Berlin at War (8 page)

and everybody went about their business as they had done before,

albeit occasionally huddling around a radio to listen to the latest

announcements. William Shirer summed up the public mood in Berlin:

The people in the streets, I noticed, were apathetic despite the immen-

sity of the news which had greeted them from their radios . . . Across

the street from the Adlon Hotel the morning shift of labourers had

gone to work on the new I. G. Farben building just as if nothing had

happened, and when newsboys came by shouting their extras no one

laid down his tools to buy one.20

This apparently relaxed attitude was partly due to the fact that

Berliners had already experienced a number of international crises

over the past few years and all of them had blown over without conflict.

Hitler, after all, had made his reputation and career by his piecemeal

and peaceful dismantling of the so-called ‘Versailles System’; he had

blustered and threatened, even annexed disputed territories, but he

had always stopped short of war. And this was how the German people

wanted him to continue. As they saw it, he had been restoring German

honour, restoring Germany’s status as a sovereign Great Power, but

avoiding the outright warfare that had been the root cause of her

malaise. Far from appreciating that the invasion of Poland would be

the prelude to an all-consuming conflagration, therefore, most saw it

merely as an isolated skirmish, more akin to the Austrian
Anschluss

or the recent occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. A discussion one

Berliner had with a taxi driver, early that weekend, showed this thinking

with particular clarity:

‘You know,’ he went on, ‘Hitler is really a great guy. With the [Nazi–

Soviet] pact the Poles haven’t got a chance. I bet you not one of these

boys,’ and he pointed to the heavy tanks now rattling by, ‘will have to

fire a single shot, or maybe just a few bullets to clean up the place. But

this time there won’t be any dead lists in the papers, and we’ll have

plenty to eat. No sir, Hitler won’t get us into war.’21

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berlin at war

The Berlin public was well primed, therefore, to accept the officially

proclaimed fiction that Germany was the innocent party and was now

‘returning fire’ in what was being billed as a limited, punitive campaign.

‘If Germany had been attacked’, many would reason, ‘she must defend

herself.’ Erich Neumann saw evidence of this attitude at Innsbrücker Platz

in the south of the city, that morning. He was changing trams as Hitler’s

speech was broadcast and he heard a ripple of applause run through the

crowd, while a few bystanders cursed the Poles or muttered ‘finally!’22

Elsewhere, however, the news was received with contemplation

and, in many cases, a profound sense of foreboding. Seventeen-year-

old schoolgirl Else Diederichs recalled the mood on a Berlin train that

morning: ‘I remember that we all sat there with these frightfully

serious faces. We were depressed. We had the feeling that something

quite terrible was coming . . . I can still see them before my eyes, how

all those faces looked.’23

The crowds watching the newsreels that day also failed to respond

with their usual enthusiasm. As one eyewitness remembered:

I walked into one of the inexpensive movie houses around the

Friedrichstrasse station. The newsreel was on. There were a few pictures

of manoeuvres of the English navy, but they were not hissed. Göring

reviewing air-force troops caused applauding murmurs and consenting

smiles. Goebbels, shown as he opened some party gathering, was met

with dead silence. Hitler, photographed as he rode up to the new chan-

cellery building, received a few female ‘Heils’, but the crowd remained

tensely quiet.24

It was the first time in years, the author noted, that the image of the

Führer had not caused ‘wild and roaring applause’.

For some, the day brought forth unwelcome recollections of the

Great War. Dorothea von Schwanenflügel recalled her parents looking

at one another in terror when the invasion of Poland was announced:

‘My God’, her father exclaimed, ‘wasn’t one war enough in our life-

time?’25 Others had more immediate fears: particularly for sons,

husbands and brothers in the armed forces, many of whom had already

been called up for active service.

For the younger generation, the outbreak of war caused genuine

consternation. One young Berliner recalled hearing the declaration

faith in the führer

21

that ‘German troops were returning fire’, but could only ask himself

‘who are they shooting at?’26 Theodore Willmann, meanwhile, was

more bewildered still, not least by the sudden air of seriousness at

home. ‘One day’, he remembered, ‘my mother and aunts Annuschka

and Heide gathered at the window of my bedroom and gazed out in

agitation. My mother said – in a voice that almost made me scared –

“It is war”. I stood on my bed and strained to see out, beyond the

grown-ups, but I couldn’t see anything.’27

For most Berliners, therefore, the mood on the outbreak of war

was one of shock. Yet, though many had not yet realised the horrors

the invasion of Poland portended, there was nonetheless a quiet deter-

mination to adapt to the new reality. That same afternoon, for instance,

the first ration cards were distributed and many Berliners immediately

set out to the shops to stock up on necessities. Heinz Knobloch was

dispatched by his mother to a department store by the Hallesches Tor

to buy something – anything – exempt from the rationing. He managed

to return with two tins of sardines.28 He was lucky to have escaped

with his booty intact: the new legislation against hoarding meant that

some of the more punctilious shopkeepers were already insisting on

opening all tins immediately upon purchase.29

Sandbags were also distributed, which were to be filled and stacked

against cellar and ground-floor windows, to protect against bomb

blasts. To this end, large piles of sand swiftly materialised across the

city, in private courtyards and in public spaces. Each block diligently

set to work, dividing their labour so that the women would sew the

hessian sacks, while the men would fill them, tie them off and stack

them for use. One young man described the scene behind his home.

