Berlin Dairies
By William Shirer
SynopsisWhy this book? William Shirer also wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. That book really moved me to search for what causes a people to go to war. Hence I have done a bit more reading on the subject with Germany as a central subject. Albeit it there are others that could have provided my center piece, Germany has too much available to a casual historian such as I have become. Germany has a history from the First Reich during the early days of the Crusades, through the Thirty Years War, the Reformation, the Unification, and finally WWI &II to be at the forefront of Wars shaping modern Western European Civilization. In related a book Causes of WWI by James Joll, he suggests numerous causes of WWI where Germany again becomes a prime protagonist. As you read this review I want to ask you to focus your thought on the word mood, that mysterious word that instills foggy intangible phenomena that I believe breeds a nation’s penchant towards territorial war. James Joll touched on it but did not bring it to the fore as I will attempt to do here in this review/essay. In part One of this report essay, I’ll summarize the book. Then I’ll circle back in Part Two and take excerpts of the book that demonstrates fertile ground found in their traits that allow for a mood in the German people for war. And finally I’ll attempt to demonstrate how Hitler’s only genius was to tap into the soul of the German mood, his mood, of the 1930’s.
This book takes the form of the diary of William Shirier the young reporter turned CBS News correspondent in the time of Hitler’s rise to power and through Germany’s conquest of France. To draw a parallel from a 21 century American perspective, I reflect on present day conversations on Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. The conversations about our leaders, the war, the adversaries, and the personal demands that war puts on our populace in general as well as direct personal experiences of individuals of either era. The history of Germany strikes both parallel and perpendicular lines with present day America. Shirer unfurls the events as they happened. Parallel lines are beginning to present themselves today. He captures the mood of the people, how the Germans reported them, the direct reactions of Germans he came in contact with, and his personal views on paper where turning each page is like turning any corner in Berlin of the 1930’s.
The picture you come up with is a tragic picture of a psychopathic leader and a group of subservient military leaders with too much of the same traits. Lack of Tantrums being the saving grace for 95% of them it was still a prominent trait in too many of them. In a rolling timeline from left to right, Shirer tells of his days event and then take a moment to drill down from top to bottom to capture either a focal point of Hitler’s strategy to manipulate millions across the world and punctuate that strategy with a human trait of either the German people .
TIMELINEWith regard to Hitler’ s strategy, he leveraged the mistakes made by world leaders of 1919 against a pragmatic thinking German society to tap into the mind and spirit of Germans. I’ll talk more about the constitution of the German people but first focusing on the strategy Hitler used which at high level is to talk to his ability to bring forward the emotion he felt through 12 years of a punishment banding that with a finality of hubris superiority by world leaders of 1919, including our own Woodrow Wilson, Britain’s Lloyd George, and France’s Clemenceau. Hitler promised the fulfillment of the German soul with more land, land that was destined to the German people, and exacted the acquisition with a sense of revenge to upon the world’s injustices toward the Fatherland. Just to use the world Fatherland with reference to one’s country then begs the unique German mind and heart of which Hitler played his tune on.
Hitler’s rants began earlier but began to resonate with a fervor in where for example Shirer describes an event in Nuremberg, September 4, 1934: About ten o'clock tonight I got caught in a mob who jammed the moat in front of Hitler's hotel, shouting: We want our Fuhrer.” I was shocked at the faces, especially those of the women, when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I saw back in Louisiana of some Holy Rollers who were about to hit the trail. They looked up at him as if he were a Messiah, there faces transformed into something positively inhuman. If he had remained in sight for more than a few minutes many of the women would have swooned from excitement. This was the mood of frenzy that Hitler drew out in his appeal for the Austrian Anschluss.
That mood was punctuated with an event described two days later in Nuremberg, September 6, 1934: Standing there in the early morning light which sparkled on their shiny spades, fifty thousand of them, with the first thousand bared above the waist, suddenly made the German spectators go mad with joy when, without warning, they broke into a perfect goose-step. Now the goose-step has always seemed to be an outlandish exhibition of the human being in the most undignified and stupid state, but I felt for the first time what an inner chord it strikes in the strange soul if the German people. The ease for which German people could be led in to war is described shortly after: Nuremberg , September 10, 1934, Today the army had it's day, fighting a very realistic sham battle in the Zeppelin Meadow. It is difficult to exaggerate the frenzy of three hundred thousand German spectators when they saw their soldiers go in to action, heard the thunder of the guns, and smell the powder.
I feel that all those Americans and English who thought that German militarism was merely a product of Hohenzollerns made a mistake. It is rather seething deeply ingrained in all Germans. Hitler was not just a man of rhetoric. His swift follow-through with action made his rhetoric appear as a fate-acompli because he applied the momentum of his words against a lack of any momentum from the opposing country and its world allies. He could do this because he prepared his country for such a play. In Berlin, March 16, 1935 Shirer writes :
• Today's creation of a conscript army in open defiance of Versailles will greatly enhance Hitler's domestic position, for there are few Germans, regardless of how much they hate Nazis, who would not support it open heartedly. In the end in Vienna, March 25, 1938, Shirer describes the Austrian Anschluss like America’s Black Friday. Some suicide among Jews. He further describes the plebiscite as a farce that took on the air of holiday. Where one must be brave to vote No. It was a Nazi con.
The acquisition of Austria demonstrated to Germans that the world is prepared to give back all that she “wrongfully” took. As in all of leadership upon world events, their brilliance is dependent on the cooperation to go along. More on that later. As Germany made his play on the Czechoslovakia he did it to for the world to see. It was not only to make overtures’ to Germany’s eastern frontier but to cover his western front to put France in check. Shirer describes the following March events.
