Berlin Diary (76 page)

As a matter of fact, the Germans did a superb technical job on our two armistice broadcasts. By a superhuman effort, army communication engineers had laid down in a couple of days a radio-cable line from Brussels to the Compiègne Forest. Earlier in the campaign they had linked up the Belgian capital with Cologne, the nearest German point on the Reich net of radio-cable lines. How necessary it was to have a radio-cable and not just a mere overhead telephone line was shown the first day at Compiègne. Whereas the voices of Kerker and myself came into New York, we were informed, as clear as a bell, the American newspaper correspondents, telephoning their stories only as far as Berlin over an ordinary overhead telephone wire, complained that even by shouting at the top of their voices they could scarcely make themselves understood in Berlin.

Given a perfect cable line over Brussels and Cologne to Zeesen, nine tenths of our troubles were over. The German Broadcasting System provided us with microphones, which they set up within fifty feet of the armistice car, and with an amplifier truck. That was all we needed. Also, in Berlin the RRG had a man calling New York constantly over the shortwave to inform them when we would be on the air. Paul White cables that on the first day they only picked us up one minute before we started talking, which gave very little time to cut off the program then on the air and switch to us.

Our scoop, like all scoops, was due largely to a combination of lucky circumstances. In the first place, we did not know until the next day that the official communiqué on the signing of the armistice had had to be
approved by Hitler before it was released in Berlin. As Hitler was some distance away, this took several hours. We had supposed that the DNB had released the communiqué in Berlin as soon as it was flashed from Compiègne at six fifty p.m., the second the armistice was signed. We did not go on the air until eight-fifteen, an hour and twenty-five minutes later.

In fact we were held up forty-five minutes because the RRG quite naturally was using the cable line to clear its own German broadcast to Berlin. Fortunately for us, this German account was not rebroadcast simultaneously, but recorded in Berlin and held until the High Command could okay it. This, fortunately for us, took several hours.

Now, the day before, the High Command had forced us to go through the same process. That is, we had had to broadcast our description of the first day to Berlin, where it was recorded and played off to the army censors, and we had only gone on the air directly to New York after the military in Berlin had given us the go-ahead. But on the second day I saw an opportunity of taking advantage of the excitement of the Germans over the signing of the armistice, and by much bludgeoning and with the co-operation of three Germans—Hadamovsky, head of the German radio, Diettrich, head of the shortwave, and a certain colonel of the German High Command—we dispensed with the recording and went on the air direct to New York. We were not supposed to. Later the three above-mentioned gentlemen swore we were not supposed to be on the air. The important thing was that in the excitement I had got them to give the all-important order merely to throw a switch in a Berlin control room which put us on the air, direct to New York. When Hitler, the High Command, and Dr. Goebbels learned that we had given the American people
a detailed thirty-minute description of the signing of the armistice several hours before the signing was even officially announced in Berlin and several hours more before the German radio gave it to their own people, they were furious. My three German friends faced court-martial or worse and spent some very uncomfortable days before the matter finally blew over.

The curious thing is that the German army alone in this country understands the position of American radio as a purveyor of news and news analysis in the United States. Dr. Goebbels and his foreign press chief, Dr. Boehmer, have never appreciated it, and it was only at the insistence of the army that Kerker and I were taken to Compiègne at all. Boehmer, who is definitely antiradio, actually rushed Lochner, Huss, and Oechsner, the three American agency correspondents, from Compiègne to Berlin by air the morning of the day the armistice was signed so that from the German capital they could be first with the news. As it turned out, this was a strategic error and there was not a single press correspondent at Compiègne the day the armistice was made.

Though a couple of the American news correspondents have often complained to the Nazis about taking me to the front, on the ground that instantaneous radio communication puts them at a disadvantage, since they must file their stories by the slower method of telephone and cable relays, I have tried to iron out this absurd competitive idea by agreeing to hold up my ordinary broadcasts until their stories could get through to New York. Since NBC and CBS subscribe to all the press associations, there is no danger of radio ever being scooped by the press. And I feel we are doing different jobs which, after all, merely complement each other. There should be no insane rivalry between American press and radio over here.

