End of a Berlin Diary

by WILLIAM L. SHIRER

7

Berlin, Tuesday, November 6. — Went with Nicky Nabokov, who is helping to guide our Military Government in its cultural endeavors, to see the première of an American play, Robert Ardrey’s Thunder Rock, at the Hebbel Theater. It is the first American play the Berliners have seen in more than ten years, and the audience liked it. Ernst Busch, who played the lead, and who, I gathered, had not been seen on the stage in these parts for a long time, got a great, reception. The theater, of course, was unheated, and it was surprising how many of these well-dressed Berlin women turned up in fur coats, I thought I recognized many old faces from pre-war first nights.

The play, which was due to start at 5.00 P.M., was delayed a little because of a rumpus with four Russian officers. They arrived with carbines slung over their shoulders, and a little in their cups, no doubt in anticipation of the anniversary of the Russian Revolution tomorrow. The play had been sold out, but the German manager hastily found four seats for them. The trouble was they were in the balcony, and when the Russians saw that scores of American officers were sitting downstairs, they descended to the box office and proceeded to make a row. The manager, not understanding Russian and not liking the way the Russians fingered their carbines, became definitely nervous until Nabokov, who has not forgotten his native Russian, stepped in, kidded the irate officers, and induced them to depart, which they did after stiff salutes, and not without dignity.

Talks these last days with some of the German Socialists and Communists. Though AMG, whose top men are either American businessmen or professional soldiers, may not know if yet, the best hope for a decent, peaceful, and eventually democratic Germany lies in its working class. The trouble is that in this land, where, even before Hitler, all workers were either Socialists or Communists, the latter are under the heel of the Russians and the former do not seem to have learned anything from the war and from the long Nazi tyranny. The Communists strike me as seeing things more clearly. They admit, for example, that one of their first jobs is to convince the German people — including the working class — of their share of responsibility for the war and of their complicity in Hitler’s crimes.

But Otto Grotewohl, chairman of the Social Democratic Party, says that not only are the German workers not responsible for what Hitler did but that the German people have no responsibility. He blames the war exclusively on German Big Business and the Nazi Party, conveniently overlooking that Hitler never could have built up his great war machine nor even marched off to war had not the German workers given him their full support.

Thursday, November 8. — Somewhat of a head this morning. Blame the Russian Revolution. Last evening, with Ray Daniell and Anne McCormick of the New York Times, I went out to the Cäcilienhof at Potsdam. The Hohenzollerns, to whom it once belonged, are of course no longer around. The palace, at the moment, is occupied by the Russians, and it was they, beginning with Marshal Zhukov, who were hosts for the celebration of the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. They almost drowned their guests with vodka and stuffed them with some very choice food.

Despite all the talk you hear in anti-Russian Allied circles here about Red Army men being forbidden to fraternize with their Allies, there was certainly a lot of it last night. I have never drunk so many toasts in my life, and have seldom seen so much conviviality. I must confess that one Russian major—a correspondent, I think, from Izvestia - gave me a particular kick when, after someone had told him I was the author of Berlin Diary, he embraced me like a bear and shouted in broken German, “It is you. You! Why, I used to read your diary day after day in the trenches at Stalingrad. It came out daily for weeks in one of our Army papers there.” And he dragged me over to the buffet table with some of his fellow officers, where we upended too many tumblers of vodka. A chat with the Russian garrison commander, General Smirnov, who, ever since General Gavin took me to a meeting of the Kommandatura at which Smirnov presided, has mistaken me for an officer in Gavin’s airborne division whom he met when his army corps made contact with the 82nd Airborne in central Germany. I try to explain I am just a civilian scribe in uniform, but he will have none of it.

8

AN interesting chat at noon today with Johannes Becher, the German poet. He almost floored Howard Smith and me with his frankness. We had got the impression from our talks with Germans that they had no sense of guilt or even remorse for Germany’s crime in making war and regretted merely having lost it. But since one reporter can talk to but relatively few Germans, we could be wrong. Becher made it clear at once that we couldn’t be more right. In fact, he put it much stronger than even I had felt it.

“With a few exceptions, there is no feeling of guilt in the entire people,” he said. We had not put the question to him. He started right off talking about it on his own. “It is not these ruins,” he said, pointing to a block of debris along the adjoining Kurfürstendamm, where once homes of the complacent bourgeoisie undoubtedly had stood, “which are the worst thing about Germany’s present condition. Fat worse is the deadness of the German soul. It has been poisoned beyond belief by twelve years of Nazism. Today it has no spiritual connection either with our German past — the world of Goethe and Schiller, for example — or with the outside world of the present. And while it is true that every - one is preoccupied with finding shelter, warmth, and food [his office, in which we talked, was bitter cold], this cannot excuse the German people for having dead souls and nitwit minds and not the slightest desire to make good their awful crimes. They do not recognize them as crimes, or even think about how Germany eventually can get in step with the rest of the world and its civilization.”

And then he made the most cynical remark I have yet heard in Berlin. “Why, these people,” he said, pointing out to the passers-by on the street, “regret the loss of their little flats and their ugly furniture from the bombings more than they do their men, or even women, who were killed in the war. It pains me, as a German, to have to say these things,” he said, apparently noticing our slight shock, “but it’s better to be brutally frank.”

Becher said the working class, though it was the only hope of a decent Germany, had been as poisoned by Goebbels and Hitler as the middle classes. The workers, too, could not understand that they had helped in the perpetration of Nazi crimes. They had not minded much — or done anything about — the loss of freedom in Germany. As for the whole German people, they had not given a hoot when they were told by the Nazis what to think and read and write.

Becher is a Communist and, like all party members, he talks a lot about eventual democracy for Germans. But having spent long years of exile in Moscow, he must have known, I could not help thinking, that there, too, a writer, a poet, is scarcely free to write what he pleases.

We got to talking about writers in Germany. Like most other men of letters who have returned to the ruins of the Reich, he was somewhat resentful of Thomas Mann’s decision not to come home.

We talked also of the man who had been to German drama what Mann was to the novel — Gerhart Hauptmann. For some reason the Russians have been making quite a hero of him, and this has been inexplicable to me. Hauptmann, who even before 1914 had been persecuted by the Kaiser for being a Socialist, had weakened in his declining days and had seemed to make his peace with the Nazi butchers. Had they not put on his last play, The Daughter of the Cathedral, and had not Goebbels made Nazi capital of this? Had the Nazis not boasted that Germany’s greatest living playwright, a former Socialist, could remain in Hitlerite Germany and write and have his plays produced? Hauptmann had bitterly disappointed his followers throughout the world. Yet when the Russians arrived, they lost no time in letting it be known that Hauptmann should be honored. And only last month, on October 6, the aged playwright had sent a message to the new Kulturbund for the Democratic Revival of Germany, wishing it well and expressing the hope that it would succeed in bringing about a “spiritual rebirth” of the German people a message that appears to ha ve been accepted with deep gratitude.

