BERLIN DIARY — William L. Shirer—Knopf ($3).
This diary is the most complete news report yet to come out of wartime Germany. In 1934, William Lawrence Shirer went to Berlin to report Nazi doings for Hearst's Universal News Service. Before he left in 1940, he had reported the destruction of European civilization from the center of the destroying whirlwind. This volume is the record. Says Shirer:
"I jotted down these things from day to day. Unfortunately some of rny original notes were lost; others I burned ... a few things I dared not write down. . . . But the bulk of my notes ... I was able to smuggle out."
When Shirer went to Berlin most people outside Germany knew (the liberal, refugee and Communist press had told them so) that the Nazis were crazy and would soon be turned out by a popular uprising. Göring was an overblown playboy who liked to wrestle with lion cubs and dress up like Lohengrin. Hitler was a mad man and a paper hanger to boot.
Those were the days when the Reichswehr maneuvered with the "defensive" weapons allowed them by Versailles, "but everybody knows they've got the rest—tanks, heavy artillery and probably airplanes." Those were the days of the Saar plebiscite; the winter Olympic games ("On the whole the Nazis have done a wonder ful propaganda job."); the Hitler peace speeches ("We have no territorial demands to make in Europe! . . . Germany will never break the peace.").
Vienna. One day Correspondent Shirer confided to his diary: "Have started, God help me, a novel. . . ." Three days later he made another jotting: "Trouble in Spain. . . ." Before the "trouble in Spain" was over, Shirer had finished his novel, changed jobs (from Universal to Columbia Broadcasting System), moved to Vienna. There he made another casual entry in his diary: "Much tension here this Sabbath. Schuschnigg has had a secret meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. ..." Next thing Shirer knew the Nazis were in Vienna.
Shirer describes the atmosphere in the newspaper circles of the Café Louvre: "Martha Fodor* is there, fighting to keep back the tears, every few minutes phoning the news to Fodor. Emil Maass, my former assistant, an Austro-American, who has long posed as an anti-Nazi, struts in, stops before the table. 'Well, meine Damen und Herren,' he smirks 'it was about time.' And he turns over his coat lapel, unpins his hidden Swastika button, and repins it on the outside. . . . Two or three women shriek: 'Shame!' at him. Major Goldschmidt, Legitimist, Catholic, but half Jewish, who has been sitting quietly at the table, rises. 'I will go home and get my revolver,' he says."
Hitler in Action. The Czech crisis took Shirer and his microphone to "Wagnerian" Godesberg, where the Swastika and the Union Jack flew side by side—"very appropriate, I find."