• March 7, 1936, Hitler’s speech in Berlin He can go no further. It is news to this hysterical "parliamentary" mob that German soldiers are already on the move into the Rhineland. All militarism in their German blood surges to their heads. They sprang to their feet, the audience does the same...their hands are raised in slavish salute, their faces in hysteria, their mouths wide open, shouting, shouting, their eyes burning with fanaticism glued on their new god. Not even a week later in Karlsruhe,
• March 13, 1936: Certainly these Rhinelander’s don’t want another war with France, but this reoccupation by German troops has inculcated them with the Nazi bug They are hysterical as the rest of the Germans... 95% approved the reoccupation. A taxi driver who had driven me around during the day and had a few Schnaps. He turned out to be a Communist, waxed bitter about the Nazis, and predicted their early collapse. It was a relief to find one German here against the regime. He said there were a lot of others but I some times wonder.
It is no secret that one of the corner stones of Hitler’s strategy, but certainly not his key stone, is his control of the press. In this case his control was the closing of newspapers with an opposing view. However the real phenomena are found in what was voluntarily printed and read of the papers that were left open. The reason press control does not hold the “keystone” award is because there was a significant amount of press that was not Goebel’s promulgated. There was voluntary expression of the German trait of which I’ll expound on later. There was an inherent part of a German that once submitting to the higher authority, there existed an enthusiasm to read how it is they are superior to the outside world. In speaking to the press the following are just a few of the many examples Shirer provides where the press becomes wrapped up in the madness of Hitler’s mind.
Another cornerstone in Hitler’s strategy was to take advantage a world that was not in any way enthused to go back to a state of war against a foe that they did not necessarily defeat. So one may ask why there was a mood in one country for war, where another had none. Could it be that the German populace is not satisfied unless its hold of dominion over, its destiny, is without question? And later you get this impression that it is in the German mind that a German does not sit at the right hand of God but possibly is God. First let us look at other countries where there was a conceding sense of diplomacy and much the same lack in physical preparedness and follow on resistance. This reluctance was held among the leaders, the people and it resonated in the press.
Early on you read from Shirer: Berlin, June 18, 1935, Norman Ebbutt complains that the London Times does not print all he sends, that he does not want to hear too much of the bad side of Nazi Germany. In this case the reader is impressed with a free press turning the heads of her nation away from pending doom. You come to appreciate the press’s role in a countries mood as it presents facts less than the whole truth and then follows up to tell their readers how they should respond. That response then is resonated back to Berlin signaling a green light for war.
Having read Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a must read sister book by the same author, I am not convinced that Shirer, at the time and place at least, fully appreciated that the magnitude of how lack of the full truth in free countries took an uplifting turn in the den of their foe. For back in Berlin you read the following.
• Berlin, March 16, 1936 The French Senate is sure to vote the Soviet pact in a day or two. Berlin full of Nazi leaders...Saw a lot of them at the Kaiserhof and they seemed in a very cocky mood. The very own allies while still with relations with German leadership did nothing to dilute a penchant of German dominion by force. Shirer describes an occasion in
• Berlin, April 20, 1937, Hitler's birthday...the Reichwehr revealed a little of what it has: heavy artillery, tanks, and significantly trained men. Hitler stood on reviewing stand in front of Technische Hochschule, as happy as a child with tin soldiers, standing for more than two hours saluting every tank and gun. The military attaches of France, Britain, and Russia, I hear, were impressed. So were ours.
The Austrian Anschluss was clearly a diplomatic coup on Austria directly, but on the world as a bystander. If the world hadn’t woken up to Chamberlain’s agenda as a pacifist, the German public saw the British posturing as an entitlement to all they saw fit to be theirs. This enabled a momentum to carry Germans and Germany into Czechoslovakia with at least a threat of war but to a world still ready to double cross her allies. Shirer on this note writes the following.
• Prague, Sept. 12, 1938, On the eve of war waiting for Hitler's speech....Everyone in Czechoslovakia seems to have heard the speech the streets being deserted from 8 to 10. Some six thousand Henlein enthusiasts, wearing Swastika a bands, paraded the streets of Karlsbad afterward shouting: "Down with the Czechs and Jews. There was no clash. It was cold and rainy...The Czechs were going about their business a usual, not gloomy, not depressed, not frightened either.
• Prague, September 14, 1938, Unless Hitler again interferes, the crisis has passed it's peak. The Sudetener I talked to were puzzled. They expected the German army to march in Monday night after Hitler’s speech, but the Czech army did and their spirits dropped. General description of Czech people in the rise to the Czech Anschluss was an air of confident calm. They did not think their government would lay down and surrender a land held for over a thousand years that was a natural barrier to Germany. The world including German Generals that war would mean a European war of which they were yet prepared to win. Chamberlain's appeasement cost this world the lives of millions!!!!!
• Berlin September 26, 1938: No war fever, not even any anti Czech feeling, discernable on this quiet Sabbath day. In fact the old days on the eve of wars, I believe, crowds used to demonstrate angrily before embassies of the enemy countries. Today I walk outside the Czech legation. Not a soul outside, not even a policeman.
• Berlin September 26, 1938: I broadcast the seen from the seat in the balcony just above Hitler. He’s still got that nervous tic. All during his speech he kept cocking his shoulders, and the opposite leg from the knee down it would bounce up….when Hitler sat down Goebbles got up and said “one thing is for sure: 1918 will never be repeated! Hitler leaped to his feet with a fanatical fire in his eyes that I shall never forget brought his right hand, after a grand sweep, pounding down on the table and yelled with all power in his mighty lungs “ja!”. Then he slumped in his chair exhausted. This is the first time I saw him completely lose control.
And finally if the door of appeasement was left open in Austria, it was blown wide open fin Czechoslovakia as Shirer writes in Berlin September 24, 1938;
• The very fact the he, with all the authority of a man who is the political leader of the British Empire, has taken upon himself this task is accepted here, and I believe elsewhere, as meaning Chamberlain backs Hitler up. That’s why German people I talked within the street of Cologne this morning, and in Berlin this evening, believe there’ll be peace.