A turncoat he seemed to me, lacking the guts that Thomas Mann and Heinrich Mann and so many other German writers had shown when the integrity of the German artist was at stake.

However, Becher said he thought there were extenuating circumstances in Hauptmann’s favor. He had learned, he said, that for every concession the great playwright had made to the Nazis, he had courageously rejected eleven other demands to exploit him. Maybe so. It is easy, of course, for an American writer who has never been put to the test the Germans were, to take a high-minded position. But Mann’s course does seem more honorable than Hauptmann’s.

It occurred to me that among eighty million Germans there must have been a few young rebels who poured out their hearts in writing which would see the light of day when the Hitler evil perished. Had it not always been so in all countries in all such periods of suppression of the human spirit? I asked Becher about this. “ You must have uncovered some interesting writing,” I said.

His eyes glared at me. “That’s what I thought too, when I returned,” he said. “I was absolutely certain that many a young, unknown writer as well as some of the older ones — would flood us with manuscripts kept in hiding during the repression. But I was wrong. Nothing, apparently, was written — by anyone.”

We did not nearly finish our talk and agreed to meet soon for a further one.

9

Friday, November 9. — Today is the anniversary of Hitler’s Munich Beer House Putsch — a day of great celebration in the Nazi time. How many endless speeches full of wind and lies have I heard Hitler give from the Bürgerbräukeller on this day. And I was here in Berlin, I remember, on November 9, 1939, when word came through that a bomb had gone off just after he and all the other bigwigs of the party had left the beer house at the end of the usual celebration and speech.

We correspondents always thought that Himmler set the bomb off it killed seven of the lesser Nazi fry and wounded sixty-three others to rally the Germans around the Führer and his war. Today one of the German editors in a local paper remarks that nothing more was ever heard of the poor chap, Georg Elser, by name, whom Himmler named as the man who planted the bomb on behalf of the British Intelligence Service. Well, the Germans will be hearing of what happened to him shortly, as soon as the German secret documents are made public at Nuremberg.

Just as we suspected, the Nazis did the job. And they made Elser, a carpenter by profession, the goat just as they had done with van der Lubbe in the Reichstag fire. The records show that Elser was confined to a concentration camp and treated exceptionally well, though kept separate from other prisoners. The Nazis had promised him 40,000 marks and release on the termination of the war. But of course it never would have done for the man to survive a lost war. So a month before the end Himmler ordered Elser “liquidated immediately and decreed that an announcement be given the press that the hapless fellow had been killed in an Allied “terror attack” on Dachau. It does not surprise me.

Today was also the anniversary of the German “revolution” of 1918, when the Kaiser fled and the Germans sued for peace and the Socialists (there were no Communists then) took over power in Germany. A couple of editors try to draw the lesson from the failure of that “revolution" the failure of the Socialists, who had the power, to appreciate it and use it. Instead, they called in the reactionaries and the men of the discredited Army .—a false and stupid move which eventually paved the way to these ruins of the Third Reich, among which the Germans, in their dazed helplessness, now live.

bast night at dinner with an old friend, I had a long confab with one of the top Russian political advisers. I got the impression from him that the Soviet Union’s policy for Germany was entirely clear: to treat Germany in such a manner that she would never again be strong enough to attack Russia.

Afterward I sat up most of the night reading the diary of Count Lutz von Schwerin-Krosigk, the German Minister of Finance throughout the twelve years of the Nazi regime. Though he was, as I recall, a dull fellow, his notes of the last feverish days of the thousand-year Reich are strangely exciting. And how revealing! The fool believed, to the last minute, that the Pope, with the backing of American Catholics, might still save Germany, and that the Wehrmacht could team up with the British and American Armies to fight the Russians.

He discloses that he, Hitler, Goebbels, and the rest of the Nazi gangsters received the news of Roosevelt’s death as though it were a gift from God, the very break they had been waiting for to enable them to snatch victory from defeat.

Schwerin-Krosigk was not originally a Nazi. A Rhodes scholar at Oxford before the First World War, a permanent official in the Finance Ministry after it, he had been Minister of Finance in the short-lived Papen government and had continued on under Hitler, apparently because he had a reputation as a financial expert and an honest man. I remember that Ambassador Dodd was impressed by him and seemed to consider him an anti-Nazi force in the Cabinet. Schwerin-Krosigk had the reputation of being a deeply religious man and was the father of an unusually large number of children — twelve, I believe. The morals of such Germans (the so-called “good Germans,” so beloved at home), who did not start as Nazi gutterbums, come to light in his diary.

Schwerin-Krosigk became Foreign Minister under Dönitz, but a quick end was made of his silly illusions shortly afterward, when all the members of the absurd “Dönitz government” were arrested and jailed by Allied military authorities.

It may be, of course, that Schwerin-Krosigk is not such a fool as his diary seems to reveal. His hope—the hope of all the Nazi criminals that Germany may somehow be saved by a falling out between Russia and her Western allies already does not seem so absurd as it did a few months ago. Well, if we and the Russians are as stupid as the Germans are counting on us to be, we deserve another German war, or, at least, to lose the peace.

10

Saturday, November 10. — Cold and raw today, and the Germans in their unheated homes, many still roofless, windowless, must be feeling it. Our military kicked the owner of our house out of the place today and hired a German worker to heat it with our meager coal ration. The house was much warmer.

Spent part of the day going over a batch of German newspapers. They, at least, have changed. The Russians, British, French, and Americans see to that. It seems incredible that the German people could have read their Nazi press with its bilge, its lies, its utter emptiness for twelve years. But some of the old Nazis are changing their colors pretty fast. Bumped into Hasendorff the other day. He was a very able assistant to Goebbels in the Propaganda Ministry, specializing on American affairs, when I was last here.

“I’ve fallen on my feet,” he laughed when I told him I was surprised to see him even at large, considering his past.

“How come?” I said.

“I’m managing editor of the British-licensed daily newspaper here,” he chuckled. Ilis attitude seemed to be: if the British are stupid, why should I be?

