continue to follow its English and French employers.”

The headlines tonight:
“CHURCHILL AND REYNAUD INSULT KING LEOPOLD!—THE COWARDS IN LONDON AND PARIS ORDER THE CONTINUATION OF THE SUICIDE IN FLANDERS.”
The German radio said tonight: “Leopold acted like a soldier and a human being.”