Berlin Diary (9 page)

Dodd called us in today for a talk with William Phillips, Under Secretary of State, who is visiting here. We asked him what action Washington would take if the Nazis began expelling us. He gave an honest answer. He said: None. Our point was that if the Wilhelmstrasse knew that for every American correspondent expelled, a German newspaperman at home would be kicked out, perhaps the Nazis would think twice before acting against us. But the Secretary said the State Department was without law to act in such a case—a lovely example of one of our democratic weaknesses.

B
ERLIN
,
January
4, 1936

The afternoon press, especially the
Börsen Zeitung
and the
Angriff
, very angry at Roosevelt’s denunciation of dictatorships and aggression, obviously directed mostly against Mussolini, but also meant for Berlin. Incidentally, an item I forgot to record: X of the
Börsen Zeitung
is not to be executed. His death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment. His offence: he occasionally saw that some of us received copies of Goebbels’s secret daily orders to the press. They made rich reading, ordering daily suppression of this truth and the substitution of that lie. He was given away, I hear, by a Polish diplomat, a fellow I never trusted. The German people, unless they can read foreign newspapers (the London
Times
has an immense circulation here now), are terribly cut off from events in the outside world and of course are told nothing of what is happening behind the scenes in their own country. For a while they stormed the news-stands to buy the
Baseler Nachrichten
, a Swiss German-language paper, which sold more copies in Germany than it did in Switzerland. But that paper has now been banned.

B
ERLIN
,
January
23

An unpleasant day. A telephone call awakened me this morning—I work late and sleep late—and it turned out to be Wilfred Bade, a fanatical Nazi careerist at the moment in charge of the Foreign Press in the Propaganda Ministry. He began: “Have you been in Garmisch recently?” I said: “No.” Then he began to shout: “I see, you haven’t been there and yet you have the dishonesty to write a fake story about the Jews there….” “Wait a minute,” I said, “you
can’t call me dishonest…” but he had hung up.

At noon Tess turned on the radio for the news just in time for us to hear a ringing personal attack on me, implying that I was a dirty Jew and was trying to torpedo the winter Olympic Games at Garmisch (which begin in a few days) with false stories about the Jews and Nazi officials there. When I got to the office after lunch, the front pages of the afternoon papers were full of typically hysterical Nazi denunciations of me. The Germans at the office expected the Gestapo to come to get me at any moment. Actually, I had written in a mail series, some time ago, that the Nazis at Garmisch had pulled down all the signs saying that Jews were unwanted (they’re all over Germany) and that the Olympic visitors would thus be spared any signs of the kind of treatment meted out to Jews in this country. I had also remarked, in passing, that Nazi officials had taken all the good hotels for themselves and had put the press in inconvenient
pensions
, which was true.

Every time the office boy brought in a new paper during the afternoon I grew more indignant. Most of my friends called up to advise me to ignore the whole affair, saying that if I fought it I’d probably be thrown out. But the stories were so exaggerated and so libellous I could not control my temper. I called up Bade’s office and demanded to see him. He was out. I kept calling. Finally a secretary said he was out and would not be coming back. About nine p.m. I could contain myself no further. I went over to the Propaganda Ministry, brushed by a guard and burst into Bade’s office. As I suspected, he was there, sitting at his desk. Uninvited, I sat down opposite him and before he could recover from his surprise demanded an apology and a correction in the German press and radio. He started to roar at me. I roared back, though in moments of excitement
I lose what German I speak and I probably was most incoherent. Our shouting apparently alarmed a couple of flunkeys outside, because they opened the door and looked in. Bade bade them shut the door and we went after each other again. He started to pound on the table. I pounded back. The door was hurriedly opened and one of the flunkeys came in, ostensibly to offer his chief some cigarettes. I lit one of my own. Twice again our pounding brought in the flunkey, once with more cigarettes, once with a pitcher of water. But I began to realize, what I should have known, that I was getting nowhere, that no one, and Bade least of all, had the power or the decency ever to correct a piece of Nazi propaganda once it had been launched, regardless of how big the lie. In the end, he grew quiet, even sugary. He said they had decided not to expel me as first planned. I flared up again and dared him to expel me, but he did not react and finally I stumped out. Much too wrought up, I fear.

G
ARMISCH
-P
ARTENKIRCHEN
,
February

This has been a more pleasant interlude than I expected. Much hard work for Tess and myself from dawn to midnight, covering the Winter Olympics, too many S.S. troops and military about (not only for me but especially for Westbrook Pegler!), but the scenery of the Bavarian Alps, particularly at sunrise and sunset, superb, the mountain air exhilarating, the rosy-cheeked girls in their skiing outfits generally attractive, the games exciting, especially the bone-breaking ski-jumping, the bob-races (also bone-breaking and sometimes actually “death-defying”), the hockey matches, and Sonja Henie. And on the whole the Nazis
have done a wonderful propaganda job. They’ve greatly impressed most of the visiting foreigners with the lavish but smooth way in which they’ve run the games and with their kind manners, which to us who came from Berlin of course seemed staged. I was so alarmed at this that I gave a luncheon for some of our businessmen and invited Douglas Miller, our commercial attaché in Berlin, and the best-informed man on Germany we have in our Embassy, to enlighten them a little. But they told
him
what things were like, and Doug scarcely got a word in. It has been fun being with Pegler, whose sharp, acid tongue has had a field day here. He and Gallico and I were continually having a run-in with the S.S. guards, who, whenever Hitler was at the stadium, surrounded it and tried to keep us from entering. Most of the correspondents a little peeved at a piece in the
Völkische Beobachter
quoting Birchall of the New York
Times
to the effect that there has been nothing military about these games and that correspondents who so reported were inaccurate. Peg especially resented this. Tonight he seemed a little concerned that the Gestapo might pick him up for what he has written, but I don’t think so. The “Olympic spirit” will prevail for a fortnight or so more, by which time he will be in Italy. Tess and I have seen a great deal of Paul Gallico. He’s at an interesting cross-road. He has deliberately thrown up his job as the highest-paid sports-writer in New York, said farewell to sports, and is going to settle down in the English countryside to see if he can make his living as a free-lance writer. It’s a decision that few would have the guts to make. Back to Berlin tomorrow to the grind of covering Nazi politics. Tess is going over to the Tyrol to get a rest from the Nazis and do some skiing.

B
ERLIN
,
February
25

Learn that Lord Londonderry was here around the first of the month, saw Hitler, Göring, and most of the others. He is an all-out pro-Nazi. Fear he has not been up to any good.

B
ERLIN
,
February
28

The French Chamber has approved the Soviet pact by a big majority. Much indignation in the Wilhelmstrasse. Fred Oechsner says that when he and Roy Howard saw Hitler day before yesterday, he seemed to be very preoccupied about something.

B
ERLIN
,
March
5

Party circles say Hitler is convoking the Reichstag for March 13, the date they expect the French Senate to approve the Soviet pact. Very ugly atmosphere in the Wilhelmstrasse today, but difficult to get to the bottom of it.