THE FINAL RALLY

In September 1938, at the height of the Czechoslovak cri- sis, the travel writer and jour- nalist Robert Byron attended the Nazis' last party day rally as the guest of Hitler's friend Uni- ty Mitford. This is the second of two extracts from his previously unpublished diary of the visit. On 7 September tension between the Czechoslovak government and the coun- try's Nazi Sudeten German Party had been magnified by clashes in Miihrisch Ostrau between police and Sudeten deputies. Robert Byron and the assembled press and diplomatic corps waited for a decisive move from Hitler in his addresses to the Nurem- berg rally.

On his return from this visit Byron wrote: 'There can be no compromise with these people — there is no room in the world for them and me, and one has got to go. I trust it may be them.' He did not live to see them go. While on an intelligence mission he was lost at sea by enemy action on his way back to Meshed, Iran, early in 1941.

8 September Spent last evening going round town with Virginia Cowles [of the Sunday Times] and Herr von Luft, joined James Holburn [Times correspondent] Later. Per- petually being called up from London. Times published leader [7 September] saying Czechs better divest themselves of the Sudeten territory before it is too late. This leader got in by some intrigue (pre- sumably by Astor [proprietor of the Times]). FO yesterday issued a denial of this being their view. At the same time 82 Sudetens [arrested for gun-running] were being violently maltreated in Mahreich (verify name) [Mahrisch Ostrau]. Henlein [leader of the Sudeten German Party] was here in the Grand Hotel. Categorical reports: a. that he has seen the Fiihrer b. that he hasn't c. that he has left for the scene of outrage and will report on Friday.

d. that he has not left.

Meanwhile the Times has been ringing up Holburn every few minutes to give him the latest from Prague. Sudetens had broken off negotiations with Czech govern- ment, but Runciman [leader of indepen- dent British peace mission in Prague] obliged them to go and see Hodza [Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia]. They were with him at 1 a.m. when we left. Spent rest of evening with an absurd British Fascist who comes here to wear his absurd full dress uniform.

This morning all papers full of the outrage. I feel extremely depressed. Vir- ginia saw [Sir Nevile] Henderson [British ambassador in Berlin] and Francois-Poncet [French ambassador in Berlin] yesterday. Latter gloomy, former full of feeble optim- ism. 8 September. Evening Went to the Congress this morning. Bobo [Unity Mitford] sat us in the front row. Having been informed by representa- tive of German FO that foreigners aren't expected to make the Nazi salute I was unwilling to do so; but having sat by Bobo in this position and having no hat to remove, and having resolved, in addition, to submit to any humiliation rather than restrict such insight as this week will give into the 'movement', I stuck out my arm and when the party leader, walking at a great pace, suddenly swept round the corner, my fingers were nearly bitten off by the Fiihrer and I half withdrew my arm, thus assuming a position of grotesque flabbiness — altogether I felt embarrassed. Whenever I raised my eyes I met those of Goebbels or Himmler or the Fiihrer. Bobo could tell by the look he cast her that the Fiihrer was not in a good mood — but he seemed to warm up later, casting smiles at her when the Burgenland [an Austrian district where Unity often stayed] was mentioned — and he emitted a most amiable smile when he went out. The standards at close quarters, to that wonder- ful tune, were terrific — particularly the ones borne by motor cycle riders in black crash helmets with silver badges.

Music is indeed incorporated in the state procedure here (cf Annunzio in Trieste)1. Before the Congress opened, a piece of Beethoven played.

[Hans] Frank [Minister of Justice] spoke first on justice — a snarling evil speech full 1. Gabriele D'Annunzio made music a state institution in the city state of Fiume, Dalmatia, which he seized and held 1919-20. of German rancour and bitterness against the democracies. He forsees that Schu- schnigg [Austrian Chancellor deposed at the Anschluss, March 1938] will be found guilty of treason. He maintained that whereas crime in the last two or three years has increased 100 per cent in the democra- cies, in Germany it has decreased by 100 per cent. But though he quoted German figures, he did not quote English or Amer- ican. Followed Dr Todt who has built the Autobahnen — lots of figures — an agree- able speech.

