Read Berlin at War Online

Authors: Roger Moorhouse

Berlin at War (10 page)

might regulate warfare ‘among civilized states’: prohibiting the killing

of the injured, for instance, or the use of poisoned gas. He concluded

with the
faux
-pious hope that God might see to it that the Germans ‘and

all others [may] find the proper path, so that not only the German Volk

but all of Europe may rejoice in the new happiness of peace’.55

Four days later, while Germany waited for Britain’s response to

Hitler’s peace offensive, a curious episode tested German resolve

to the full. When Christabel Bielenberg visited the market that

October morning, she noticed immediately that something was

afoot. ‘What had happened?’ she asked herself:

There shouldn’t have been a cabbage-leaf left, instead the stalls were

only half cleared, only the do-or-diers were queuing and the other

ladies were standing round in animated groups. As I passed down

between the rows, one or two heads nodded smilingly in my direction.

It was the baker’s wife who enlightened me as she clipped off my bread

coupons and recklessly pushed an extra loaf into my old string bag.

‘We won’t be needing these much longer, Frau Dr,’ she said. ‘
Wieso
?’

‘Why, haven’t you heard? Peace, they say, peace negotiations are going

on at this very minute.’56

The same scene played out countless times across Germany that

morning. The rumour of peace spread like wildfire, overwhelming

the telephone system with the increased traffic. Though it had not

emanated from the German media, it nonetheless quoted reliable

sources, such as the Air Ministry and German radio. Wild claims were

trumpeted: Chamberlain’s government had fallen; the British King had

been forced to abdicate; peace had returned to Europe.

A few managed to remain circumspect. Helmuth James von Moltke,

for instance, wrote to his wife on 10 October of ‘a suggestion . . . that

the war may come to an end’. If it were true, he said, it would come

as a ‘welcome relief’, but, he conceded, ‘I don’t know if there’s anything

in it.’57 The majority of Berliners, however, rejected caution in favour

of celebration. According to William Shirer, there was tremendous

rejoicing all over Berlin. ‘The fat old women in the vegetable markets’,

he wrote, ‘tossed their cabbages in the air, wrecked their own stands

faith in the führer

31

in sheer joy, and made for the nearest pub to toast the peace with

Schnaps
.’58 In a market in the suburb of Prenzlauer Berg, it was said

that traders abandoned the usual rationing procedure in the mistaken

belief that such pettifogging was now redundant.59 Christabel Bielenberg

recalled the scene in her suburb of Dahlem:

I was soon the centre of a chattering group all eager to tell me

exactly what was going on. Peace negotiations, oh yes, with the

British of course, a special envoy . . . No one seemed to know any

precise details. Most had got the news from someone who’d had it

from someone else; but one thing was certain: everyone . . . was

beside themselves, and our joy reached its peak when the police

sergeant, on duty guarding the market, pushed through the crowd

and added his voice, behind which was all the authority of the law,

to our babbling conjectures.60

The peace rumour was certainly not confined to the ‘babbling’

housewives at market stalls. In the university, it was relayed during

lectures with no doubts expressed as to its authenticity. Factories

stopped work to discuss the news, and even those in government

ministries began to celebrate.61 Cheering crowds of civilians greeted

troop transports returning from the Polish campaign: ‘You can go

home!’ they cried, ‘The war is over!’62

An American observer noted that the Germans he saw on the streets

of the capital that morning were smiling in a way that he hadn’t seen

since the time of the
Anschluss
. ‘On Potsdamer Platz’, he wrote, ‘I saw

people who had gone crazy with joy. Strangers grabbed strangers by

the arms to tell them the wonderful news. “Peace, brother, peace!”

Other people grabbed strangers and embraced them in a delirium of

joy. It looked like New Year’s Eve in the daytime.’63

As the rumour spread, it was embellished still further. Eden, it was

said, would take over from Chamberlain. The Duke of Windsor would

accede to the British throne and a special plane was due to land at

Tempelhof that very day, bringing a British envoy and a draft peace

treaty. Then, as if to give final confirmation to the rumour, word spread

that Hitler would speak that afternoon at three o’clock. In response,

jubilant crowds began to gather outside the Reich Chancellery on the

Wilhelmstrasse chanting ‘
Wir wollen unseren Führer!
’ – ‘We want our

32

berlin at war

Leader!’64 Across the city, pubs were filled to overflowing and radios

were switched on everywhere at the appropriate moment. Berliners,

like Germans elsewhere in the Reich, waited with bated breath to hear

the good news. For those sober enough to realise it, the reaction was

all very different from that of barely a month earlier, when war had

been declared.

The American William Russell witnessed the Berlin public as they

eagerly gathered to hear Hitler’s speech. ‘It was already three o’clock’,

he wrote:

I stopped in front of a radio shop, where a large crowd was collected

on the sidewalk to listen to an outside loud speaker. Martial music blared

from the radio. The Germans talked happily amongst themselves.

We waited for an hour, hearing the stirring music all the time. Finally,

not at three o’clock but at four, came the voice of Adolf Hitler. The

crowd on the sidewalk was deathly quiet.

Der Führer
spoke.

. . .

The Voice spoke for forty minutes.

It had finished, and the sound of rousing ‘
Sieg Heil
,
Sieg Heil
,
Sieg
Heil
!’ came through the noisy loud speaker.

There was no mention of the new peace in any sentence.

The Germans on the sidewalk around me were puzzled. Could it

be that everybody in Germany knew that peace had arrived except

Hitler?

Had nobody told him?