His talk reminded me of a recent evening at John Scott’s. Victor de Kowa, the theater producer, was there. I remembered him as having done very well in the theater business under the Nazis. Now, he said, the British had just given him two theaters to direct in the British section of Berlin.

“How come?” I had asked, hardly surprised any more.

“I was in the underground. Didn’t you know it?” he said.

“No,” I said. “What did you do in the underground?”

“Raised money,” he said.

The girl with him was very beautiful. She spoke German, but I soon gathered from her accent that she was French. In fact, it came out that she was a French movie actress. She spoke of the pictures she had made in Berlin during the war. Now, she said, she was going back to Paris. The war was over, after all. It was — apparently even for the collaborators.

The French, who have been fairly tough on their own collaborators, puzzle me. The girl was small fry — though pretty. But Hasendorff says that the managing editor of a new French-licensed newspaper here, the Kurier, which will begin publishing next week, is one Vaudoin, the same individual who was, he adds, Vichy correspondent of the Berlin newspaper Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung and an ardent Pétainist. Surely the French are not that stupid - assuming that Hasendorff is correct.

Howard and I again went to see Becher, who complained that his German cultural committee and its new publishing house find it difficult to make cultural contacts with the American Military Government, He says the British and the Russians have been most helpful. The Germans, he declares, are starving for foreign books and are especially anxious to fill the void of the last twelve years. They want to read again Hemingway and Steinbeck and Dos Passos and Sinclair Lewis and others. But AMG, he says, apparently hasn’t heard of America’s best writers.

It became clear that Becher and his crowd are really quite bitter at Thomas Mann for not rushing back to Germany. They are pretty sore at him for a letter he wrote to Walter von Molo, a minor German poet and a former president of the German Academy of Poetry, explaining why he wasn’t going back to Germany.

What a commentary on German culture and character in our time, when the country’s greatest living author has to become an American citizen, and has to tell his former countrymen that what they did to him in the past and what they failed to do as decent men and honest artists under the Nazis, does not make him feel much like returning!

I am moved by the tragedy of this great estrangement between a German artist, and the German people.

[Mann, as my diary notes indicate, was immediately attacked by a number of secondand thirdrate German writers for sending this letter. He answered them in a broadcast to Germany over the BBC.]

MANN’S DEFENSE OF HIS STAND

I am ready to defend my stand before God, and posterity will call it reasonable.

It seems that one could give proof of egoism as much by remaining in Germany as by fleeing, I was far removed from the monumental callousness such as Richard Strauss manifested in an interview with American journalists for the amusement of the world. The devil’s spawn that is National Socialism has taught me to hateto hate for the first time in my life with a genuine, deep, inextinguishable, deadly hatred, a hatred which, I fancy in a mystical way, was not without influence on the course of events. From the very first day I have worked for the downfall of this evil, not only through my broadcasts to Germany, which were a single-minded, sincere appeal to the German people to rid themselves of it. And what do you believe was my purpose, among other things, in doing this? That I should return, as I am now being asked to do, now that it is too late?

To return home! For years, as a guest of Switzerland, I hoped for it, dreamed of it. How eagerly I accepted every sign that Germany had had its fill of degradation. How different it would have been if it had been given to Germany to liberate herself. If, between 1933 and 1939, the revolution of deliverance had broken out among you, do you think I would not have taken the very first train home?

This could not and did not happen. It was impossible—every German says so — and so I must believe it. I must believe that a highly cultured people of seventy million, under certain circumstances, can do nothing but accept for six years a regime of bloody savagery which is revolting to the depths of its soul, and then follow that regime into a war which the people recognizes as utter insanity. And that this same people, for six more years, does its utmost, strains all its inventive powers, courage, intelligence, love for discipline, military ability - in short, throws its entire strength into helping this regime to victory and thus to immortality. That is what had to be, and entreaties such as mine were utterly worthless.

“The blind,” says the writer Frank Thiess, a member of the Inner Emigration, “would not listen, and the wise were always one step ahead of the spoken word” — at least, at the very end. That is how it was in Germany. In oppressed Europe and in the rest of the world, more than one tortured heart found solace in my superfluous talks, and so I have no regrets. But, however meaningless the “love’s labor lost” of these appeals may have been for Germany, they cannot now be my compelling reason for returning.

“You have posed as a spiritual leader of the German people,” so they say. “Well, now live among this people. Do not merely share their sufferings, but relieve them, and oppose the foreigners who are responsible for them.

But where is Germany? Where is it to be found, even only geographically? How can one return to a fatherland which does not even exist as a unit, to a country torn asunder into occupation zones, which hardly know each other? Should I go to the Russians, or to the French, or to the English, or to my new fellow citizens, the Americans, and ask for the protection of their bayonets against National Socialism, which is far from being buried and, even today, is hard at work at corrupting our soldiers? Should I, in the face of the impudence which is exhibited and which is unfortunately encouraged in certain quarters, protest against the sufferings of Germany and point out to the occupation powers the mistakes they commit in the treatment and administration of Germany?

This is exactly what I cannot do. I was able to speak as a German to the Germans, and to warn them of the approaching Nemesis. But just because I am a German who feels deeply that everything German is involved in the terrible national guilt, I cannot feel free to criticize the policy of the victors, for my criticism would always be interpreted as being the expression of egocentric patriotism and of apathy towards the years of suffering imposed by Germany on other nations. One who has long ago been frightened by the mountains of hate which established themselves all around Germany, and who long ago, during sleepless nights, anticipated and tried to imagine the terrible way the inhuman acts of the Nazis and of their armies would one day backfire throughout Germany, cannot now wring his hands in patriotic horror at the actions of the Russians, Czechs, and Poles towards Germany. It is a mechanical and unavoidable reaction to the misdeeds committed, and for which a whole people is being punished, and in which individual justice, or the guilt or innocence of the individual, unfortunately is of no account.

It is far better to act from here to help Europe, to save German children from starving to death, than to agitate in Germany to soften the lot of the Germans — an agitation which might unwittingly promote German nationalism. For I am not a nationalist. You may forgive this or not, but I have suffered as much over the misery of the countries oppressed by Germany as I now do over German misfortune.

As far as my living abroad is concerned, the time granted to me by my country for this purpose has not only led me to accustom myself to it with resignation, but also to accept, with sincerity, the dictates of fate as being for the best. I have in the past impatiently awaited the opportunity to return home. I have just seen again a printed letter I wrote early in 1941 to a Hungarian friend, in which I said: “Exile has become something quite different from what it was in the past; it is no more a stale of expectation, a concentration on return, but hints already at the dissolution of nations and the unification of the world.” This is true. Everything national has long ago become provincial, and the atmosphere which is but the air of the fatherland has become prison air!

