Berlin Diary (23 page)

L
AUSANNE
,
June
(
undated
)

We came up the lake on a paddle-steamer, Tess and Ed Murrow and I, on this glorious June afternoon, the water blue like the Mediterranean, the shores splashing green, the Jura mountains to the left, a deep, smoky blue, the Alps to the right, pink and white under the snow and sun. It was almost overwhelming. Ed and I here for the semi-annual conference of the International Broadcasting Union. As associate instead of regular members we refrain from the scraps of the European
broadcasters and merely observe, which gives us time for extra-curricular activities. The Broadcasting Union, at that, is one of the few examples of real European co-operation. Reason: if the broadcasters don’t co-operate, especially in the matter of wave-lengths, there won’t be any European radio. The Czechs and some of the English here much exercised about an editorial in the London
Times
on June 3 advising the Czechs to hold a plebiscite for the Sudeten Germans and if they want to join the Reich to let them. The
Times
argues that if this is done, Germany would lose any claim to interfere in the affairs of Czechoslovakia
. The Old Lady simply won’t learn. Ed and Dick Marriot of BBC, an intelligent and courageous young man, very pessimistic about the strength and designs of the “appeasement” crowd in London. Major Atkinson of BBC, whose English translation of Spengler’s
Decline of the West
is even better than the original—one of the few great translations from the German, an almost untranslatable language—and who is also a terrific expert on the American Civil War, came charging up to me this evening on the terrace where we were having coffee, a bottle of red Burgundy in one hand and a large globular glass in the other, and said: “Shirer, what would have happened at Gettysburg if Lee had…” and he went into some complicated military problem. I see we shall be fighting the Civil War over here. And these English military chaps know much more about it than any American civilian.

É
VIAN-LES-
B
AINS
,
July
7

Delegates from thirty-two states here, on Roosevelt’s initiative, to discuss doing something about refugees from the Third Reich. Myron C. Taylor,
heading the American delegation, elected permanent president of the committee today. I doubt if much will be done. The British, French, and Americans seem too anxious not to do anything to offend Hitler. It’s an absurd situation. They want to appease the man who is responsible for their problem. The Nazis of course will welcome the democracies’ taking the Jews off their hands at the democracies’ expense. I guess I was a little hasty thinking the “radio foreign correspondent” had been born at the time of the
Anschluss
. I’ve put on Taylor for a broadcast, but have no invitation from New York to talk myself on the program of this conference. We are not really covering it at all. Stumbled into Jimmy Sheean, whom I have not seen since our Paris days ten years ago. We had a big reunion at the Casino last night, Robert Dell of the
Manchester Guardian
, a grand old man, joining us. Jimmy broke the bank at the baccarat table while I was winning a couple of thousand francs more laboriously at roulette, Dell, who is in his sixties, remaining in the hall to dance. Dinah Sheean joined us during the evening, she beautiful with large intelligent eyes. Renewing acquaintance with other old friends, Bob Pell of the American delegation, John Elliott, and others. Should mention John Winant, whom I met a month ago in Geneva and who has been here, a very likable person, liberal, awkward in manner, a bit Lincolnesque.

P
RAGUE
,
August
4

Lord Runciman arrived today to gum up the works and sell the Czechs short if he can. He and his Lady and staff, with piles of baggage, proceeded to the town’s swankiest hotel, the Alcron, where they have almost
a whole floor. Later Runciman, a taciturn thin-lipped little man with a bald head so round it looks like a mis-shapen egg, received us—about three hundred Czech and foreign reporters—in the reception hall. I thought he went out of his way to thank the Sudeten leaders, who, along with Czech Cabinet members, turned out to meet him at the station, for
their
presence.

Runciman’s whole mission smells. He says he has come here to mediate between the Czech government and the Sudeten party of Konrad Henlein. But Henlein is not a free agent. He cannot negotiate. He is completely under the orders of Hitler. The dispute is between Prague and Berlin. The Czechs know that Chamberlain
personally wants Czechoslovakia
to give in to Hitler’s wishes. These wishes we know: incorporation of all Germans within the Greater Reich. Someone tonight—Walter Kerr, I think, of the
Herald Tribune
, produced a clipping from his paper of a dispatch written by its London correspondent, Joseph Driscoll, after he had participated in a luncheon with Chamberlain given by Lady Astor. It dates back to last May, but makes it clear that the Tory government goes so far as to favour Czecho ceding the Sudetenland outright to Germany. Before the Czechs do this, I’m convinced, they’ll fight. For it would mean giving up their natural defences and their Maginot Line. It would mean their end. They’re willing to give the Sudetens practical autonomy. But Henlein demands the right to set up a little Sudeten Nazi state within the state. Once he has this, of course, he will secede to Germany.

Dined tonight at the Baarandov, overlooking the lovely Moldau, with Jeff Cox of the
Daily Express
and Kerr. Prague, with its Gothic and baroque architecture, its winding little streets, its magnificent Charles
Bridge across the Moldau, and the bluffs on one side on which perches the Hradshin castle built by the Habsburgs, has more character than almost any other city in Europe.

Testing daily with Czech radio engineers their new short-wave transmitter. Our engineers in New York, working with RCA, sending a daily report now of reception there. Sunday we will try it out for the first time with a broadcast of some Czech army manoeuvres. Svoboda does not think it will carry well to New York.

P
RAGUE
,
August
14

A few minutes before we went on the air this afternoon, while the troops on the ground and the air force in the air were rehearsing a grand show, a Skoda fighter diving from ten thousand feet failed to come fully out of its dive. It crashed in front of my microphone and skidded a couple of hundred feet past me. When it came to a stop it was a mass of twisted metal. I was talking at the time, describing the dive. Phoebe Packard of U.P., who was helping in the broadcast, says I kept on shouting into the mike when it crashed, but I do not remember. The pilot and his observer were still alive when we extricated them from the wreckage, but I fear they will not live this day out. Four or five soldiers lying in a skirmish line in front of us were badly hurt when the plane skidded over them. We were all a bit paralysed and I offered to call off the broadcast, but the commanding general said we would go on. Phoebe, large, a bit masculine, and the only woman correspondent to go through both the Ethiopian and the Spanish wars, which have hardened her to such things, remained very calm, though obviously affected.

CBS engineers afterwards said there had been a little
too much gunfire for an ideal broadcast, but they were enthusiastic about the new Czech transmitter. It gives us an independent outlet now if the Germans cut the telephone lines.

P
RAGUE
,
August
24

Runciman still fussing about, asking the Czechs to make all the concessions. He has the government busy now working out a plan of cantonal government
à la Suisse
. The situation being momentarily quiet, am going to Berlin tomorrow to take a look at the military parade Hitler is putting on for Horthy, Regent of Hungary.

B
ERLIN
,
August
25

The military attachés, are still a little bit pop-eyed tonight. Among other things which the Reichswehr showed Horthy (and the world) in the big military parade was an enormous field-gun, at least an eleven-inch affair, hauled in four pieces on motor trucks. There were other big guns and new big tanks and the infantry goose-stepped very well. But the big motorized Bertha was the sensation of the day. No one has ever seen a cannon that big outside of a battleship, except for the railroad guns. And how the spectators applauded it! As if it were not inanimate, a cold piece of steel. When I called at the Embassy after the parade, our military experts were busy working out sketches of the gun from memory. No photographing was allowed, except for one or two official shots which did not show much. Ralph [Barnes] as excited as a cat. Some of the American correspondents, more friendly than others to the Nazis, laughed at me at the Taverne tonight when I maintained the Czechs would fight.