Followed [Dr Otto] Dietrich, the press minister, an endless catalogue, textual, of lies in the foreign press — but very good humoured. Even the SS men in front had difficulty in keeping a straight face when they heard that German men were forbid- den to shave more than four times a month. Abused Mme Tabouis [French journalist], Pertinax [Andre Geraud], the Week (a 'cheese wrapper', Kaseblatt), the. News Chronicle for General Reichenau's putative outline of world domination2, Poliakov . . a witty speech. But he asked in the end, quoting some English idiotic statesman who said the press was a great danger in international relations, why the democratic governments didn't do some- thing about it!

Lessons: 1) How weak the Germans must feel themselves to bother about the foreign press (reference to the fact that their defeat in 1914-1918 was due to Liige [lies]).

2) Dietrich dealt with none of the serious accusations: no mention of the Times leader on 'the Rape of Austria' [15 March 1938] or 'Homage to Murderers'. This speech was circulated textually to corres- pondents. I fear they may distort how amusing and good tempered it really was, apparently it doesn't quite read so.

Journalists who have been in Germany some time comment on the extraordinary amiability of the proceedings so far. Perhaps this misguided people has begun to realise that it may not be quite wise to antagonise the whole world.

Faces: Ribbentrop a very distinguished female novelist.

Goebbels more amiable than in photo- graphs.

Himmler terrifying, he sucks his teeth and keeps them bared. The Fiihrer is peculiar for the pink and white podginess of his face. The lines under his eyes go very far out and splay out at the end — eyes like peas, but a good-humoured face obviously very moved by music.

I sat next to Colonel Bolitho, Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall, at dinner. He as much as expressed his opinion, and his gratitude, that the British ships sunk in the Mediterranean were sunk by the British Navy out of Franco sympathies.3 I said, `Could I have dreamed 10 years ago, that I should ever hear an Englishman talk like that, I should have become a Swiss or an Icelander.'

Holburn this evening says all is quiet and conciliatory in Prague.

9 September This morning to the Congress — thank God we were spared the first row and sat in the third. First speech on Arbeitsdienst [labour service] — the remark that got the most clapping was the hope that one day all the European races might work together. The usual comparisons with foreign coun- tries, lists of those who have introduced Arbeitsdienst and in what degree. Bulgaria

Faces: Ribbentrop a very distinguished female novelist. Himmler terrifying, he sucks his teeth and keeps them bared

somehow came in very prominently but I didn't quite understand how. Second on food production — all statistics of course had gone up. Great enthusiasm for state- ment that it would now be guaranteed to keep the Deutsche Volk in bread (and I think sugar) for two years. Third speech on press — but in abstract, no reference (that I could hear) to foreign press.

So far I have got two definite impress- ions of government policy (though I don't say they are of unique importance): 1) Push the people into a fool's paradise re war supplies.

2) To stir up and disintegrate the forces that brought Germany to her last pass.

In the afternoon Lady Redesdale and I went off for a drive round the camps. The Fiihrer caused consternation to 25,000 women including Miss [Thelma] Cazalet [MP for East Islington], by not appearing at their parade. Journalists in depths of pessimism. French Government said to have sent angry note threatening complete mobilisation. Henderson told Ward Price there was much more tension here behind the scenes than appears. Frangois-Poncet [French ambassador in Berlin] has left. Tea with Duke of Coburg — an amiable old gentleman with pleasant conversation. Then in the evening the Government Appell den politisches Leiter [roll-call of political leaders] — a wonderful sight — 34 lots of scarlet flags and in between them 33 bright blue searchlights going straight up into the sky but appearing to meet at a point and form a dance. There were 100,000 men in the arena. Then 25,000 flags entered in one main stream and 14 little ones on either side, all shivering and twinkling scarlet and gold. The great tri- bune had its bowls of torchlights and all the flags lit up between its pillars. The Flihrer made a speech saying he saw clouds on the horizon and hoped he could call on all of them.