“Germany, Germany, and without Germany one must decay!” This is the call of those who never opened their mouths to warn of the coming catastrophe and therefore were allowed to remain in Germany in 1933. But this is a grave error. Living away from home has been good for me. I have taken with me my German heritage, I have not missed anything which the Germans experienced these past years, even though I was not in Munich when my house was destroyed. Grant to me my world Germanism which came naturally to me when I was still at home, and grant me my outpost of German culture which I hope to maintain honorably for the remaining years of my life.

[Thus a great German soul crying out in the terrible German wilderness. And the soul seared and sorrowed, but courageously facing the hideous fact of what has happened to his fellow countrymen, and the awful plight their collective crime against humanity has put them in. The American and British people, in the depths of their sentimentality and their ignorance, will try to forget the facts; and soon, I am afraid, the integrity of Thomas Mann will be but a small voice in the complacent Anglo-American wilderness.

[In his letter to Molo, Mann refers to a conductor who was sent abroad by the Nazis, to direct the music of Beethoven, as being “guilty of an obscene lie.” He mentions no names, but he could mean Wilhelm Furtwängler Germany’s greatest symphony orchestra conductor, whose concern for art did not prevent him from serving the Nazis well. On December 17, 1946, nevertheless, Furtwägler was acquitted by a German denazification court in Berlin, and most Germans, it was evident, were greatly pleased with the verdict. Why not? Furtwängler’s real crime was one that the frightened little denazification tribunal in Berlin did not even attempt to assess: lack of moral sense and integrity. Was that not the chief crime of the whole German people?

[Was that not what was wrong with the greatest composer of our time, Richard Strauss, whom Mann, in his broadcast, castigates for his “monumental callousness”? Here were Germany’s two greatest artists in the art in which modern Germans were pre-eminent — music — (Walter Gieseking, the pianist, was a third) lending their world-wide reputations, their magnificent talents, their great names, to a barbarous German regime which was murdering and prostituting art and crucifying mankind, from which art springs.

[The writers who stayed on in Germany were no better than the musicians, though in literature, at least, the greatest figures (except for Hauptmann) — the brothers Mann, Hermann Hesse, Bert, Brecht, Leonhard Frank, Fritz von Unruh, and others — had the guts to emigrate rather than to knuckle down to the inanities of Dr. Goebbels. In most cases, uprooted as they were, they were not able to write very much. But those who remained in Germany, the authors Mann refers to as the “Inner Emigration,”produced nothing of worth — a frightening phenomenon. A few, like Ernst Weichert, once a rabid German nationalist, showed courage. He went to a concentration camp and now appears to be emerging as the most significant writer in Germany.

[On the stage and screen it was the same story. Gustav Gruendgens, perhaps Germany’s most popular actor and director, who, during the Republic, had had left-wing sympathies and who had been a disciple of the great Max Reinhardt, became a darling of Göring and one of the titans of the Nazi theater. Werner Krauss, a sort of German Barrymore, became another. Gruendgens recently made a triumphal return to the Berlin stage, his prodigious services to the Nazis having been forgiven, if not forgotten. Only the other day the Berlin Actors’ Association petitioned the Allied Kommandatura to permit Krauss to return to the stage.

[I suspect that Emil Jannings, most, popular of German film actors, will be back in business soon too. After the German collapse innocent young American war correspondents sought him out at his picturesque villa on the Wolfgangsee near Salzburg, and fell easily for his pose that he, of course, had been anti-Nazi all along. Even Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann, who should have known better, was taken in by Jannings when, as a soldier-correspondent for Stars and Stripes, he went to see the famous actor. Jannings told Mann of how he had been persecuted by the Nazis and of what a good liberal democrat he had always been at heart. Later, after further evidence of Jannings’s kowtowing to Goebbels had come in, Mann changed his mind. I myself, especially during the first year and a half of the war, had seen Jannings gloating in the company of the Nazi bigwigs, had been disgusted by his taking the leading role in the Nazi propaganda war film Ohm Krueger and by his boasting of how he liked this ridiculous movie of the Boer War, and, finally, I had noted in the Nazi press a little item announcing that Jannings had been made head of a big Nazi film company - a most lucrative post.

[Germany’s artists under the Nazis had been as lacking in personal guts and integrity as other Germans. The fact that the Germans demanded the return to the limelight of their artists who had served Hitler’s barbarism so well is merely further proof that the German people, at heart, have not changed, have not reformed. There will always be a Germany, I guess, and, in our lifetime at least, it will always be the same.]

11

Sunday, November 11. — Armistice Day, and cold, gray, and drizzly. This morning the Russians unveiled their mammoth monument in the Tiergarten commemorating the men of the Red Army killed in the Battle of Berlin. You could almost hear Hitler’s Bolshevik-hating bones rattling in the grave.

Field Marshal Montgomery called the correspondents to his villa. His mind seemed to be preoccupied with another battle. He kept talking about the “ Battle of Winter.” “ ‘Twill be a tough winter for the Germans,” he said. Something must be done to get them more food and heat. Everyone here agrees that the Allies must not let Germans starve or freeze. We Americans are now furnishing the Germans one third of their food supplies. This morning I noticed in the corner grocery store sacks of flour piled up to the roof. They were all stamped: “Buffalo, U.S.A.”

What stumps me, though, is that the Allies don’t seem to give a damn about the liberated people, who also are cold and hungry, after having been deliberately starved (and frozen) by the German government for years. Shouldn’t we help them first? According to UNRRA, the liberated peoples will get this winter 300 fewer calories a day, on an average, than we provide for the Germans.

Yet only the other day there were shocking outbursts in the House of Commons, especially from my Labor friends, protesting about the Allied failure to give the Germans more food. No wonder that Jan Christiaan Smuts was moved to say recently: “You see today a ruined Europe. If tomorrow you hear of suffering, disease, starvation, and death on a large scale unknown before in time of peace, remember that that was, in the first place, the curse of Hitler and, in the second place, the dreadful responsibility of the German people who allowed such a monster to become their master. The dreadful responsibility rests on us to do all we can to save what can still be saved. But do not forget where the chief responsibility lies.”

But we are forgetting.

I said to a German woman the other day, “It must be nice to have white bread again after that, sawdust you got from the Nazis during the war.”

“Nice? I find it tasteless,” she said. “Why don’t the Americans give us nice brown bread?”