In Poland it was much the same way only with alliance treaties put to their final test. Britain and France at least made a diplomatic stand to the public and were pressed in to a declaration of war. But here is how it was perceived first hand.
• Berlin September 10, 1939; One week after the Anglo – French declaration of a state of war the average German is beginning to wonder if it’s a world war after all. He sees it this way. England and France, it is true are fulfilling their obligation to Poland. For a week they have been formally at war with Germany. But has it been a war? They ask. The British it is true sent over twenty-five planes to bomb the Wilhelmhaven. But if this is war why only twenty-five. And if this is war, why only a few leaflets over the Rhineland? …. Not a bomb has fallen on a Rhineland factory? Life here is still quite normal. The operas, the theaters, the movies all opened jammed.
• Berlin, April 23, 1939 The nerves of the German people were becoming frayed and they were against going to war. (this at the prospect of now taking his war to the Polish)
• Berlin August 27, 1939“The Fuher is still demanding patience from your because he wants to exhaust even the last possibilities for a peaceful solution of the crisis. The means of bloodless fulfillment of the irreducible German demands” This is a nice build up to convince the people that if war does come, the Fuhrer did everything possible to avoid it.
After Norway fell in much the same way as Poland the lid was ready to come off as Hitler and his German population knew it was only a matter of time and a bit of rhetorical posturing by Hitler to take the lowlands. To the profit of the press, the campaign was designed to sell newspapers which in the end Hitler was purchasing minds of a very obedient people domestically and an international community content with their destiny of doom. Shirer writes the following about the Dutch who were next in line.
• Amsterdam January 18, 1940 The Dutch, like everyone else, want it both ways. They want peace and comfortable life, but they are unwilling to make the sacrifices or even hard decisions which might ensure their way of life in the long run.
By the time Amsterdam fell it was apparent that Hitler was going to run the table in the West as he had yet broken treaties with the USSR. History has it well documented that the Germans, were relentless in their military conquest with the highest degree of amoral conscience waged against not just on soldier but civilian alike. But for now I want to capture a little of what Shirer saw of the benyn diplomatic resistance and the mind of the soon to be conquered. I do this to demonstrate that it was not merely Hitler’s perceived genius of the time, but a world that would not stand up to his madness that by now was an epidemic in Germany. I see this piece of first hand history as a lesson to be taught and not to be forgotten. I blend Belgium and France together because the both people fell to the same demise as they blindly allowed their governments to sell them out on their choice for freedom. In the rise to the actual clash of arms Shirer writes:
• Berlin October 6, 1939: Hitler offered Great Britain and France peace,….I doubt very much if England or France will listen to these proposals for five minuets, though some of my colleagues think so on the ground that, now that Russia has come up against Germany on the long front and this past week has been busy establishing herself in the Baltic States, it would be smart of London and Paris to conclude peace and sit back until Germany and Russia clash in eastern Europe.
o In my opinion this option of diplomatic intrigue while too little too late, had it been spawned a year earlier, it would have slowed the mad mind of Hitler. Being that it didn’t occur in either case makes a case that it was not Hitler’s genius alone as he had an accomplice in the apathy in the minds of his national neighbors.
• Paris October 8 1940 Paris a frightful place, completely surrendered to defeatism with no inkling of what happened to France. At Fouquet’s, at Maxim’s fat bankers and businessmen toasting Peace with rivers of champagne.
• Berlin March 28, 1940;The DNB today: “ At some place along the Upper Rhine front Easter Sunday, there were on the French side demonstrations against the English war, which clearly showed how foolish the French troops consider it to be that Germany and France have become enemies as a result of British connivance.”
• Berlin June 1, 1940 General Wygand has now had ten days to organize his armies along this line along the rivers Somme and Aisne, but the fact that he has not felt himself strong enough to attempt an offensive northward from the Somme against a fairly thin German line – a move which if pushed at home would have saved the Franco-British armies in Flanders – has convinced the German generals, if they needed convincing, that they can crack his forces fairly easily and quickly break through to Paris and to Norman and Breton ports.
• Maubegue June 16, 1940; Of an abandoned French house: What a break in his comfortable bourgeois life this must have been, this lazy flight before the town was blown up! Here in this house – until last month – solidity, a certain comfort, respectability.
• Paris June 17 1940; The inhabitants are bitter at their government, which in the last days, from all I hear, completely collapsed. It even forgot to tell the people until too late that Paris would not be defended.
Hitler’s demonstration of brutal power left his German people impressed with the idea that the German people were invincible. I’ll speak further to the propensity of a German to have already had that latent sense of invincible power. In the calm before the storm to befall on them, they became somewhat grateful for the forced sacrifice over the previous eight years but they were reluctantly accepting the prospect of a war with England as it finally meant a Europe completely dominated by German influence. Hitler with a sense of hesitation for two strategic reasons paused. First he felt that with dominion of the mainland Britain would be forced to play a junior role in Europe and two he did not have a war strategy that he was prepared to execute. So Hitler provided a little political maneuvering in the press to first intimidate the English and prepare the German for one last push. Shirer writes the following:
• Berlin November 19, 1939: 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 as mistake to think that Germany will accept the Allied challenge to fight this war largely on economic front. That is just the kind of war which the Reich would be at a disadvantage. And that’s one of the reasons why most people here expect military action very soon.
• Berlin July 19, 1940: As a maneuver calculated to rally them for the fight against Britain, it was a masterpiece. For German people will now say: “Hitler offers peace, and no strings attached. He says he sees no reason why this war should go on. If it does, it’s England’s fault.
• Aachen May 20, 1940: 7.45 Tongres -Thursday night (May 9), Belgium had been at peace with the world, including Germany. At dawn on Friday the German bombers were leveling the station and the town – the houses in which they had gone to bed so peacefully – to a charred mass of ruins. The town itself was absolutely deserted. Two or three hungry dogs nosed sadly about the ruins, apparently searching for water, food, and their masters.