G
ENEVA
,
July
4

Here for a week’s rest. The smell of the dead horses and the dead soldiers in Belgium and France seems a part of another world you lived in a long time ago. The excited cries of Eileen when I take her in swimming for the first time of her life at the proud age of two and a half, the soft voice of Tess reading a fairytale to Eileen before she goes to bed—these become realities again and are good.

Everyone here is full of talk about the “new Europe,” a theme that brings shudders to most people. The Swiss, who mobilized more men per capita than any other country in the world, are demobilizing partially. They see their situation as pretty hopeless, surrounded as they are by the victorious totalitarians, from whom henceforth they must beg facilities for bringing in their food and other supplies. None have any illusions about the kind of treatment they will get from the dictators. The papers are full of advice: Prepare for a hard life. Gone, the high living standard. The freedom of the individual. Decency in public life.

Probably, too, the Swiss do not realize what the dictators really have in store for them. And now that France has completely collapsed and the Germans and Italians surround Switzerland, a military struggle in self-defence is hopeless.

Mont Blanc from the quay today was magnificent, its snow pink in the afternoon sun. Later went to a 4th of July celebration at the consul’s. Nice home in the country and restful, with the cows grazing in the pastures around it. Talked too much.

People are talking about the action of the British yesterday in sinking three French battleships in Oran to save them from falling into the hands of the Germans.
The French, who have sunk to a depth below your imagination, say they will break relations with Britain. They say they trusted Hitler’s word not to use the French fleet against Britain. Pitiful. And yet there will be great bitterness throughout France. The Entente Cordiale is dead.

We had dinner along the lake, on the Alpine side, under a thick old chestnut tree, its branches extending over the water. The Juras were bluer—a deep smoky blue—than I’ve ever seen them. They looked lonely and proud, and now the Germans were occupying them. I left the party and went over to the rail to gaze at the scene as the sun was setting. The overwhelming blue of the Juras had cast its colour on Lake Geneva, which was like glass, neatly placed amongst the green hills and the trees. The lights started to sparkle across the lake.

G
ENEVA
,
July
5

Avenol, Secretary-General of the League, apparently thinks he’ll have a job in Hitler’s United States of Europe. Yesterday he fired all the British secretaries and packed them off on a bus to France, where they’ll probably be arrested by the Germans or the French.

Tonight in the sunset the great white marble of the League building showed through the trees. It had a noble look, and the League has stood in the minds of many as a noble hope. But it has not tried to fulfil it. Tonight it was a shell, the building, the institution, the hope—dead.

B
ERLIN
July
8

Tomorrow France, which until a few weeks ago was regarded as the last stronghold of democracy on the Continent, will shed its democracy and join the ranks of the totalitarian states. Laval, whom Hitler has picked to do his dirty work in France—the notorious Otto Abetz is the main go-between—will have the French Chamber and Senate meet and vote themselves out of existence, handing over all power to Marshal Pétain, behind whom Laval will pull the strings as Hitler’s puppet dictator. The Nazis are laughing.

The armistice car arrived here today.

B
ERLIN
,
July
9

The Nazis are still laughing. Said the organ of the Foreign Office, Dienst aus
Deutschland
, in commenting on Vichy’s scrapping the French Parliament today: “The change of the former regime in France to an authoritarian form of government will not influence in any way the political liquidation of the war. The fact is that Germany does not consider the Franco-German accounts as settled yet. Later they will be settled with historical realism… not only on the basis of the two decades since Versailles, but they will also take into account much earlier times.”

Alfred Rosenberg told us at a press conference this evening that Sweden would have to join the rest of Scandinavia and come under the benevolent protection of the Reich. Emissaries of Goebbels and Ribbentrop who were in the room dashed out to inform their bosses of Rosenberg’s blunt remarks and were back before he had finished speaking, he being very long-winded. They passed notes to Dr. Boehmer, who was presiding. As
soon as Rosenberg sat down, Boehmer popped up and announced excitedly that Rosenberg was speaking only for himself and not for the German government.