Shirer - End of a Berlin Diary

End of a Berlin Diary

William L. Shirer

Copyright

End of a Berlin Diary
Copyright 1947 by William L. Shirer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Electronic edition published 2016 by RosettaBooks, LLC, New York.
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EPUB ISBN: 9780795349584
Kindle Edition ISBN: 9780795349591

Dedication:
TO
the memory of my mother, who died in our little Iowa town while I was on my last assignment in Germany

The notes that made up the book Berlin Diary ended in December 1940, when I left Germany to return to my native land. The Third Reich, which Hitler had boasted would last a thousand years, was at that excruciating moment at the zenith of its brutal power. The Master Race had conquered most of Europe and made slaves of its stunned inhabitants. The extermination of the Jews and other peoples was under way. So were plans to turn on Russia, finish gallant Britain, and then go on, with Japan, to conquer the world by bringing the United States to heel.

When I came home from Berlin at Christmas time in 1940, I found most of my fellow countrymen unaware of what Hitler was really up to and somewhat confused as to how he had accomplished his evil designs. Some Americans didnt much care. Since it had been my lot to witness Europes agony at first hand, I collected some of my notes in a book for the edification of such citizens as cared to read it.

This book of notes is, in a way, a sequel to Berlin Diary. It is the end of my own small contribution to the Berlin story. There was a great deal, of course, that a reporter had not been able to learn in the frenzied Nazi capital beyond the Elbe. The sinister plots, the fateful decisions, that had plunged the world into such awful horror and misery had been made in secret. And what had really gone on in Germany after I left? Had defeat and collapse solved the German problemat least for the rest of our lifetime?

After the wars end I went back to Berlin to try to find out. I prowled the obscene ruins of the once proud capital and talked with the remnants of the Herrenvolk. At Nuremberg, amidst the debris of the lovely medieval town, I saw the surviving leaders of the Nazi gangster world, who had wielded such monstrous power so arrogantly when last I beheld them, finally brought to justice. Most important of all, I had access to a good part of the fourteen hundred tons of secret German documents that the Allies had captured intact. You will find the essential portions of many of them in this book. I have been content to let the German authors tell in their own inimitable words the dark and almost unbelievable tale of their savagery and deceit. Had these secret archives of the German government been destroyed, as the Nazis intended them to be, much of the truth about our weird period in history would have been buried forever. Now it is here for those who care to learn it.

I have also tried to include in this book the thread of another storythe story of the beginning of the Peace. Reader, you and I have already forgotten the fleeting moment of glory and mans magnificent sense of dedication the day peace descended on this wretched earth. I know that erring mortals cannot remain on the heights for long. But these notes, scribbled down at the time, may help to remind you that many on our side achieved those heights after the wars bloody struggles had brought out their inhuman courage, their bravery, and their wonderful fortitude. At San Francisco, for a flicker of time when the United Nations was being born, I saw the high hopes, the noble purpose, the patient understanding of the men of our world seeking to find a way to permanent peace.

Where and when and how did their hopes start to turn to stone? In these day-to-day notes, perhaps, you will see how the dark cloud, which presently envelops us, grew.

Finally, this book is a record of the most momentous year any of us have ever lived through. Have you forgotten what it was likethe year of Our Lord 1945when the Nazi and Jap barbarians were finally destroyed and the terrible carnage ended and peace came, and ingenious men burst the atom and a new age, for better or worse, was suddenly upon us?

New York

May 1941

New York, Thursday, July 20, 1944

Someone threw a bomb at Hitler, but Berlin claims he escaped with only minor injuries. The luck of the man! Still is it not the beginning of the end?

Lake Placid, Thursday, July 25

The mountains and the lake and the clear air and the smell of pines and the wild laughter of the kids and all the comfortable, well-off folkand the bloody war so far away. My musician friends came over to the cottage to play chamber music and sip beer. They played Mozarts Quartet in F Major for oboe and stringsone of my great favorites. The oboe-player, a youngster from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, who kept telling me that oboe-players usually end up in the lunatic asylum, was magnificentand quite sane.

New York, Sunday, August 20

Tomorrow at Dumbarton Oaks, an old Washington colonial mansion lately used by Harvard for early Christian and medieval research, there will be held the first of the most important international conferences that we shall ever see in my lifetime. Representatives of the United States, Britain, and Russia will sit down and attempt to do what human beings have never been ablein their monumental foolishnessto do in the long and sorry history of the human race: prevent war by collective action. The time is late. Another war, with its giant rockets and flying bombswill no doubt finish the human race. This is probably our last chance to save ourselves!

New York, Wednesday, August 23

Paris, the glory of France, as Montaigne said, has been liberated!

New York, Sunday, August 27

Berlin is trying to frighten us with tall talk about an atomic bomb. Scientists do say that the explosive force released by splitting the atom is more deadly than any hitherto discovered. But a scientist who knows a great deal about the atomTheodore Svedberg, a Swede and Nobel prize-winner for his work with atomssaid last week: Talk about the atom bomb is so much hooey.

New York, Sunday, September 10

The Battle of Germany has begun! Todayfor the first time in history, I believeAmerican artillery shells began hitting German soil.

New York, Monday, September 18

The Germans at last are facing something all of themfrom generals to peasantshave feared above everything else for the last century: an all-out attack on the Fatherland from the east and the west. That they will fight tenaciously and even fanatically cannot now be doubted. But if you study the writings of the great German generals from Clausewitz down to the generals of this war, you will find that they, at least, never believed it possible for Germany to survive the ordeal of a two-front war.

New York, Friday, September 29

The Russian phase of the World Security Conference at Dumbarton Oaks has ended. From what I hear, there has been a wide divergence in the approach of the Soviets and ourselves to the whole problem of the peace structure.

London, Friday, October 6

It bucks you up to be back in battered, brave, grimy London even if it is just a stopover place on your way back to Germany, where you saw the war start and wheresooner or lateryou will see it end, though not exactly as the Master Race calculated.