The crowd was bewildered, and disappointed.65

That disappointment, it seemed, proved to be just as infectious as the

jubilation that had preceded it. An SS security report, for instance, noted

a ‘profound dejection’ evident in the populace following the official

denial.66 Christabel Bielenberg retrospectively chided herself for believing

in such a ‘ridiculous affair’. She vowed, from that point on, ‘never to

believe anything that I had not seen with my own eyes or heard with

my own ears’.67 William Russell commented on the ‘gloom’ that settled

on Berlin that night. ‘The faces which had been alight with joy all day

were secret and hurt . . . Berlin was completely blacked out. Just like

every other night. But in the hearts of the people it was blacker still.’68

faith in the führer

33

Even the more sober observer Helmuth James von Moltke was

crushed by the sudden realisation that Germany was in the war for

the long haul. In the following days, he wrote once again to his wife

in Silesia: ‘The catastrophe is rushing towards us. I’ve reached the

point where I can no longer see anything standing between us and

this catastrophe. Only a miracle can give us a brief respite.’69

Goebbels, meanwhile, set about tracking down the source of the

rumour. In a radio broadcast he vehemently denied the stories,

directing his trademark venom at the ‘peace-loving rumour mongers’

who had fallen victim to ‘fishwives’ gossip’70 spread by the British

Secret Service. In truth, there is no evidence that the peace rumour

originated in Britain. The subsequent investigation traced its imme-

diate origin to the German Post Office, and its director was duly

hauled over the coals.71 But Goebbels was incensed: ‘There must be

exemplary penalties’, he raged in his diary. ‘It will rain punishments.’72

Whatever its precise origin, the peace rumour had clearly struck a

chord with the wider German public. As the crowds listening in

expectation to Hitler’s speech that afternoon had demonstrated, the

country was gripped by a fervent enthusiasm for peace. To the dismay

of the Nazi leadership, it was clear that Berliners and the German

people as a whole were not ready for war.

2

A Deadly Necessity

As the people of the German capital accustomed themselves to the reality

of the war, they also had to come to terms with one of its defining

features: darkness.

Blackout regulations were issued on the very first morning of the

conflict. They stated that all light sources in Berlin were to be extin-

guished, filtered or shaded during the hours of darkness. Lights in

shop windows, advertisements, railway stations, buses and trams were

also to be switched off or covered with a blue filter. All windows and

doors – from factories to restaurants to homes – were to be shuttered

and curtained. Skylights and cellar ventilators were to be sealed with

waxed paper or sandbags. According to the wording of the decree,

no light was to be visible from a height of 500 metres.1 If the cities

and towns could not be seen from the air, so the reasoning ran, then

they could hardly be bombed.

To minimise the inevitable disruption, a number of additional meas-

ures were introduced to aid pedestrians. Phosphorescent paint was

liberally employed: kerbstones, street corners, crossings and assorted

pavement obstacles were marked with a stripe; steps were painted with

a zigzag.2 Luminous arrows were painted on walls giving directions to

the nearest air raid shelter. Scaffolding or earthworks, meanwhile, were

to be marked by red-filtered lamps.3

Naturally, Berlin’s road users were targeted with a raft of new rules.

Their vehicle headlights were to be screened, and only a rectangular

opening, no larger than five by eight centimetres was permitted. They

were also informed that they should use their horns more frequently.

Cyclists, too, were ordered to shield their lights with red cloth or paper.

Green and blue filters were not permitted for the public, as they were

the colours used by the police and the fire brigade.4

a deadly necessity

35

William Shirer noted the effect of the new measures in his radio

broadcast to America on the very first night of the war, 1 September

1939: ‘It’s just quarter after one in the morning Berlin time’, he said,

and we’re half way through our first blackout. The city is completely

darkened, and has been since seven o’clock.

It’s a little bit strange at first, and takes some getting used to. You

grope around in the pitch-black streets and pretty soon your eyes get

used to it, and you can make out the white-washed curbstones – and

there’s a blue light here and there to guide you – and somehow you

get along.5

Though the experience was disquieting, the results were nonethe-

less impressive. The Berlin press enthused that, on that first night,

compliance with the blackout had been ‘exemplary’. ‘The 4 million

inhabitants of the city’, one report swooned, ‘adjusted to the new situ-

ation with incomparable ease . . . Berlin was ready and the Berliners

did their duty.’6 Even the city’s contingent of foreign correspondents

shared this positive judgement. One American reporter noted the

assessment of a neutral diplomat with experience of both the German

and the French capitals, who told him that ‘the blackout [in Berlin]

was one hundred percent, really pitch black . . . By comparison, what

the French call a “blackout” has left Paris still
La Ville Lumière
.’7

One diarist marvelled at the scope and efficacy of the new measure:

Berlin was a no-city city out there in the black. I could see occasional

flashes of light from the S-Bahn and the subways. There were noises of

unseen automobiles passing along the street by the Tiergarten. I even

heard guttural little scraps of conversation drifting up to me, and saw

the lighted ends of cigarettes bobbing along the black sidewalk.

Over there, where the beacon used to flash from the top of the radio

tower, there was blackness. There were no lights from the apartment

windows; Berlin was as though some giant had placed a thick blanket

over it, to hide the light.8

Aside from the journalistic hyperbole, Berlin and its inhabitants

genuinely adapted well to the new regulations. Pedestrians took

to carrying torches (with an appropriate filter), or pinned small

36

berlin at war

phosphorescent badges – sometimes in the shape of cloverleaves or

horseshoes – on their clothing to avoid collisions. Others adopted

more imaginative measures. According to an American corres-

pondent, ‘to keep from bumping into one another on the sidewalks

at night, Berliners . . . were rattling canes on the pavements or

imitating old-time auto horns with guttural cries of “Honk, honk,

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