Everyone met down in the yard. Even those whom we’d never noticed

or spoken to before all lent a hand. The men reinforced the cellar

windows with wooden boards. The women sewed the sandbags. One

by one they were filled. ‘Don’t hurt yourselves lifting those!’ the porter

called to us boys as we set to with the bags.

. . .

Those who couldn’t help, made coffee. And then cakes appeared from

somewhere. It was like a holiday . . . an atmosphere that I had never

experienced . . . The war seemed somehow harmless.30

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berlin at war

As afternoon turned to evening another novelty made itself known.

While the news of the outbreak of war was being solemnly digested

across the city, the air raid sirens wailed into life for the first time.

One foreign correspondent noted, quite correctly, that that first air

raid brought the war home to the inhabitants of Berlin far more

effectively than the countless announcements and decrees of that

day.31 As the opening drone of the warning siren sounded, many

reacted with no little panic, unsure of where they should go. One

diarist recalled the confusion: ‘Outside a strange noise is heard – up

and down, down and up, a long-drawn howl. Andrik springs up. “Air

raid alarm!” he cries startled. We look around not knowing quite

what to do.’32

In spite of the confusion, that first raid on the evening of 1 September

passed off without serious incident. No bombs fell and it is unclear

whether the ‘raid’ was a propaganda exercise or just the result of a

lone plane that strayed too close to the capital. Whatever its origins,

the regime took advantage of the event to sing Berliners’ praises.

According to officials, the alarm was greeted by a ‘remarkable calm-

ness and discipline’ among the civilian population of Berlin. ‘Within

a few minutes’, the newspaper articles claimed, ‘the streets of the

capital were completely deserted.’ The mood in the cellars was ‘serious,

but calm and optimistic’. Within a mere quarter of an hour of the

‘all clear’, they claimed, Berliners were back on the street, going about

their business ‘as if nothing had happened’.33

The reality was rather different. One Berlin diarist found that the

alarm caused the greatest unease. It was all ‘most disagreeable’, she

wrote, ‘and almost makes us feel as if we’d disgraced ourselves’.34

Another remembered eating with her father in a Berlin restaurant,

when the siren sounded for the first time. She was immediately gripped

by fear:

I panicked and thought ‘now there’ll be mustard gas and phosgene’. I

ran into the restaurant, opened the case, pulled out an item of papa’s

underwear and hurried towards the buffet. I wanted to wet the under-

wear in the sink so that I could cover my mouth and nose if there was

a gas alert . . . I just wondered why the other guests all sat calmly at

their tables and continued eating and drinking.35

faith in the führer

23

She soon discovered, to her embarrassment, that her fellow diners had

all assumed that the siren was a test.

For those waking to a bright autumn morning the next day, 2 September,

it might have been possible to imagine, albeit briefly, that the momen-

tous events of the previous day had been no more than a bizarre dream.

That is until the German press and radio wrenched them back into

the new reality of military offensives, artillery bombardments and

‘Polish perfidy’. The newspapers that morning triumphantly recorded

that German forces had advanced all along the line; Danzig had been

welcomed back to the Reich, Teschen on the Polish–Czech frontier

had fallen and the rail link to Gdynia had been severed. The only

problem, it seemed, was that the British and French were still declaring

their support for their beleaguered Polish ally. Though they had not

yet declared war, both had ordered a general mobilisation.

The world’s politicians also went into action. President Roosevelt

had issued an appeal the previous evening to all the governments

caught up in the European crisis. ‘The ruthless bombing of civilians

in unfortified centers of population’, he wrote, had ‘sickened the hearts

of every civilized man and woman and [had] profoundly shocked the

conscience of humanity.’36 In response, he asked all would-be combat-

ants to affirm their determination to desist from bombing civilian

populations or undefended cities. He requested an immediate reply.

Mussolini, too, sought to exert his influence. Despite previously

pledging to support Germany in the event of war, the Italian leader

now prevaricated and tried instead to broker a peace conference, clearly

hoping to pose – as he had done at Munich the previous year – as the

voice of moderation. When this idea foundered – scuppered by Hitler’s

unwillingness to be pacified and the British insistence that German

troops withdraw from Poland prior to any talks – he chose neutrality,

dressed up for his domestic audience as ‘non-belligerence’. Though

the German press indulgently neglected to mention the Duce’s deci-

sion, Hitler was privately furious.

While the diplomatic storm raged worldwide that weekend, Germany

presented an image of outward calmness. Hitler busied himself reading

situation reports from the front and refused to hear what he called ‘bad

news’ about the wider crisis. Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, therefore,

assumed temporary control of what remained of German diplomacy.

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berlin at war

His primary objectives were to forestall the creation of a united front

against Germany, and to shift the blame for any widening of the war

firmly onto the shoulders of the British and the French. To this end,

he prevaricated and obfuscated to the best of his ability, repeatedly

sending the Italian ambassador, Bernardo Attolico, to act as an inter-

mediary with the British and French, while simultaneously hoping that

any such exchanges would be overtaken by events. He also attempted

to undermine Britain’s new-found assertiveness by inviting

Chamberlain’s adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, to Berlin for talks.37

In Britain, meanwhile, Prime Minister Chamberlain also prevari-

cated, hoping to the last to prevent war, while the British cabinet and

parliament pushed for a robust response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.

An initial British warning, sent on the evening of 1 September, had

brought no response from Hitler, and, on the afternoon of 2 September,

cabinet met and unanimously decided that an ultimatum should be

communicated to Berlin. Chamberlain, however, was more cautious

and sought to clutch at the straws offered by Mussolini. That evening

in the House of Commons he suggested the possibility of an inter-