Berlin Diary (70 page)

B
ERLIN
,
June
12

It
was
a German submarine that stopped the
Washington
, after all.

This was officially admitted in Berlin after the Wilhelmstrasse had kept silent all day. The Germans blame it on the State Department or our Embassy for it. They claim that our Embassy neglected to inform the German government that the
Washington
was proceeding to Ireland from Lisbon.

If the government didn’t know it, the German press and radio certainly did. They’ve announced it for days.

I went over to our Embassy to check this, but they seemed a little troubled and asked us to let the State Department answer, which was reasonable enough. It would have been a hell of a slip-up if they hadn’t informed the Germans.

The official statement here also gives another curious explanation. It says the “error” came about because the German U-boat commander mistook the
Washington
for a Greek (!) steamer which he had stopped before and told to change its course. When the American boat appeared on the horizon, he thought, says the official statement, it was the Greek boat disobeying his instructions, and that’s why he stopped it.

One might ask: (1) Have the Greeks a single vessel anywhere near the size of the
Washington
, which is a 24,000-ton liner? The answer: No. (2) Why did a German submarine commander order the passengers and crew to their boats before he had properly identified
the steamer? (3) If the commander thought it was his Greek steamer, why did he wait ten minutes after the
Washington
had signalled that it was an American ship? These points are not taken up in the official statement. In my broadcast the censors allowed me to mention only the first point. Their view was that the last two questions were unfair.

In view of the suspicious German warning of June 3, in which Berlin claimed to have knowledge that the British intended to torpedo the
Washington
, I’m convinced that Berlin itself gave orders to sink that ship. It then intended to launch a terrific propaganda campaign charging that the British did the deed and pointing out that the German government had already warned Washington on June 3 of what would happen. I think Ribbentrop naïvely believed he could thus poison Anglo-American relations and put a damper on our sending supplies to Britain. German naval men tell me that the U-boat held up the
Washington
just at dawn. Washington dispatches say the ship was somewhat behind schedule. It is highly possible, then, that the German submarine commander planned to torpedo the ship while it was still too dark for his craft to be identified. But the
Washington
did not arrive on the scene until dawn, a couple of hours later than expected, and the commander refrained from launching his torpedo only out of fear that in the prevailing light his U-boat could be recognized as German. It was not submerged and therefore was easily recognizable.

I had a nasty scare this afternoon. I was listening to the three fifteen BBC broadcast when the announcer suddenly reported that Geneva had been bombed last night, that bombs had fallen in a residential suburb, and that there had been killed and wounded. For a
moment I was floored. Our home is in one of the few residential suburbs.

It took hours to get through to Geneva with an urgent call. But about eight I heard Tess’s voice. The bombs
did
fall in our district, she said, shook the house, and hit a hotel down the street where we formerly lived, killing five or six and injuring a score more. They had two air-raid alarms and she took the baby to the cellar. I told her she and the child must come to Germany, much as we both hate the idea. It’s the safest place now. They’re cut off from any possibility of getting home.

The
B.Z. am Mittag
plays up the farewell broadcast of the CBS man from Paris Monday night, probably Eric Sevareid. It quotes him as concluding: “If in the next days anyone talks to America from Paris, it won’t be under the control of the French government.” I suppose I’m nominated. It’s my job. It will be the saddest assignment of my life.

Though the German High Command does not mention it, the truth is that the Germans are at the gates of Paris tonight. Thank God, the city will not be destroyed. Wisely the French are declaring it an open city and will not defend it. There was some question as to whether the Germans would recognize it as an open city, but about midnight it became plain that they would.

The taking of Paris will be a terrific blow to the French and the Allies. To the east of Paris, too, the Germans appear to have broken through to Châlons.

B
ERLIN
,
June
14

Paris has fallen. The hooked-cross flag of Hitler flutters from the Eiffel Tower there by the Seine
in that Paris which I knew so intimately and loved.

This morning German troops entered the city. We got the news on the radio at one p.m., after loud fanfares had blazed away for a quarter of an hour, calling the faithful to hear the news. The news was a war communiqué from the Supreme Command. It said: “The complete collapse of the entire French front from the Channel to the Maginot Line at Montmédy destroyed the original intention of the French leaders to defend the capital of France. Paris therefore has been declared an open city. The victorious troops are just beginning to march into Paris.”