After Montgomery’s remarks my mind kept going back to a little item in yesterday’s Berlin newspapers. It came from Czechoslovakia. It was about that former little Czech town, Lidice. Almost forgotten now, isn’t it? How the Nazi gangsters erased it from the face of the earth and murdered the entire male population above the age of fifteen.

What ever happened to the women and children? The women, the newspapers now divulge, were shipped to a concentration camp at Ravensbrück.

And their children? The papers say they were torn from their mothers by the Gestapo and scattered around, nameless, in Germany. There were ninety-three of them. Not a one of them has been found to this day. That’s what the little piece in the local papers was about. It. was a pitiful appeal from the mothers of Lidice to the German people to help locate their children and send them home.

I’ve been wondering since I came here how many of the 540,000 Jews that lived in Germany when the Nazis came to power in 1933 are still alive. I can’t get the figures for today, but I have found the Nazi government’s own figure for a year ago. On July 1, 1944, there were 20,000 Jews left in Germany — 20,000 out of 540,000. Hitler thus failed by only 4 per cent to make good his boast of wiping them all out.

Which reminds me of another item in the local press. It tells of the testimony of a fifteen-year-old German lad, the son of the former SS Commander of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Questioned about his father, the boy said; “For my birthday, my father put forty inmates at my disposal to teach me how to shoot. I took shots at them until they were all lying dead. Otherwise, I have nothing to report about my father.”

After my recording today, Howard and I went out to see Friedrich Wolf, the anti-Nazi German playwright and author of the play Professor Mamlock. We found him at the home of Fritz Wisten, a Jewish régisseur. Wisten is a bit puzzled that none of the Allies will give him a theater, though the British have given de Kowa two, despite his having done well under the Nazis. We found the two hungry for news -especially literary and theater news — from the outside world.

12

Monday, November 12. I have had several talks here with American economic and financial experts, and had better put some of their amazing revelations down.

In the first place, the bomb damage to Germany’s industrial plant is not nearly so great as it looks, or as we were all led to believe by the British and American air forces. In fact, our people stale flatly that German industry is virtually intact, and that, if left to her own devices, Germany could — in five years make herself stronger industrially than she was when she marched off to war in 1939. The Allied bombers, it develops, did not destroy the German industrial plant. They merely curtailed production temporarily in a number of key industries — above all, aircraft and synthetic oil. Actually, at the very moment that Allied bombing approached its peak, in the latter part of 1944, German production was higher than it had ever been in history. Today, according to our experts, most, of the big German plants could get back to normal production with very little repairing.

For example, one single I. G. Farben plant, with a capacity for producing nearly as much dye annually as all the chemical works in the United States put together, is completely intact. It didn’t even suffer a broken window. It could start full operations tomorrow.

Almost all the iron and steel furnaces of Germany are either in a position to start producing immediately or could be put into operation in a short time after minor repairs. It is this industry which is the basis of a warmaking machine. Its capacity of some 25 million tons of steel a year is easily five times what Germany could consume for peaceful uses.

Here are some facts about the state of other German industries that most of us in America thought had been destroyed by the Anglo-American bombing: —

Coal-tar by-products. These include hundreds of materials used in warfare (explosives, for example). Germany’s production in this field, the world’s greatest, has scarcely been affected by the bombing.

Nitrogen. Germany produced about half the world’s output. It could so do again, after a little repair work.

Oil. At the height of the war Germany was manufacturing 5 1/2 million tons of synthetic oil per year. Our bombers put out of action a number of the plants producing it, but most of them can be repaired, and normal production restored, in a short time.

Aluminum. If allowed to, Germany can produce 250,000 tons a year, compared to 40,000 tons in 1933, the year Hitler came into power.

Machine tools. Production of these, as everybody knows, is the key to all great modern war machines. In 1939, Germany surpassed every other great power, including the United States, in its supply of machine tools and its capacity to manufacture them. Today, despite some bomb damage suffered by the industry, Germany has more than 4 million tons of machine tools on hand and a vast undamaged plant to produce more.

It is plain, therefore, that unless the Allies do something about it, Germany, in five years, can become again a great military power, able to produce more deadly machines of war than she turned out for a war which almost destroyed the rest of the world. It will not solve the problem to propose, as many more or less innocent souls in Britain and America do, that this great German industrial plant be put back to work to produce for the prosperity of Europe. That is, it will not do if you leave the control of this vast plant in German hands. For if you do, you automatically guarantee Germany’s military power.

My own feeling is that some of the plant should be removed to the liberated lands as compensation for the destruction visited upon them by the Nazis. As for the heart of German industry, which lies in the Ruhr and Rhineland, this should be placed under permanent international control, and its superb production facilities should be made to work not only for the Germans but for all Europe. We should never again allow it to become the basis of Germany’s ability to wage gigantic wars.

[Speaking at Stuttgart, Germany, on September 6, 1946, James F. Byrnes, then Secretary of State, declared that the United States favored giving the control of the Ruhr and Rhineland back to the Germans. His reasoning, it seems to me, bordered on the ridiculous. He said: “So far as the United States is aware the people of the Ruhr and the Rhineland desire to remain united with the rest of Germany. And the United States is not going to oppose their desire.” To allow the inhabitants of the Ruhr and the Rhineland to decide this all-important problem of European and world peace would be sheer lunacy.]

I wish I had the time to get down here some of the fantastic tales our economic and financial experts tell: of American businessmen suddenly turning up in Army uniform to reclaim their factories or acquire new ones; of AMG officers sabotaging the job of getting the Nazis out of the Big Business posts in Württemberg. They tell of a certain American Lieutenant Colonel who stoutly declares that our official denazification policy will drive the Germans to Communism, and who therefore opposes our denazification whenever he can.

The story of I. G. Farben, the world’s greatest chemical trust , which not only furnished Hitler with the materials to make war but which carried on a gigantic economic and political warfare against the rest of the world, is gradually being ferreted out by our American investigators. It would make a fascinating book but is too vast a story even to attempt to summarize here.

Perhaps it is too strong stuff to be published at home, for I. G. Farben had many connections with big American corporations, and, according to the evidence so far uncovered (including the testimony of various I. G. directors), made monkeys out of some of our leading businessmen. It obtained from the latter some of the most vital secret processes for such essentials to modern war as lead tetraethyl, while at the same time it refused, on the advice of the Wehrmacht, to give us in return some of its secrets, such as the buna process for making synthetic rubber — a product which was to become ;i life-and-death matter for our country in 1941.