8.30 Tirlemont – I deduce that while the German Stukas put the Belgium railroad out of action, they were careful not to blow up the roads and bridges. Apparently the German high command decided in advance not to try to use Belgian railways; only roads. Their army was built to go on gasoline-motored vehicles.
o my note: this bares out the evidence that the thirst for war was inbred in the German people as demonstrated by the Stuka pilots ability to aim bombs at homes , women and children and not at prized implements for their war.
9.15 Louvain Before we left Berlin a certain officer in the German army had come down to the Wilhelmplatz to tell us: “ Gemtlemen, we have just word. From Louvain. The British have plundered that fine old town. Plundered it in the most shameful manner.”
We spend the morning in Louvain, looking over the ruins, snooping into some of the buildings that still stand, talking with the first returning inhabitants and with priests and nuns, some of whom have lived out the three-day battle huddling in the cellar of a nearby convent and monastery. We do not see or hear one shred of evidence that the British plundered the town. Nor-it is only fair to say-do any of the regular army officers suggest it.
Forty-one thousand people lived in Louvain until the morning Hitler moved west. A week later, when Nazi army poured into the town, not one of them was there. How many civilians were killed we could not find out. Probably very few. Perhaps none. What happened was that the population, gripped by fear of the Nazi hordes and remembering no doubt how the last time the Germans came, in 1914, two hundred of their leading citizens, held as hostages, had been shot in reprisal for alleged snipping, fled the city before the Germans arrived.
• Berlin July 20, 1940: No official reaction to Hitler’s peace offer, but Goebbels had local press tonight break the news gently to the German people that apparently the Britons aren’t having any. The Germans I talk to simply cannot understand it. They want peace. They don’t want another winter like last one. They have nothing against Britain, despite all the provocative propaganda. (Like a drug too often given, it is losing what force it once had) The think they’re on top. They think they can lick Britain too, if it comes to a showdown. But they would prefer peace.
• Berlin July 23, 1940: The press campaign to whip up the people for the war on Britain started with a bang this morning. Every paper in Berlin carried practically the same headline: CHURCHILLS ANSWER – COWARDLY MURDERING OF A DEFENCELESS POPULATION!...Afraid the German people swallow this They are depressed that Britain will not have peace. But they down pin their hopes on a quick peace.
After Shirer’s tour of the front, escorted by German’s with a complete German perspective of the events, hi s entries became darker and more opinionated. He was tired of living the austere life in Germany, tired of the hypocrisy he witnessed from not just the Nazi regime but of the people’s reaction to the war, he was ready to come home. He had heard stories of German soldiers taking relentless hostilities on civilians and then on his tour of the Western Front Blitzkrieg, found evidence for first hand corroboration . I think what added unbearable salt to the wound of relentless killing, was in the aftermath German soldiers spent time in the destroyed towns purchasing all the luxuries of the defeated to take home to their families who have been systematically deprived of such for eight years. The booty of war that prevailed in centuries before, still prevailed on the German mind in 1940. I can attest to that feeling of German superiority as once I was on a train from Zurich to Basel, Switzerland. I was reading an English newspaper and keeping to myself. In a mostly empty car came a mail voice from a middle aged man. He said “you are American aren’t you.” To this I looked over my paper and said “yes I am.” He went on to say “Just because you won the war, does not make you better than the German people.” I kept my silence but etched in my mind was the reason I believe that to conquer evil men you must annihilate them, and those left, must be forever left the message that a test of arms is futile. The question is, did Shirer’s book resurrect and then galvanize my nascent thought I had 15 years prior on a train.
German Traits a Foundation to MoodIn my answer to that question it is good to take stock in my own reading and formed opinions. I invite all readers of my reviews to do so and tell be if and where I have gone adrift. It is also good idea to take stock in an assessment of Shirer before you take stock in what he writes about German people. And finally it is a good idea to take your own analysis of Germans of present day, what they have been of the past, and how their history affects your thinking on why people go to war.
I will say reading this book leaves no doubt that Shirer has little regard for Germans of the 1930’s. I am going in this direction in the essay review at the risk of redundancy with the purpose in mind to illustrate that it takes a certain train of thought in a society to find them at least passengers and likely coal shovelers on that train to initiate a war. Then it takes a leader to extort that latent trait and catapult them blindly into a war. The rationale for this is to look to the future for potential hot spots. Traits in German people are 1.) Subservient, 2.) Arrogant, 3.) Insensitive to brutalities imposed by Germans on others Shirer’s assessment of German people are captured in the following.
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Subservient • Berlin January 27, 1940:At six PM Fraulein X called for some provisions I had brought her from relatives abroad. She turned out to be the most intelligent German female I have met in ages. We talked about the German theatre and films, about which she knew a great deal. She had some interesting ideas about German character, history, direction. The trouble with Germans she said was that they were very geborene Untertanen – born subjects, through Untertan conveys also the connotation of submissive subjects. Authority and direction from a master above was about all a German wanted in life.
A German she said will think he has died a Good German if he waits at a curb at a red light, and crosses on a green on though he knows perfectly well that a truck, against the law though it may be, is bearing down upon him to crush him to death.
She though the present regime cared not a whit about Western civilization and represented the barbarian element which had always lurked below the surface in German history and for whom life only had meaning when it meant glorified war, force, conquest, brutality, and grinding down the weaker foe, especially if he were a Slav. She blasted about the German utter lack of political sense, his slavishness toward authority, his cowardly refusal to think or act for himself.
• Accepting of leadership• Berlin December 25/25, 1939: Christmas Eve. Raining out, but it will turn to snow. The first war Christmas somehow has brought the war home to the people more than anything else. It was always the high point of the year for Germans but this year is a bleak Christmas, with few presents, Spartan food, the men folk away, the streets blacked out, the shutters and curtains drawn tight in accordance with police regulations…The Germans feel the difference tonight.