I was having lunch in the courtyard of my hotel. Most of the guests crowded around the loud-speaker in the bar to hear the news. They returned to their tables with wide smiles on their faces, but there was no undue excitement and everyone resumed eating.

In fact, Berlin has taken the news of the capture of Paris as phlegmatically as it has taken everything else in this war. Later I went to Halensee for a swim, it being warm and I feeling the need of a little relaxation. It was crowded, but I overheard no one discussing the news. Out of five hundred people, three bought extras when the newsboys rushed in, shouting the news.

It would be wrong, though, to conclude that the taking of Paris has not stirred something very deep in the hearts of most Germans. It was always a wish dream of millions here. And it helps wipe out the bitter memories of 1918 which have lain so long—twenty-two years—in the German soul.

Poor Paris! I weep for her. For so many years it was my home—and I loved it as you love a woman. Said the
Völkische Beobachter
this morning: “Paris was a city of frivolity and corruption, of democracy and capitalism, where Jews had entry to the court, and
niggers to the salons. That Paris will never rise again.” But the High Command promises that its soldiers will behave—will be “as different as night is from day, compared to the conduct of the French soldiers in the Rhine and Ruhr.”

The High Command also said today: “The second phase of the campaign is over with the capture of Paris. The third phase has begun. It is the pursuit and final destruction of the enemy.”

I walked into a door in the
Herald Tribune
office tonight. First time since the black-out that it has been closed. Cut my nose considerably, but got it patched up at a near-by first-aid station and recovered sufficiently to go out and do my midnight broadcast.

Tomorrow, probably, I shall leave for Paris. I do not want to go. I do not want to see the heavy-heeled German boots tramping down the streets I loved.

B
ERLIN
,
June
15

Leaving for Paris today.

N
EAR
M
AGDEBURG
,
June
15 (
later
)

Spending the night in a hostelry along the
Autobahn
. Very good and modern, and better food than in Berlin. Our car broke down six miles out of Berlin on the way to Potsdam. This held us up two hours waiting for a new car. I fear we shall not get to Paris tomorrow. At ten p.m. in the restaurant of the road-house we heard the news. Verdun taken! The Verdun that cost the Germans six hundred thousand dead the last time they
tried
to take it. And this time they take it in one day. Granted that the French army
is in a fix; that the fall of Paris has demoralized it still further. Still you ask: What has happened to the French? Germans also claim Maginot Line broken through.

M
AUBEUGE
,
June
16

Got up at three a.m., started at four a.m. from the little road-house for Aachen. In the Ruhr there was little evidence of the British night bombings. We arrived at Aachen at eleven a.m. Thence through Limburg to Liège and Namur. Surprised to see so little destruction along this route. It’s quite unlike the road from Aachen to Brussels, where most of the towns lie in ruins. We drove all afternoon up the valley of the Meuse. Amazingly little evidence of the war. Dinner at Charleroi. Bitter faces in the streets. No bread in the town, and water only for drinking. But we got some meat and salad in a little
bistro
.

I bought the local journal, the
Journal de Charleroi
. It publishes both the German
and
French war communiqués. An order in the paper said the German troops and the Belgian gendarmerie would fire without warning into any lighted windows. Another notice from the German
Feldkommandantur
had to do with stopping any monkey business with carrier pigeons. Another signed by the chief army physician ordered all local doctors to report. Anyone unjustifiably absent, said the order, would be punished. “No excuses will be accepted,” it added.

Maubeuge itself has been terribly destroyed. The main part of the town is reduced to broken stone, twisted girders, and ashes. One of the German officers tells us what happened. German tanks tried to get through the town. French anti-tank guns concealed in houses got
the first five or six. The Germans had to retreat. Word was sent back to the Stukas. They came over and did their job with their usual deadly efficiency. Underneath the church, the commandant tells us, was the town’s biggest air-raid shelter. One of the bombs hit it square on. Result: five hundred civilians lie buried under the debris. Buried air-tight, though, because on this warm, starlit summer evening there is no smell.