10 September I was half asleep when I wrote last night. Now we have just got up early and been to the parade of the Hitler Jugend in a smaller arena. One ingenious piece of show- manship: two ranks of flags, one black, the other red, entered the arena from different sides and when they met under the tribunal marched through one another. Baldur von Schirach [Reich youth leader] spoke, a neat looking man. Enthusiasm more spon- taneous than at other parades — I have not noticed the frenzied enthusiasm (it is a peculiar note) I expected, but this may be due to the orderliness of the German character.

One reflects: this is undoubtedly demo- cracy. But it is one which postulates, not the rational human being judging questions for himself, but the emotional creature subordinating his judgment to the mass instinct. Both are true, but this system puts humanity on a much lower plane. Thus, this morning, when a section of the Jugend suddenly divested itself of some white clothing so as to form two vast initials A.H.

I had a feeling of disgust — that men should be used for such a purpose.

What we are seeing here, I suppose, is the annual Witenagemot. The whole cere- monial is of a remarkable kind. It is certainly that of a democracy rather than of a tyranny — there's no cringing or bowing and a general ease pervades the Fiihrer's entourage. And it is new in that it incorpo- rates, indeed is based on, the last resources of the age — floodlighting, relaying, motorcars — and does them without being shoddy, because these devices are the essence of it. I haven't seen a horse — not one. Is this to be explained by the fact the Fiihrer doesn't ride?

Bobo says the Fiihrer is very easily bored — lives on excitement and only really looks well at such times. She said to him after he dismissed the generals in February: 'Well you have caused a fuss this time.' He replied: 'One must do something. Life becomes too boring otherwise.' Not that I should take this literally, but it indicates a certain temperament. He hates exercise, only taking very short walks, but likes tearing about in a car. He sometimes reads, but only late at night. When, as sometimes happens, she spends whole days with him in Munich he is always restlessly planning things to do and then not doing them because they aren't exciting enough. 11 September I lunched yesterday after writing the above with Virginia Cowles [of the Sunday Times] at the Wurtembergerhof. At 20 to

2. On 12 July the British press had carried accounts of a speech given by General Walther von Reichenau on German ambitions in Spain and Portugal.

3. Between April and August 1938, 14 British merchant ships were sunk or badly damaged by Italian planes while supplying Republican-held ports on the east coast of Spain. On 26 July the Dellwyn had been sunk in Gandia harbour in sight of H.M.S. Hero. three the correspondents came back literal- ly fainting with the violence of Goring's speech, which we had missed, arriving too late. He had called the Czechs 'cultureless hogs'.

Ribbentrop [German foreign minister] gave a tea at which the Flamer was present. The Redesdales and Bobo spent an hour with the Fiihrer after it. He seemed not in the least worried about anything and talked mainly of the weather and the Arbeitsdienst [labour service].

There was a conference in the evening. I could follow a good deal of Goebbels, who has most singular pansy gestures. He set out to compare National Sozialismus, Bols- chewismus and Demokratie, the second is the bastard son of the last, though Demok- ratie makes a pretence of not recognising this fact. All Democracy dates from the French Revolution. That ushered in an age. That age is now ended.

Half the speech was taken up with quotations from the foreign press. That ghastly German sarcasm, the honeyed ser- pent lumbering with elephant's feet. But oddly enough, no great response. In his most contemptuous vein he quoted several foreign papers as calling Czechoslovakia `an oasis' in Central Europe. Waited for laugh. None came. Again he got no shouts of derision for quotations that culture was dead in Germany. Like Dietrich, he avoided any of the really important attacks. Said that the Germans hadn't started the blackguarding match. The democracies started it. The Germans wanted true friends. They had found some and would find others. Evidently the fore- ign press is a mania. Any reproof to their press by foreign Governments is given headlines in the newspapers.

A party at the SS Bivouac in the evening. Himmler received the guests. He has a very small hand, a sort of doll's hand.

I sat next to an old soldier who may have been [Hermann] Kriebel. He said he had been Chiang Kai-Shek's military adviser for years and had only just returned. Oddly enough he was also besieged as a lieute- nant in the Boxer Rising. He says result of war unpredictable but China has become a nation. He obviously couldn't say what he wanted to. He referred to the Fiihrer as `Hitler' — in connection with the Baden- weiler march which the Fiihrer has annexed as his own. He said that march, or rather its refrain, opened the battle in 1914 without orders. He was a member of the armistice commission at Spa, a genial old boy. The Redesdales had Ribbentrop, but he didn't mention the war. A present white vase with sweets in it.