• Berlin January 1, 1940What will this year bring? The decision, as Hitler boasted yesterday? I haven’t met a German yet who isn’t absolutely certain. Certain it is that this phony war cannot continue long. Hitler has got to go forward to new victories or his kind of system cracks…More drunkenness on the Kurfurstendamm last night than I has ever seen..
• Berlin February 24, 1940: The newspapers seem inane after the Swiss. But the Germans swallow the fare, the lies. After this terrible winter their morale is lower, but they seem to be in the same cow-like mood. It’s hard to see the limit of what they will take. Much talk here of a spring offensive. But where?
• Berlin March 10, 1940: Today the Nazis ask the people not to think too much of the World War dead, but to concentrate their thoughts on those who have been done to death or will die in this war. How perverse humans can be! A front page editorial in the Lokal Anzinger says: “this is no time for being sentimental. Men are dying for Germany day and night. Ones personal fat now is unimportant . There is no asking why if one falls or is broken.
• Berlin March 24, 1940I tried to read the faces of the thousands what was in their minds on this Easter day. But their faces looked blank. Obviously they do not like the war, but will do what they are told. Die for instance.
• Page 264 Berlin May 4, 1940: Goethe harps on the theory that a writer can only get things done by retiring from the world when he has work to do. He complains that the world takes but does not give. Some of his letters on local administrative problems in Weimar are amusing. He had his small, bickering side. And –surprising he is subservient to his Prince Ruler!
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Arrogant, a one over society• Paris July 14, 1934: Yesterday Hitler screamed ; The supreme court of the German people during these past 24 hours consists of myself! The deputies rose and cheered. One had almost forgotten. How strong sadism and masochism are in German people.
• Berlin September 2, 1934 We've had some walks and twice had to duck into stores to keep from having to salute the standard of some passing SA or SS battalion of facing the probability of getting beat up.
• Munich September 30 On the train Munich to Berlin – Most of the leading German editors on the train and tossing down champagne and not trying to disguise any more elation over Hitler’s terrific victory over Britain and France. On the dinner Halfeld of Hamberguer Frembenblatt, Otto Kriegk of Nachttausgaber, Dr, Boehmer, the foreign press chief of the Propaganda Ministry, gloating over it, buying out all champagne in the dinner. Gloating, boasting, bragging….When a German feels big he feels big.
• Berlin September 11, 1939: Later (midnight) – In subway, going out to broadcast tonight I heard a considerable grumbling about the war. The women, especially seemed depressed. And yet when I came back from my broadcast, a big crowd, mostly women, got on at the station under the Deutches Oprehaus. They had been to the Opera and seemed oblivious of the fact that a war was on.
But one thing is for sure is it possible that if the British and French decide upon a war of attrition, the mass of the German people will forget their feelings toward the regime and regard it as their duty to defend the Fatherland? Some of the things I’ve heard today from Germans make me think so.
• Berlin September 14, 1939: Y. holds Hitler is justified in bombing and bombarding towns where the civilian population offers resistance. Guess I’m losing my balance, but I disagree.
The maid came in tonight to say how terrible the war was.
“Why do the French make war on us?’ She asked.
“why do you make war on the Poles?’I said.
“Hum” she said, a blank face over her face. “but the French, they’re human beings.” She said finally.
“But the Poles, maybe they are human beings,” I said
“Hum” she said, blank again.
• Boulogne August 16 1940 On tour of the front with German press officials: We have lunch here in Boulogne, the food fair, a bottle of Chateau Margaux, 1929, excellent. After lunch our party goes out to loot a little more with the marks. In a perfume shop I picked up a conversation with an engaging little French sales-girl after I’ve convinced her by my accent that I’m an American. She says the Germans have cleaned out the town of all stockings underwear, soap, perfume, coffee, tea, chocolate, tobacco, and conac. But she is mainly interested in food. “How will we find enough to eat this winter? She asks.
• Berlin September 26, 1940: The German, I am profoundly convinced after mingling with him now for many years, is incapable of organizing Europe. His lack of balance, his bullying sadism when he is on top, his constitutional in ability to grasp even faintly what is in the minds and hearts of other peoples, his instinctive feeling that relations between two peoples can only be on the basis of master and slave and never on the basis of let-live equality.
• Insensitive to the brutalities imposed by Germans on others• Berlin October 2, 1939: “A” blew in Saturday accompanied by an American girl has had met in Warsaw. They had been wandering in the wilds of Eastern Poland for three weeks – between German and Russian armies. He said they had lived on stale bread wandering from village to village. Stale bread was all the peasants would sell them, though they had butter and eggs and meat. Most villages had already set up local Soviets. A., who never loved Poles and rather liked the Nazis, says whole villages in eastern Poland far off the beaten track, far off the railroads and main roads, villages with no military importance whatsoever, have been destroyed by the German Luttwaffe for no reason he could think of. He says the German planes would often dive on lone peasant women in lonely fields and toss a bomb on them or machine gun them . He saw the bodies
• Berlin May 6, 1940: Bernhard Rust, Nazi Minister of Education, in a broadcast to school children today, sums it up pretty well the German mentality in this year of 1940. He says: “God created the world as a place for work and battle. Whoever doesn’t understand the laws of life’s battles will be counted out, as in a boxing ring. All the good things on this earth are trophy cups. The strong win them. The weal lose them. ..The German people under Hitler did not take up arms to break into foreign lands and make other people serve them. They were forced to take up arms by states which blocked their way to bread and union.
• Berlin May 8, 1940: I went out to a suburb last night to see the film of havoc wrought by the German air force in Poland. It is called Feuertaufe – or Baptism of Fire. The wanton destruction of Polish towns and villages, but especially Warsaw, is shown nakedly. The German audience took the film in dead silence.