Tuesday, November 13. — Lunch with Bob Murphy in a very charming villa he has taken over. Somehow, we never got around to talking much about what is going on here. Afterward, a long talk with General Lucius Clay, deputy military governor, a most competent administrator. His lalest headache, he said, was the refusal of the French to set up a central German administration in Berlin, He has many other headaches, of course.

The magnificent American Army which landed on the Normandy beaches and swept to the Elbe in less than a year is deteriorating at a frightening pace. Officers and men have but one thought: to get back home. Those who stay are pretty inferior. They know nothing of Germany or the Germans and they are not fit to govern our zone. Too many of them have already been taken in by German propaganda. Few of them have the faintest idea of what Nazism is. Most of them therefore are either opposed to denazification — even though it is a military order which they are supposed to carry out—or are uninterested in doing anything about it. Their passion for creature comforts is tremendous. They think of little else.

Afterward at X’s, perused a somewhat startling document. The British had proposed a list of suitable Germans for responsible positions in the information setup of the planned central German authority. This group will be largely responsible for the future of the German press, the theater, movies, music, art in the new Reich. The British had proposed some fifty German names, and my American friends had been assigned to check up on them. The first forty-nine were all members of the Nazi Party!

I’ve found Hilda, who saved my neck on many an occasion when I was here during the war. Though as Aryan as they come, she had fallen in love with a Jew who escaped to a neighboring country. When it was overrun by the Germans, she gave him up for dead. I have promised to try to find out for her if the man is alive, as soon as I get out of Germany. It was good to see her again and to be reminded that there are Germans of noble character, capable of every sacrifice for fellow human beings, able to distinguish evil when they see it, and brimming with courage. She had sustained me at many moments when hope seemed lost. She had fantastic tales to tell of life in Berlin after I left.

13

Wednesday, November 14.— Here in the ruins of the capital of the conquered Reich one can see the end of the road to war which Hitler took. But how did it begin? How did he proceed? Was there a thought of turning back? A chance? Did he, from the start, know his goal and realize that war — war against the world — was the only means of attaining it ?

This day, I believe, I have found the complete answers to such questions. History can no longer have any doubts. For the Germans, with true Teutonic thoroughness, wrote everything down and now we have captured their secret archives — some 1400 tons of them, at least. I have spent some time the last, few days wading through those that tell the story of Germany’s road to war. They would fill several volumes.

On September 30, 1034, a year and a half after Hitler came to power, Dr. Schacht submitted to Hitler a secret “Report on the State of Preparation for War-Economic Mobilization.” Schacht, as Minister of Economy, was enthusiastic and realistic about his job. Eight months later, on May 3, 1935, he wrote another memo to the Führer. “The execution of the armament program,” he said, “is, by its speed and extent, the mission of German policy and everything else must be subordinated to this purpose.”

On November 5, 1937, Hitler called to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin his top military men: Field Marshal von Blomberg, the Minister of War; Colonel General von Fritsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army; Admiral Dr. Raeder, Commander-inChief of the Navy; Colonel General Göring, Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force; and von Neurath, the Foreign Minister. Colonel Hossbach, Hitler’s aide, was also present and drew up the minutes of the meeting.

Those minutes I have just now read. They show that after Hitler had harangued his leading military and political advisers for four hours and fifteen minutes— from 4.15 P.M. to 8.30 P.M.— they could have had no more doubts that he had chosen irrevocably the road to war. Hitler himself considered his statement so important, Hossbach noted, that he requested it to “be looked upon in the case of his death as his last will and testament.”

Here is the remarkable transcript of the speech, from which only nonessential details have been omitted for the sake of brevity; —

HITLER’S ADDRESS

The aim of German policy is the security and the preservation of the nation and its propagation. This is consequently a problem of space. . . . The German future is therefore dependent exclusively on the solution of the need for living space. Such a solution can be sought naturally only for a limited period, about one to three generations.

Before touching upon the question of solving the need for living space, it must be decided whether a solution of the German position with a good future can be attained, either by way of an autarchy or by way of an increased share in universal commerce and industry.

Autarchy. Execution will be possible only with strict National Socialist State policy, which is the basis. Assuming this can be achieved, the results are as follows: —

A. In the sphere of raw materials, only limited, not total, autarchy can be attained. . . .

B. In the case of foods, the question of an autarchy must be answered with a definite No. . . .

Consequently autarchy becomes impossible, specifically in the sphere of food supplies as well as generally.

Participation in world economy. There are limits to this which we are unable to transgress. The market fluctuations would be an obstacle to a secure foundation of the German position; international commercial agreements do not offer any guarantee for practical execution. . . . We live in a period of economic empires, in which the tendency to colonize approaches the condition which originally motivated colonization. In Japan and Italy economic motives are the basis of their will to expand; the economic need will also drive Germany to it. . . .

The only way out, and one which may appear imaginary, is the securing of greater living space, an endeavor which at all times has been the cause of the formation of states and of movements of nations. It is explicable that this tendency finds no interest in Geneva and in satisfied states. Should the security of our food position be our foremost thought, then the space required for this can only be sought in Europe, but we will not copy liberal capitalist policies which rely on exploiting colonies. It is not a case of conquering people, but of conquering agriculturally useful space.

It would also be more to the purpose to seek raw material producing territory in Europe directly adjoining the Reich and not overseas, and this solution would have to be brought into effect in one or two generations. What would be required at a later date over and above this must be left to subsequent generations. The development of great world-wide national bodies is naturally a slow process, and the German people, with its strong racial root, has for this purpose the most favorable foundations in the heart of the European Continent. The history of all times — Roman Empire, British Empire — has proved that every space expansion can only be effected by breaking resistance and taking risks. Even setbacks are unavoidable. Neither formerly nor today has space been found without an owner; the attacker always comes up against the proprietor.

The question for Germany is where the greatest possible conquest could be made at lowest cost.¹

German politics must reckon with its two hateful enemies, England and France, to whom a strong German colossus in the center of Europe would be intolerable. Both these states would oppose a further reinforcement of Germany, both in Europe and overseas, and in this opposition they would have the support of all parties. Both countries would view the building of German military strong points overseas as a threat to their overseas communications, as a security measure for German commerce, and, retrospectively, a strengthening of the German position in Europe.

England is not in a position to cede any of her colonial possessions to us owing to the resistance which she experiences in the Dominions. After the loss of prestige which England has suffered owing to the transfer of Abyssinia to Italian ownership, a return of East Africa can no longer be expected. Any resilience on England’s part would at best consist in the readiness to satisfy our colonial claims by taking away colonies which at present are not in British hands—for example, Angola. French favors would probably be of the same nature.