Later I joined [Jules] Sauerwein [of Paris Soir], Dr [Karl] Silex [of Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung], Virginia and Ward Price [of the Daily Main— the aristocracy of the press. Sauerwein became apocalyp- tic. Wagging a finger at Silex, he said: 'If you wait, you can get what you want. But if you make a war, you will have the whole world against you.'

Silex: 'We know what that's like.' Sauerwein: 'The whole world. You don't know how you are hated.'

Silex: 'Yes we do.'

Sauerwein: 'I say, if you make a war, Germany is doomed, doomed.'

Silex (in effect): 'We can't help that.'

Sauerwein then explained in my ear what he meant by doomed. He said that after another war, Germany would be literally depopulated — the Germans would have to be exported from Europe As Hitler's fury mounted, and his hair grew untidy, the nightmare of the whole week came to its climax . . . a nightmare from which one might never wake up 9 and divided. He wondered if the inhabi- tants of New Zealand would care to exchange their islands for Germany.

Silex argued that the present quarrel was one for Germany and Czechoslovakia to settle alone [in his column of 9 September he said British promotion of settlement in the Sudetenland had failed]. The old general at supper had said the same: 'If there is a war, this time England will be the criminal.' I tried in both cases, but with singular lack of success, to explain that English foreign policy was not merely a thing of the moment but a line we have pursued for 200 years. It seemed to me that Germany was always led to disaster by her diplomats.

Silex: 'Diplomats count for nothing.'

R.B.: 'Well, the people who conduct relations between nations, whoever they are. They are not informed of what English foreign policy is — they therefore cannot calculate for it properly' and so on.

Sauerwein said in my ear, he was an old man, though he had been a journalist for many years, and had met a number of important people, he trusted he attached no undue importance to himself. But tomorrow he was lunching with the Fiihrer, who he used to know well and if he got a chance, he would say the same to him as he had said to Silex: 'If you make war now, Germany is doomed.'

Ward Price earlier had been whispering in Bobo's ear that the only way to save the world was for him to have an interview with the Fiihrer. She was not responsive. He is a very amiable man, courteous, amusing and always out to help anyone.

It is funny to be introduced, not as a Byzantinist, or a traveller or an oil mag- nate or an architectural critic, but as an occasional contributor to the Times funny, but remarkably effective!

Got to bed at 4.30, and was called, 0 God, at six, to see the dedication of the new S.A. and S.S. standards. A new stadium. A new and equally effective ritual. A new speech of the Fiihrer! But I began to feel I couldn't bear much more of it. Now they are marching through the town, five hours of them — to the old market place, now called Adolf Hitler Platz.

When we got back at 10.30 Lord Redes- dale had just been rung up by the Oxford Group [for moral rearmament] at Inter- laken saying they wanted to 'change' the Fiihrer and if he would shew the Ftihrer a letter they had written in the Times of the 9th this would undoubtedly be effective. Lord Redesdale replied he hadn't got and couldn't get a Times of the 9th, also that he was unlikely to see the Fiihrer again. Bobo said they rang her up every morning from London for three weeks offering to send someone out to do the changing — by aeroplane. But, as she said, she doesn't want the Fiihrer changed. Lord Redesdale: `No, damn it, I like the fellow as he is.'

I wonder at moments whether the whole thing is really the nightmare I feel or a scene from the Palladium. Bobo said to Lord Redesdale: 'As there isn't going to be a war, now you'll get the credit for having stopped it.'

Himmler apparently dotes on the Ox- ford Group and writes to its English members discussing their troubles with them. Frau Himmler has a twitch of the face.

I have been reading Crome Yellow [by Aldous Huxley] — bought it as embodying the age that is past — as indeed it does. But Mr Scrogan gives a singularly accurate forecast of this present German state (1921) except that the guiding intelligences are not rational — or are they? I take off my hat to Huxley.

