BOOKS OF THE DAY
The War From Berlin Arlin Diary. By William L Shirer. tHamish Hamilton. 12s. 6d.)
FEw weeks ago a New York friend wrote to me that all America
s reading Shirer's Berlin Diary. It is a very safe prediction that thin a month all Britain will be reading it. The hackneyed csuiption, " the best book yet written on the war," must be rserved for reviewers who have read every book written on the rar. I have not (and doubt whether anyone else has), but I pall be surprised if Berlin Diary does not outdo every other rat-book in popularity. Mr. Shirer was for six years in a unique ntegic position. In August, 1934, he left his work as an hterican correspondent in Paris to become an American corre- pondent in Berlin, and two years later forsook journalism for roadcasting, with a commission to cover the continent of Europe r the Columbia Broadcasting System. That meant six months nth Vienna as headquarters, followed by permanent settlement Berlin, with perpetual excursions to whatever point in Europe tight be showing the highest temperature at the moment. It used till December, 1940. By that time censorship had made e broadcaster's lot intolerable, and Mr. Shirer, who began his ary in the first month of 1934 by recording the close of a bbatical year spent in a Spanish fishing-village, ends it in the at month of 1940 on board a liner bound from Lisbon to New ark.
Mr. Shirer's diary was frankly written for publication, for he 2lised that he was going to be seeing things in Europe that ould merit permanent record. It may have lost something trough that, but it has gained more, for it meant that the writ ir as recording the incidents and impressions which would most merest other people besides himself. To some extent, of course, has the reader at his mercy. Nothing could be easier than to actor the record before publication in the light of events, omitting redictions that were falsified and inserting sagacious judgements er the event. But all the trend of the volume belies such a ory. Mr. Shirer reveals himself in these crowded pages as a able, objective, discerning and entirely honest recorder of events. e never obtrudes his own personality. He says little about his tivate affairs, though the rare and restrained references to Tess, ad the home in the safety of Geneva which he could only visit xasionally and briefly, will make most readers wish they could eet Tess. He is, in short, an admirable diarist.
Here, then, is a striking picture of the war from the German e by a detached, acute and well-informed observer whose eneral attitude is indicated by the conviction expressed in his reface that " the primary cause of the Continent's upheaval was e country, Germany, and one man, Adolf Hitler." A third of the aok is devoted to the period January, 1934, to August, 1939, the anainder, in much greater detail, to the war-period down to ectmber, 1940. Mr. Shirer watched the approach of tragedy cm Paris, from Vienna and from Berlin. On one thing he lays :peated and consistent emphasis—that the German people never anted war. " They are dead set against war," he writes at the me of the Munich crisis in 1938. " Everybody against war " ?en on August 31st, 1939; " the people in the streets apathetic " on eptember 1st, and no one buying the special editions of the vers. Even in June, 1940, after the defeat of France, " no real anon over the victory discernible in the people here." But ere is another side to this. Mr. Shirer affirms that the whole rope is solid behind Hitler, and always has been, and there is 1 instructive entry from Paris in October, 1938 (after Munich), cording the universal feeling among Frenchmen that they had tight in one war and didn't want another. " That would be okay," Nerves Mi. Shirer, " if the Germans, who also fought in one at, felt the same way, but they don't."
Rich in interest as Mr. Shirer's daily observations and personal Inches are, it is his comments on the broad issues of the war- rategy as seen from the German side that give his diary its lief importance. He is convinced that Hitler could have been flied for ever if France and Britain had moved when conscrip-
t was introduced in 1935 or the Rhineland militarised in 1936. t is frank in his criticism of other Allied failures—for example, Trondheim—as he is fully justified in being. On that "one's orst suspicions seem to be confirmed—namely, that the British 'ver went into the fight for Trondheim (read Norway) seriously." a the R.A.F.'s raids he is illuminating, but it must be remem- red that he is writing of a period when they were necessarily a far smaller scale than today. The one cry is that the AF. comes far too seldom. Actual destruction, declares Mr. lirer matters little. If only half-a-dozen machines come to rrlin every night to drive Berliners to their cellars that will be ugh to undermine morale. But it is essential that (subject to rather conditions) they come every night. " When they came er nearly every night the morale of this • nerve-centre which -ps Germany together slumped noticeably. The Germans, I 1 convinced, cannot take the kind of pounding which the Luft- wafie is meting out to the British in London." This last judge- ment on an often-argued question is important.
It is impossible even to enumerate the topics on which Mr. Shirer sheds just the light that readers outside Germany want. His remarks on personalities—e.g., Mr. Winant, whom he met in Geneva in September, 1940, " I think he would make a good president to succeed Roosevelt in 1944 if the latter gets his third term," or von Fritsch, whom he overheard at a military review in March, 1935, muttering contempt of the Nazis and their whole system under his breath—are enough to commend the book in themselves. So are the pictures of pre-war Vienna or occupied Paris or of the actual campaign in Flanders or of the armistice-scene at Compiegne. And there are one or two striking diseosures, notably regarding the wholesale slaughter of mental deficients and of the unexplained arrival in Berlin in September, 1940 (when there was no serious fighting anywhere), of Red Cross trains of phenomenal length loaded with wounded The patients were all, it seems, suffering from burns, which Mr. Shirer took as confirmation of the reports that the British Navy had surprised a German invasion-rehearsal and had set the sea on fire with petrol.
I have never met Mr. Shirer, but a man cannot publish a diary kept regularly over a period of six years and not reveal himself. The revelation here is unreservedly attractive. As you read, your confidence in Mr. Shirer's eye for the essential, soundness of judgement, and fairness even to characters he dislikes most increases. The result of those qualities is a book of engrossing interest and solid value which will inevitably be in abnormal
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