A serious discussion regarding the return of colonies to us could be considered only at a time when England is in a state of emergency and the German Reich is strong and well armed. The Führer does not share the opinion that the Empire is unshakable. Resistance against the Empire is to be found less in conquered territories than amongst its competitors. The British Empire and the Roman Empire cannot be compared with one another in regard to durability; after the Punic Wars the latter did not have a serious political enemy. Only the dissolving effects which originated in Christendom, and the signs of age which creep into all states, made it possible for the ancient Germans to subjugate ancient Rome.

Alongside the British Empire today, there exist a number of states which are stronger than it. The British mother country is able to defend its colonial possessions only allied with other states and not by its own power. How could England alone, for example, defend Canada against an attack by America, or its Far Eastern interests against an attack by Japan?

The singling out of the British Crown as the bearer of Empire unity is in itself an admission that the universal empire cannot be maintained permanently by power politics. The following are significant pointers in this respect.

A. Ireland’s tendency for independence.

B. Constitutional disputes in India, where England, by her half-measures, left the door open for Indians at a later date to utilize the nonfulfillment of constitutional promises as a weapon against Britain.

C. The weakening of the British position in the Far East by Japan.

D. The opposition in the Mediterranean to Italy, which — by virtue of its history, driven by necessity and led by genius — expands its power position and must consequently infringe British interests to an increasing extent. The outcome of the Abyssinian War is a loss of prestige for Britain which Italy is endeavoring to increase by stirring up discontent in the Mohammedan world.

It must be established, in conclusion, that the Empire cannot be held permanently by power politics by 45 million Britons, in spite of all the solidity of her ideals. The proportion of the populations in the Empire, compared with that of the motherland, is 9:1, and it should act as a warning to us that if we expand in space, we must not allow the level of our population to become too low.

France’s position is more favorable than that of England. The French Empire is better placed geographically; the population of its colonial possessions represents a potential military increase. But France is faced with difficulties of internal politics. At the present time only 10 percent, approximately, of the nations have parliamentary governments, whereas 90 per cent of them have totalitarian governments. Nevertheless we have to take the following into our political considerations as power factors: —

Britain, France, Russia, and the adjoining smaller states.

The German question can be solved only by way of force, and this is never without risk. The battles of Frederick the Great for Silesia, and Bismarck’s wars against Austria and France, had been a tremendous risk, and the speed of Prussian action in 1870 had prevented Austria from participating in the war. If we place the decision to apply force with risk at the head of the following expositions, then we are left to reply to the questions when and how. In this regard, we have to decide upon three different cases.

Case 1. Period 1943-1945. After this we can only expect a change for the worse. The rearming of the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force, as well as the formation of the Officers’ Corps, is practically concluded. Our material equipment and armaments are modern; with further delay, the danger of their becoming out-of-date will increase. In particular the secrecy of “special weapons” cannot always be safeguarded. Enlistment of reserves would be limited to the current recruiting age groups, and an addition from older untrained groups would be no longer available.

In comparison with the rearmament, which will have been carried out at that time by the other nations, we shall decrease in relative power. Should we not act until 1943 1945, then, depending on the amount of reserves, any year coidd bring about the food crisis, for the countering of which we do not possess the necessary foreign currency. This must be considered as a “point of weakness in the regime.” Over and above that, the world will anticipate our action and will increase countermeasures yearly. While other nations isolate themselves we should be forced on the offensive.

What the actual position would be in the years 1943-1945 no one knows today. It is certain, however, that we can wait no longer.

On the one side the large armed forces, with the necessity for securing their upkeep, the aging of the Nazi movement and of its leaders, and on the other side the prospect of a lowering of the standard of living and a drop in the birth rate, leave us no other choice than to act. If the Führer is still living, then it will be his irrevocable decision to solve the German space problem no later than 1943—1945. The necessity for action before 1943-1945 will come under consideration in Cases 2 and 3.

Case 2. Should the social tensions in France lead to an internal crisis of such dimensions that it absorbs the Army and renders it incapable for employment in war against Germany, then the time for action against Czechoslovakia has come.

Case 3. It would he equally possible to act against Czechoslovakia if France should be so tied up, by a war against another state, that it cannot “proceed” against Germany.

For the improvement of our military and political position it must be our first aim, in every case of entanglement by war, to conquer Czechoslovakia and Austria simultaneously, in order to remove any threat from the flanks in case of a possible advance westwards. In the case of a conflict with France it would hardly be necessary to assume that Czechoslovakia would declare war on the same day as France. However, Czechoslovakia’s desire to participate in the war will increase proportionally to the degree to which we are being weakened. Its actual participation could make itself felt by an attack on Silesia, either towards the north or the west.

Once Czechoslovakia is conquered — and a mutual frontier, Germany-Hungary is obtained — then a neutral attitude by Poland in a GermanFrench conflict could more easily be relied upon. Our agreements with Poland remain valid only as long as Germany’s strength remains unshakable; should Germany have any setbacks, then an attack by Poland against East Prussia, perhaps also against Pomerania and Silesia, must be taken into account.

Assuming a development, of the situation, which would lead to a planned attack on our part in the years 1943-1945, then the behavior of France, Poland, and Russia would probably have to be judged in the following manner.

The Führer believes personally that in all probability England and perhaps also France have already silently written off Czechoslovakia, and that they have got used to the idea that this question would one day be cleaned up by Germany. The difficulties in the British Empire and the prospect of being entangled in another long-drawn-out European war would be decisive factors in the nonparticipation of England in a war against Germany. The British attitude would certainly not remain without influence on France’s attitude. An attack by France without British support is hardly probable, assuming that its offensive would stagnate along our western fortifications. Without England’s support, it would also not be necessary to take into consideration a march by France through Belgium and Holland, and this would also not have to be reckoned with by us in case of a conflict with France, as in every case it would have as consequence the enmity of Great Britain.

Naturally, we should in every case have to bar our frontier during the operation of our attacks against Czechoslovakia and Austria. It must be taken into consideration here that Czechoslovakia’s defense measures will increase in strength from year to year, and that a consolidation of the inside values of the Austrian Army will also be effected in the course of years. Although the population of Czechoslovakia, in the first place, is not a thin one, the embodiment of Czechoslovakia and Austria would nevertheless constitute the conquest of food for 5 to 6 million people, on the basis that a compulsory emigration of 2 million from Czechoslovakia and of 1 million from Austria could be carried out. The annexation of the two states to Germany militarily and politically would constitute a considerable relief, owing to shorter and better frontiers, the freeing of fighting personnel for other purposes, and the possibility of reconstituting the new armies up to a strength of about 12 divisions, representing a new division per 1 million population.

