Stumbled across this diary - William Shirer, Foreign Correspondent Berlin 1934-41

Cirrus

Absolutely captivated by this. I read his book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, about a decade ago but there's something very personal about all this;

Diary

Some excerpts from what I've read so far;

- A section where a fellow journalist describes an attempt by fascists to storm government buildings in Paris in 1934 as a "working class protest".

- "Goring has told the Daily Mail, which through Lord Rothermere, its owner, and Ward Price, its roving correspondent — both pro- Nazi — has become a wonderful Nazi mouthpiece and sounding-board, that Germany is building up a military air force."

- "Berlin, June 3 We've moved again, this time to Tempelhof, our studio place in the Tauenzienstrasse, which was just under the roof, proving too warm. We've taken the apartment of Captain Koehl, a German flying ace in the World War, and the first man (with two friends) to fly the Atlantic from east to west."

- "The new Zeppelin — to be called the Hinderiburg — soared gracefully over our office yesterday. I was down to Friedrichshafen the other day to inspect it and it's a marvel of German engineering genius."

Cirrus

1936 Ragusa,
June 20 A bad scare today. While Knick, Agnes, and I were still eating breakfast on the terrace of the hotel,
which is a half-mile or so up the coast from town, Tess
went off to town to snap some photographs. A couple
of army bombers suddenly appeared and started to do
acrobatics over Ragusa, a curious thing because they
were much too cumbersome for stunting. Then one went
into a long dive right over the centre of town. Agnes
looked away. It failed to come out of it entirely, or
rather seemed to fall apart in the air, as it was coming
out, just over the house-tops. Then there was an ex-
plosion and flames. I thought of Tess. The flames were
leaping up from just next to the Cathedral. That's
where she mentioned she wanted some " shots." I had on
only shorts and a shirt and beach shoes. I must have got
away automatically. I sprinted up the road to town.
Something told me she was in it. Several houses were
on fire when I got to the little square in front of the
cathedral. Police were carrying away blanketed forms
on stretchers. I started to look under the blankets, then
held myself back. I darted in and around the jam of
people in the streets. No sign of Tess. Hysterical I
became. I started asking for the mayor, the governor,
anyone who could tell me. In the end there was a nudge.
" Get out of my way, I want to get that." Tess was
squinting through her Leica. She had been a hundred
yards distant, she said after she finished her photo-
graphing, when the plane crashed.
Later. — It seems that the two pilots met
a pair of dazzling girls in town last night and to further
their romantic adventure told them to be on their bal-
conies at eight this morning, promising them some-
thing " exciting." The death-roll ten, including the
pilot and observer.

quarky

It's a great book. Both of them should be mandatory reading for anyone with an interest in history.

I was reading the "Rise and Fall" on a flight to and from Poland. I did feel a little self conscious getting on the aeroplane with that great lump under my arm and it's swastika on the cover!