• Berlin May 10, 1940: Later- The people in Berlin, I must say, have taken the news of the battle which Hitler says is going to decide the future of their nation for the next thousand years with their usual calm. None of them gathered before the Chancellery as usually happens when big events occur. Few bothered to buy the noon papers which carried the news. For some reason Goebbels forbade extras.
• Berlin May 16, 1940: I just saw two uncensored new-reels at our press conference in the Propaganda Ministry. Pictures of the German army smashing through Belgium and Holland. Some of the more destructive work of German bombs and shells was shown. Towns laid waste, dead soldiers and horses lying around, and the earth and mortar flying when a shell or bomb hit it. Yelled the German announce;” And thus do we deal death and destruction on our enemies! The film, in a way summed up the German people to me.
Towards sundown Joe Harsch and I took a walk in the Tiergarten and agreed: The savage destruction by high explosives and steel of the other fellow is a beautiful thing and the fulfillment of a high aim in Germanic life; blow up his home and his wife and his children. But let him do it to you and he is a barbarian.
• Berlin May 30, 1940: The papers are full of revenge for this and that…the Germans are incapable of comprehending that the hate against them in France and Belgium is due to the fact that Germany invaded these countries. Belgium- without the slightest excuse or justification and laid waste their towns and cities, and killed thousands of civilians with their bombings and bombardments
• Berlin June 2, 1940: Despite the lack of popular enthusiasm for this colossal German victory in Flanders, I gather quite a few Germans are beginning to feel that depravations which Hitler has forced on them for five years have not been without reason. Said my room waiter this morning: “Perhaps the English and French now wish they had less butter and more cannon.”
And yet the picture this capital presents at this great moment in German history still confounds me. Last evening, just before dark, I strolled down Kurfurstendamm. It was jammed with people meandering along pleasantly. The great sidewalk cafes on this broad tree-lined avenue were filled with thousands, chatting quietly over their ersatz coffee or their ice-cream. I even noticed several smartly dressed women. Today, being the Sabbath and a warm day, tens of thousands of people, mostly in family groups, betook themselves to the woods or the lakes on the outskirts of the city. The Tiergarten, I noticed, also was thronged. Every-one had that lazy, idle, happy-go-lucky Sunday holiday air.
• Berlin June 10, 1940 At the six PM press conference we were given another dose of the weekly German news-reel. Again the ruined towns, and dead humans, the putrefying horses’ carcasses. One shot showed the charred remains of a British pilot amid the wreckage of his burned plane. Most Germans there seemed to get a sadistic pleasure from these pictures of death and destruction. A few I know didn’t. A few react still like human beings.
MOODAfter this reading book and much reading elsewhere on the subject, the nebulous word “mood” comes back in to focus for me. Mood is a word symbol that captures the collective conscience of a people. With Germans, they were subject to a 100 years of philosophers’ messages that compelled them to be the survivor of the fittest, where leaders beginning with Bismarck, To Wilhelm, to Hitler lathered their people at the barber pole of nationalism. This nationalism spawned by Woodrow Wilson, left the rest of Europe with Churchill the only exception, so enchanted by a peace surrendered by default to a capable dominator. The mold cast was a void for a mood of German dominion over a inferior people of Europe. If Germans could have visualized a dominion through sound leadership like what is experienced in our current European Union, a world war could have been averted. Of the German character that rendered a vision of peaceful dominions impossible, I captured a few of following excerpts under the heading: They wanted peace, but they wanted their Germany back
• Berlin June 14, 1940; At the capture of Paris: I was having lunch in the courtyard of my hotel. Most of the guests crowded around the loud speaker in the bar to hear the news. They returned to their tables with wide smiles on their faces, but there was no undue excitement and everyone resumed eating.
• It would be wrong, though, to conclude that the taking of Paris has not stirred something very deep in the hearts of most Germans. It was always a wish dream of millions here. And it helps wipe out the bitters memories of 1918 which have lain so long – twenty-two years – in the German soul.
Germans seemed very capable of uniting around the cause of one people, provided that one people was limited to that of the Aryan race. Within that one people was a brush stroke of selfishness towards other people. I find it a trait of sadistic thinking people were the cause may be a noble cause, however where it brings hardship, the desire for war quickly evaporates. On this note I provide a few excerpts for Shirer’s Diary. They despised war only when it is not waged upon them.
• Berlin October 3 1938: The bravery of the Czechs in Prague the night war and bombs seamed certain; the look of fear in the faces of the German burghers in the Wilhelmstrasse the night the motorized division swept by and war seemed certain to them and then the delirious joy if citizens in Munich – and Berlin when they learned on Friday that it was not only peace they won but victory
• Berlin January 24, 1940:We discussed the Germen conception of ethics, honour, conduct. Said he: “For Germans a thing is right ethical, honourable, if it squares with the tradition of what a German a German should do; or if it advances the interests of Germinism or Germany. But the Germans have no abstract idea of ethics, or right or right conduct.” He gave a pretty illustration. A German friend said to him: “isn’t it terrible what the Finns are doing, taking on Russia? It’s utterly wrong.” When Mr. W. remonstrated that, after all, the Finns were only doing what you would expect all decent Germans to do if they got in the same fix – namely defending their liberty and independence against wanton aggression – his friend retorted: But Russia isn’t Germany. In other words, for a German to defend his country’s liberty and independence is right. For a Finn to do the same is wrong, because it disturbs Germany’s relations with Russia.
• Berlin August 31, 1940: Laid up with the flu for a bit. When the maid came in last night just before the bombing started, I asked: “Will the British come over tonight?”
• “For certain,” she sighed resignedly. All the confidence, all confidence that five million Berliners had that the capital was safe from air attack, is gone.