No opposition to the removal of Czechoslovakia is expected on the part of Italy. However, it cannot be judged today what would be her attitude in the Austrian question, since it would depend largely on whether the Duce were alive at this time or not.

The measure and speed of our action would decide Poland’s attitude. Poland will have little inclination to enter the war against a victorious Germany, with Russia in its rear.

Military participation by Russia must be countered by the speed of our operations; it is a question whether this need be taken into consideration at all in view of Japan’s attitude.

Should Case 2 occur—paralyzation of France by a civil war — then the situation should be utilized at any time [Hitler’s italics] for operations against Czechoslovakia, as Germany’s most dangerous enemy would be eliminated.

The Führer sees Case 3 looming nearer; it could develop from the existing tensions in the Mediterranean, and should it occur, he has firmly decided to make use of it any time, perhaps even as early as 1938.

Following recent experiences in the course of the events of the war in Spain, the Führer does not see an early end to hostilities there. Taking into consideration the time required for past offensives by Franco, a further three years’ duration of war is within the bounds of possibility. On the other hand, from the German point of view a 100 per cent victory by Franco is not desirable; we are more interested in a continuation of the war and the preservation of the tensions in the Mediterranean. Should Franco be in sole possession of the Spanish Peninsula it would mean the end of Italian intervention and the presence of Italy on the Balearic Isles. As our interests are directed toward continuing the war in Spain, it must be the task of our future policy to strengthen Italy in her fight to hold on to the Balearic Isles. However, a solidification of Italian positions on the Balearic Isles cannot be tolerated either by France or by England and could lead to a war by France and England against Italy, in which case Spain, if entirely in white (that is, Franco’s) hands, could participate on the side of Italy’s enemies. A subjugation of Italy in such a war appears very unlikely. Additional raw materials could be brought to Italy via Germany. The Führer believes that Italy’s military strategy would be to remain on the defensive against France on the western frontier and carry out operations against France from Libya against French colonial possessions in North Africa.

A landing of French-British troops on the Italian coast can be discounted, and a French offensive via the Alps to Upper Italy would be extremely difficult and would probably stagnate before the strong Italian fortifications. Attacks on the French lines of communication by the Italian fleet will to a great extent paralyze the transport of fighting personnel from North Africa to France, so that at its frontiers with Italy and Germany, France will have at its disposal solely the metropolitan fighting forces.

If Germany profits from this war by disposing of the Czechoslovakian and the Austrian questions, the probability must be assumed that England being at war with Italy — would not decide to commence operations against Germany. Without British support a warlike action by France against Germany is not to be anticipated.

The date of our attack on Czechoslovakia and Austria must be made dependent on the course of the Italian-English-French war, and would not be simultaneous with the commencement of military agreements with Italy but completely independent. And by exploiting this unique favorable opportunity, the Führer wishes to begin to carry out operations against Czechoslovakia. The attack on Czechoslovakia would have to take place with the “speed of lightning” [blitzartig schnell].

Feldmarschall von Blomberg and Generaloberst von Fritsch, in giving their estimate on the situation, repeatedly pointed out that England and France must not appear as our enemies, and they stated that the war with Italy would not bind the French Army to such an extent that it would not be in a position to commence operations on our western frontier with superior forces. Generaloberst von Fritsch estimated the French forces that would presumably be employed on the Alpine frontier against Italy to be in the region of 20 divisions, so that a strong French superiority would still remain on our western frontier. The French would, according to German reasoning, attempt to advance into the Rhineland.

We should consider the lead which France has got in mobilization; and quite apart from the very small value of our then existing fortifications — which was pointed out particularly by Generalfeldmarschall von Blomberg - the four motorized divisions which had been laid down for the West would be more or less incapable of movement. With regard to our offensive in a southeasterly direction, Feldmarschall von Blomberg draws special attention to the strength of the Czechoslovakian fortifications, the building of which had assumed the character of a Maginot Line and which would present extreme difficulties to our attack.

Generaloberst von Fritsch mentioned that it was the purpose of a study which he had laid out for this winter to investigate the possibilities of carrying out operations against Czechoslovakia with special consideration of the conquest of the Czechoslovakian system of fortifications: the Generaloberst also stated that, owing to the prevailing conditions, he would have to relinquish his leave abroad, which was to begin on November 10. This intention was countermanded by the Führer, who gave as a reason that the possibility of the conflict was not to be regarded as being so imminent. In reply to the remark, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, that ail Italian-English-French conflict was not as near as the Führer appeared to assume, the Führer stated that the date which appeared to him to be a possibility was summer, 1938. In reply to statements by Generalfeldmarschall von Blomberg and Generaloberst von Fritsch regarding England’s and France’s attitude, the Führer repeated his previous statements and said that he was convinced of Britain’s nonparticipation and that, consequently, he did not believe in military action by France against Germany. Should the Mediterranean conflict mentioned lead to a general mobilization in Europe, then we should have to commence operations against Czechoslovakia immediately. If, however, the powers who are not participating in the war should declare their disinterestedness, then Germany would, for the time being, have to side with this attitude.

In view of the information given by the Führer, Generaloberst Göring considered it imperative to think of a reduction or abandonment of our military undertaking in Spain. The Führer agreed to this in so far as he believed this decision should be postponed for a suitable date.

The second part of the discussion concerned material armament questions.
(signed) HOSSBACH

Thus, for Hitler’s Germany (and for the world, though the world didn’t know it), the die was cast. Germany would go to war for additional “living space.” To wait much longer would be to her disadvantage. Perhaps war would come in the following summer of 1938. It could not come “later than 1943-1945.”

We pass over Hitler’s plans for war against Austria and Czechoslovakia. Both countries fell without a war, though in each case Hitler was determined to take them even if it meant a European armed conflict. We must revise our judgment that Munich was a bluff. It was not. Hitler preferred to begin his war then.

We come, then, to the fateful year of 1939. On March 15, the Germans had seized t he rest of Czechoslovakia. At Easter, Poland feared it might momentarily be the next victim. On May 23, Hitler again convoked his generals and admirals to the Reich Chancellery. Poland would be attacked “at the first suitable opportunity,” he announced. And this time he warned his followers there would be war.

(To be concluded)