I must note the extraordinary similarities with Russia.

1) Proclamation of a belief in a new age.

2) A new hagiography.

3) A new ideography (The Fiihrer's suc- cessors will find it difficult to remove the swastika — it is on every bridge, every doorhandle, interlaced in every mosaic, etc).

4) Revolutionary shrines, the Brown house etc.

5) Leader passion.

6) Unimportance of Foreign Minister (Rib's star is sinking).

7) Celebration of Revolutionary festiv- als — here November 9th is the chief one, I suppose that is the Munich Putsch. The dlte Kiimpfer [old guard] do the same march through Munich, and halt at the place where they were killed.

8) Elevation of gangsters into heroes.

Have just seen Ward Price, who has come back from lunching at the Burg with the Fiihrer. Sauerwein had no opportunity to say anything. The Fiihrer in a very genial mood, talking about the weather, `Good for the potatoes, bad for the Partei- tag.' Ward Price thinks this augurs well for the speech tomorrow night. I found the letter in the Times and attach it — a lot of tripe. Had Lord Redesdale shewn it to the Fiihrer, it would have been equivalent to asking him to believe in God! The people who want 'morally rearming' are the peo- ple who sign such a letter [Lord Baldwin of Bewdley, Lord Salisbury, Lord Trenchard] — the English upper classes. But we are entering a harder age — in which we shall need a far sterner defence than Buchman [founder of Oxford Group].

September 13 Somewhere near Cologne. We got up early, as I think I have described, on Sunday the 11th — to the dedication of the S.A. and S.S. flags. The rest of the day was spent meandering through the town — I slept in the evening. Virginia and I walked to the old town and ate hot sausages at the little restaurant below the grill. A pleasant scene and to us it seemed one of the last of such evenings. We resolved, whatever else we accomplished, to see that the blood of this generation, should it be shed, should be on the heads of the Appeasers. Then we dined with Ward Price and Sauerwein, while at dinner Ward Price wanted on telephone to be told that the Prime Appeaser [Neville Chamberlain] had sent for the Press and told them that England would fight. Virginia detected the influ- ence of [Sir Robert] Vansittart [diplomatic adviser to the government] and of her private communication on him. Said in March this might have saved us all. Said now, at the end of such a week as this, Chamberlain could and has only made things worse.

Stayed up late talking to Clive and Lord McGowan [chairman of ICI]. Woke up yesterday with a sore throat and the jitters — and ordered a car for 11 p.m. to take me to Frankfort. Saw the Wehrmacht display — aeroplanes that landed in 20 yards, gliders ditto, anti-aircraft guns and so on, a musical ride — then to Congress Hall where Hitler made the speech [saying Germany would help the Sudeten German inhabitants of Czechoslovakia to self- determination] that now all the world knows of (there was nothing about P.M.'s pronouncement in the German papers). As his fury mounted, and his hair grew untidy, the nightmare of the whole week came to its climax (though I scarcely understood any of what he was saying) — as one finally realised that it was a nightmare from which one might never wake up. I noticed, despite the terrific enthusiasm of the audi- ence, that many German women and some of the soldiers were realising this too.

Back to dinner. Bobo's confidence all gone — for the first time, she admitted the possibility, indeed the probability of war and wondered what to do with herself she can't come back to England, yet would be an enemy alien in Germany. She sent her love to her family, and seems to contemplate a time of unhappiness, though bravely keeping up her spirits by saying she would be in Prague for the Einmarsch [marching in].

At 11.30 I asked Clive if he would care to come in the car. Instead he saddled me with a mysterious colonel of dandyish appearance named Rocke who lives in Rome and was so anxious to get to London that he left all his luggage in Bamberg for Clive to pick up.

We left at 1 a.m., ran into fog and got to Frankfort at six — whence the Colonel took an aeroplane. I was assured I could get to London tonight, but my train was late and I don't think I shall make connec- tion with any Ostend boat. I may fly. There seems so little time left that even the first sight of this hideous grey Rhine lacks interest. I want to be home.

Or shall we wake up one day?

C) Lucy Butler