Shirer implied in many of his entries that Germans disdained war only because of its inconvenience. This seems to blend a sense of selfishness with a sense of superiority, and is not to be confused with laziness. As a superior people they did much in industry to prepare for war and made a huge sacrifice to take war to their adversaries, so when it turned out tat war did land in their front yard, they were put out. The following excerpts on demonstrates yet another dynamic to the mood Hitler created in an easily led people.
• Berlin August 28, 1939; The average German today looks dejected. He can’t get over the blow of the ration cards, which to him spell war.
• Berlin August 31, 1939; (morning)Everybody is against the war. People talking openly. How can a country go into war with a population so dead against it. People also kicking about being kept in the dark. A German said to me last night: “We know nothing. Why don’t they tell us what’s up?
• Page 162 Berlin September 2, 1939; I was standing in the Wilhemplatz about noon when the loud speakers suddenly announced that England had declared herself at war with Germany. Some 250 people were standing there in the sun. They listened attentively to the announcement. When it was finished, there was not a murmur. They just stood there as before, stunned.
I walked the streets. On the faces of the people astonishment, depression. Until today they have been going about their business pretty much as usual. There were food cards and soap cards, and you couldn’t get any gasoline and at night is was difficult stumbling around in the blackout
Few believed that Britain and France would move…The British and French had been accommodating before
In 1914, I believe the excitement in Berlin on the first day of the World War was tremendous. Today, no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, not throwing flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria. There was not even a hate for the British and the French
• Berlin September 20, 1939:If the war goes on, it is still a question in my mind whether the mass of the people won’t swing behind the regime. The people, who are very patriotic, and are being fed a terrific barrage of propaganda about England alone being responsible for the war, may get the general idea that they have to “defend the Fatherland.” I have still to find a German, even among those who don’t like the regime, who sees anything wrong with the destruction of Poland. All moral attitudes of the outside world regarding the aggression against Poland find little echo among people here. People of all classes, women as well as men, have gathered in front of the windows in Berlins for a fortnight and approvingly gazed at the maps in which little red pins showed the victorious advance of the German troops in Poland. As long as the Germans are successful and do not have to pull in their belts too much, this will not be an unpopular war.
• Berlin August 4, 1940: Of the English air raids on Berlin: The chief complaint of the people of Hamburg with whom I talked was not the damage caused, but the fact that the British raids robbed them of their sleep.
Strolled in the Tiergarten this afternoon, it being warm and the sun out brightly: At six different spots a crowed gathered to watch someone feed squirrels Even soldiers on leave stopped to watch. And these squirrel-feeders are the ones who have stormed through Norway to Narvik and through Holland, Belgium, and France to the sea.
• Berlin October 8 1940: The German press harps so much on the Luftwaffe attack on Britain being reprisals for the sort of thing we received last night that the public is already nauseated by the term – and Germans take a lot of nauseating. The story around town is that the average Berliner when he buys his ten-pfenning evening paper now says to the newsboy: :Give me ten-pfennings’ worth of reprisals.
• Munich October 25, 1940: All restaurants, cafes and beer halls here packed tonight with lusty Bavarians. Notice they’ve completely stopped saying “Heil Hitler.”
How does mood translate to war? Again I find that the mood was latent in the German soul and found its release through Adolf Hitler. Hitler’s strategy is not genius. It was a people of the same mind, to lesser proportions in most cases , that allowed a mood to catch fire. With regard to mood, so far I provided where it was a mood of a country that allowed German people to act the way they did. In my last example I touch on the atrocities taken not just by the German army, but the people themselves. Written elsewhere by Shirer I was appalled to have read in Rise and Fall of the Third Reich of German companies rigorously competing for government contracts to build gas chambers for the Jews. I was sickened to read about the multitudes of German medical society approvingly sitting and listening with inquisitive minds to the results of human experiments performed in concentration camps. And to appreciate how thorough this callous behavior towards man kind, the general German public were purchasing gold and jewelry of the executed Jews in local pawn shops. If you were to subscribe to the notion that what is inside a person is what is expressed through his actions, then the work of the German soul has much to be concerned about. The following excerpts from the book shed some light on the hypocrisy found in the German trait where they claimed to distain Hitler’s brutality, but were overtly guilty of the same themselves.
• Berlin September 1, 1939: One curious thing about Berlin on this first night of war: the cafes, restaurants, and beer halls were packed. The people just a bit apprehensive after the air raid, I felt.
• Berlin September 11, 1939: Later (midnight) – In subway, going out to broadcast tonight I heard a considerable grumbling about the war. The women especially seemed depressed. And yet when I came back from my broadcast, a big crowd, mostly women, got on at the station under the Deutches Oprehaus. They had been to the Opera and seemed oblivious of the fact that a war was on.
But one thing is for sure is it possible that if the British and French decide upon a war of attrition, the mass of the German people will forget their feelings toward the regime and regard it as their duty to defend the Fatherland? Some of the things I’ve heard today from Germans make me think so.
• 8.30 Tirlemont – I deduce that while the German Stukas put the Belgium railroad out of action, they were careful not to blow up the roads and bridges. Apparently the German high command decided in advance not to try to use Belgian railways; only roads. Their army was built to go on gasoline-motored vehicles.
• my note: this bares out the evidence that the thirst for war was inbred in the German people as demonstrated by the Stuka pilots ability to aim bombs at homes , women and children and not at prized implements for their war.
• Berlin September 4-5, 1944 They were easily excited by the dominance of a German over any other Hitler said with lovely hypocrisy: “I waited three months without answering the British night bombings in the hope they would stop this mischief. But Her Churchill saw in this a sign of weakness. You will understand that we are now answering, night for night. And when the British Air Force drops two or three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150 -230- 300 or 400,000 kilograms.
At this point he had to stop because of the hysterical applause of the audience, which consisted mostly of German nurses and social workers.
