Berlin Diary (45 page)

“If we could only make planes at your rate of production,” he said, “we should be very weak. I mean that seriously. Your planes are good, but you don’t make enough of them fast enough.”

“Well, will Germany deliver a mass attack in the air before these thousands of American planes are delivered to the Allies?” we asked.

He laughed. “You build your planes, and our enemies theirs, and we’ll build ours, and one day you’ll see who has been building the best and the most planes.”

The talk continued:

“What do you think of the general situation?”

“Very favourable to Germany.”

“So far your air force has only attacked British warships. Why?”

“Warships are very important objects. And they give us good practice.”

“Are you going to begin bombing enemy ports?”

“We’re humane.”

We couldn’t suppress our laughter at this, whereupon Göring retorted: “You shouldn’t laugh. I’m serious. I
am
humane.”

B
ERLIN
,
November
8

Without previous notice, Hitler made an unexpected speech in the Bürgerbräu Keller in Munich tonight on the anniversary of his 1923 beer-house
Putsch
. Neither the radio nor the press hinted that he would be speaking tonight, and officials in the Wilhelmstrasse learned about it only an hour before it took place. Speech broadcast by all German stations, but for some reason was not offered to us for transmission to America. Hitler told the people to make up their minds to a long war and disclosed that on the Sunday two months ago when Britain and France came into the war, he ordered Göring to prepare for five years of conflict.

B
ERLIN
,
November
9

Twelve minutes after Hitler and
all
the big party leaders left the Bürgerbräu Keller in Munich last night, at nine minutes after nine o’clock, a bomb explosion wrecked the hall, killed seven, wounded sixty-three. The bomb had been placed in a pillar directly behind the rostrum from which Hitler had been speaking. Had
he remained twelve minutes and one second longer he surely would have been killed. The spot on which he stood was covered with six feet of debris.

No one yet knows who did it. The Nazi press screams that it was the English, the British secret service! It even blames Chamberlain for the deed. Most of us think it smells of another Reichstag fire. In other years Hitler and all the other bigwigs have remained after the speech to talk over old times with the comrades of the
Putsch
and guzzle beer. Last night they fairly scampered out of the building leaving the rank and file of the comrades to guzzle among themselves. The attempted “assassination” undoubtedly will buck up public opinion behind Hitler and stir up hatred of England. Curious that the official Nazi paper, the
Völkische Beobachter
, was the only morning paper today to carry the story. A friend called me with the news just as I had finished broadcasting at midnight last night, but all the German radio officials and the censors denied it. They said it was a silly rumour.

B
ERLIN
,
November
11

Armistice Day. An irony! Listened to the broadcast from Munich of the state funeral for the beer-house victims. Hitler present, did not speak. Hess spoke. He said: “This
attentat
has taught us how to hate.” I think they knew before.

Informed today that someone last night threw a brick into the window where the court photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, exhibits his flattering portraits of Hitler. A policeman fired, but the culprit got away in the black-out. Police protection of big shots being increased.

Something’s in the wind. Learned today that Hitler’s headquarters train has steam up. Party gossip about a mass air attack on England. A drive through Holland and Belgium. Or one through Switzerland.

B
ERLIN
,
November
12

The Germans announce they’ve shot “by sentence of court-martial” the Polish mayor of Bromberg. They say an investigation showed he was “implicated in the murder of Germans and the theft of city funds.” That, I suppose, is a German peace. I cannot recall that the Allies shot the mayors of German towns after the Rhineland occupation.

B
ERLIN
,
November
12

The ration cards for clothing out today, and many long German faces to be seen. There are separate cards for men, women, boys, girls, and babies. Except for the babies, everyone gets a hundred points on his card. Socks or stockings take five points, but you can buy only five pair per year. A pair of pyjamas costs thirty points, almost a third of your card, but you can save five points if you buy a nightgown instead. A new overcoat or suit takes sixty points. I figured out tonight that with my card, which limits your purchases by the seasons, I could buy from December 1 to April 1: two pairs of socks, two handkerchiefs, one muffler, and a pair of gloves. From April 1 to September 1: one shirt, two collars, and a suit of underwear. For the rest of the year: two neckties and one undershirt.

B
ERLIN
,
November
18

Yesterday nine young Czech students at the University of Prague
were lined up before a German firing squad and executed. At the press conference this noon we asked the authorities why and they replied that the students had staged anti-German demonstrations in Prague on October 23 and November 15. “There can be no joking in war-time,” said our spokesman, a little bored by our question. Later in the day the Germans admitted that three more Czechs, two of them policemen, were shot for “attacking a German.” I would bet my shirt that in the twenty years that three million Sudeten Germans lived under Czech rule not a single one of them was ever executed for taking part in any kind of demonstration.

Here in Germany three youths were executed yesterday for “treason.” And two youngsters aged nineteen were sentenced to death in Augsburg today for having committed a theft in the home of a soldier.

Beach Conger of the
Herald Tribune
, who arrived here only a month ago, left today by request. The Nazis didn’t like a story he had written. They demanded a retraction. He declined. At the last minute, Beach says, a high Nazi official called him in and “offered” to get him the job as Berlin correspondent of a big American radio network, which rather surprised him, as it did me. Most of the American correspondents were at the station to see him off, and there were flowers for Mrs. Conger.

Though the Nazis don’t like me, I suppose I shall never get kicked out of here. The trouble is my radio scripts are censored in advance, so that whatever I say over the air cannot be held against me. The newspaper correspondents can telephone out what they please, subject
to the risk of getting what Conger got. This is almost a worse form of censorship than we have, since the New York offices of the press associations and New York newspapers do not like their correspondents to be kicked out.

B
ERLIN
,
November
19

For almost two months now there has been no military action on land, sea, or in the air. From talks with German military people, however, I’m convinced it would be a mistake to think that Germany
will accept the Allied challenge to fight this war largely on the economic front. That is just the kind of war in which the Reich would be at a disadvantage. And that’s one of the reasons why most people here expect military action very soon now.