What I find interesting is that whether at soldier level where a command could be to take a theater of battle, but did not necessarily mean rape and pillage, but they did and justified it in their own mind. When you read that the same solider that rapes and pillages, and then goes home to feed squirrels in the Tiergarten you pause. When you read that the press does not just write what Goebbells dictates, they get excited about it, you ponder. When you read that the general public sees hope in their prospect of dominion, you protest up to an engagement of all out war. It was that voice in Churchill that elicited for some reason on the German mind that that is what was being done to them by the British and it justified their national madness. Hence the power of the press is essential. As you read the following you may pause and ponder on our world future and lessons to be learned by expanding our present moment backwards as though it is now and then projecting it forward as it would be out new now.
Conclusions: Author’s Conclusion Berlin December 1, 1940: As an author anxious to get to sanity found in America, William Shirer writes his conclusion of which I copy verbatim. I do this because I intend to draw an Ominous parallel in 2010 in my conclusion. The following is directly from the book.
• After a year and a half of total war German morale is still good. Let us admit the fact. There is no popular enthusiasm for the war. There never was. And after eight years of deprivation caused by Nazi preparation for war, the people are weary and fatigued. The crave peace. They are disappointed, depressed, disillusioned that peace did not come this fall, as promised. Yet as the war goes into its second long, dark winter, public morale is fairly high. How explain the contradictions? Keep in mind three things:
First the millennium-old longing of Germans for political unification has been fulfilled. Hitler achieved it. Few people outside this country realize how this unification has knitted the German nation together, given the people self confidence and a sense of historical mission and made them forget their dislike of the Nazi regime, its leaders and the barbaric things It has done. Also – coupled with the rebirth of the army and air force and the totalitarian reorganization of industry, trade, and agriculture on a scale never before realized in this world –it makes the German feel strong. In its emergence of the primitive, tribal instinct of the early German pagans of the vast forest of the North to whom brute strength was not only the means but the ends of life. It is in this primitive racial instinct of “blood and soli” which Nazis have reawakened in the German soul more successfully than any other of their modern predecessors and which has shown that the influence of Christianity and western civilization on German life and culture was only a thin veneer. The Germans as a people lack the balance achieved, say, by the Greeks, the Romans, the French, the British, and the Americans. They are continually torn by inner contradictions which make them uncertain, unsatisfied, frustrated, and which force them from one extreme to the other. The Weimar Republic was so extreme in its liberal democracy that the Germans couldn’t work it. And now they have turned to the extremes of tyranny.
In drawing my own conclusion I think that the average modern person from East or Western cultures is vaguely aware of the traits of German people. Looking first at the western world there does exist the same sense of “we are better than you” mentality which is displayed first in business success. There is a success that has provided a comfortable life style that insulates them from the hardships felt by the people of other less fortunate countries. In western countries there is a freedom of the press, and relative freedom of economy and most importantly a democracy backed up and facilitated by a strong expression of capitalism that allows good fortune and good voice to elect leadership that represents that good choice. If any of those ingredients breaks down there is a reason to pause. I will pick China, North Korea, and Iran where those aforementioned does not exist and therefore are potential countries that could follow the German model.
With regard to China I will reference the book The New Chinese Empire, by Ross Terrill . From that book you learn that there is an Inner China, which includes the Han China and Manchurian China. Then there is also the outer China that includes providences that are quite a different mix of people from Muslim, to Buddhist, Shamanism , to Confucianism. For much the same reason religion is not apt to bring these people together. The reason is freedom to speak your mind. By virtue of inner and outer China one may be comforted with the fact a disparate society will never coalesce around nationalism and go to war as did Germany. In fact the Chinese people (inner China) not only don’t see them selves as superior, but rather they see there way as simply more preferable. Its why the annexing of outer China seems to escape under the radar. Will China be a world power? Yes. But before China could ever adopt a German ideal of dominion over a western society, she would have to figure out the “Inner/ Outer” dynamic first.
With regard to North Korea, while I too have little knowledge on the country, I reflect merely on the google map that illustrates lights turned on in North Korea. Those people are certainly oppressed and then depressed as well. From my prospective however that while the leadership has taken on the role of Hitler, Korea’s people do not have the same traits as do Germans or Japanese. So like China if North Korea were to take her people to war, the country would end up in revolt much like what happened to Russia in 1917.
Iran is a much different country. It has the all the same dynamics as did Germany in 1930. The leadership is fanatical, and delusional. Mahmud Ahmdenejad displays much the same personal history as did Hitler. The Iranian people are a proud people. It is heard within their cries that all they want is to have the same respect in the world as does any other first world country. This comes from a great Persian history, which is a striking parallel to Germany’s history post unification. Lets not forget that Persia, once included much of the Orient. Ahmdenejad appeals to a large base of Iranians who feel oppressed by the West. The sanctions applied to them is not weakening the governments resolve for nuclear war power as so much of their people are unemployed, which is a striking parallel to Germany’s 1920 -30’s. In recent history the exploiting of Muslim people in Iran by the British in the 1920 – 40’s combined with the apparent exploiting of government by the America in the 19650 – 70’s, to the Russian constant threat to march her armies across boarders, gives Ahmdenejad plenty of reason to coalesce his people around the Iranian Nationality. Today we have an oppressed Iranian people looking to break out. The people themselves do not want war, they don’t even want domain over foreign lands as was the case in Germany. They have simply a desire for their heritage to bask in the same sun as the West. But Ahmdenejad, in a thirst for power as demonstrated by Hitler and almost any other Muslim nation will exact a war cry from his people to give them what has been missing. When you look at the offer the Western Powers put on the table here in 2010 that we will give them their place in the sun, the only reason Ahmdenejad would refuse is he believes he can take his people down the same path as did Hitler. Because of the Muslim factor where one sixth of the world is Muslim, he will have no shortages of allies.
