BOOK: Howard Smith, "Last Train from Berlin"

Howard K. Smith: Last Train from Berlin. London: The Cresset Press, 1942. vii + 266 pp.

Smith was an American journalist who reported from Germany during the first two years of the WW2, while the United States was (in principle) still neutral. He published this book in 1942, after his return to the USA. I found it an interesting read, but I have much the same complaint as with Arvid Fredborg's Behind the Steel Wall, which I read a few years ago: I wish there was more about what it was like to work as a journalist in wartime Germany, and less about how the war was going, what the internal dynamics of the Third Reich were, and the like — I can read these latter things in the work of any number of later historians who are in a much better position to see the whole picture than someone living in the middle of those events had been. The problem, of course, is that the readers in 1942 very reasonably had exactly the opposite preferences than me in these matters, and authors like Smith and Fredborg wrote for them, not for the likes of me. Still, I enjoyed the book a lot; Smith not only observed things, but also thought about them a good deal, and I found something interesting on practically every other page.

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Smith first visited Germany in 1936; he had just graduated from college and wanted to travel in Europe a bit before settling down, and he went to Germany because it was cheapest (p. 1). But he also wanted to find out how the Nazi system worked in Germany; he was surprised by how heavily militarized everything in Germany had already become by then (pp. 6–7), and it was clear that an enourmous amount of resources were being dedicated to rearmament (while the standards of living of the civilian population had actually declined since the Nazi takeover of power; p. 12). From this, Smith concluded that the regime was inevitably on a course for war.

In 1937–39, he spent two years at Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship (pp. 22–8); he was impressed by how keenly the students were involved in political clubs, and he himself seems to have spent more time on activism for the Labour Club than on studying. When war started, he was pleasantly surprised to see that Britain was actually going to stand up to Hitler this time (p. 28), but was disappointed by how uninspired British propaganda was (pp. 31–2). He got himself a job with the United Press and went to Berlin in January 1940 (pp. 28, 30).

There are a couple of odd insults at Hitler's expense that I haven't seen before. I know that his very modest artistic career led some people so mockingly refer to him as a housepainter and the like, but Smith upgrades this to “a second-rate, psychopathic carpenter with a third-rate intellect” (p. 16) and “a wall-paper hanger” (p. 29)!

Interesting factoid of the day: Hitler's half-brother Alois (from their father's second marriage — Adolf was from the third) was running a “little restaurant” in Berlin (pp. 46, 105).

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Since the war was going well for Germany for the first couple of years, the Nazi regime was bursting with self-confidence and didn't supervise the foreign reporters as closely as later (p. 34). After the first air-raids against Berlin, they were allowed to report freely as the Germans wanted to show how insignificant the damage had been; but as the raids grew more serious, the reporters' access was correspondingly reduced (pp. 43–4).

American reporters were treated particularly well in the first year or so of the war, as Germany still hoped that America would stay neutral; but Smith says that despite these efforts they were not in the least bit favourable to the Nazis (pp. 35–6). But as the U.S. supported Britain more and more, the Nazis became increasingly anti-American; Roosevelt took the place of Churchill as the big bogeyman of their propaganda (p. 153), and American reporters in Germany were increasingly harassed by the Nazi authorities. Some of them (notably Richard Hottelet) were imprisoned for months at a time, without any definite charges being brought against them (pp. 166–7); the offices of the United Press, where Smith worked, were raided by the Gestapo for no real reason other than to intimidate them (pp. 160–6). Despite this pressure, many of them persisted in Berlin, considering that sort of risks to simply be a part of journalism (pp. 169, 172).

To me one of the most interesting things about journalists' memoirs is to see some glimpses of how they work. Smith says he was surprised by the Nazi invasion of Norway, but in hindsight he saw there had been many signs pointing to it (e.g. masses of mountain troops passing through Berlin on the way north), and he resolved to pay more attention next time (pp. 39–40). For example, he tracked the regime's attitude towards Soviet Union by watching anti-Soviet books disappear from the German bookstores in 1939 and then re-emerge in 1941 (pp. 46–7), a hint that the Nazis were planning to make a move against the Soviet Union. Various other signs and rumours soon followed (pp. 48–9).

He had been surprised, and dismayed, by the German military successes of 1940, and in early 1941 he had almost quit his job and left Germany, but then decided to stay when he saw that an attack on Soviet Union seemed to be brewing (pp. 45–6).

There's an interesting chapter about the momentous occasion on October 9, 1941, when Hitler's press chief, Dr. Otto Dietrich, stepped before the gathered reporters and announced that the Soviet Union was as good as defeated (pp. 60, 62–3). He was supposed to announce the successful progress of a new German offensive started a week or so before, but he seems to have got a little carried away, perhaps because he knew that some major good news were sorely needed by the German public, which was getting weary of the war in view of the fact that the Soviet Union wasn't showing any signs of imminent collapse, contrary to many confident predictions made at the start of the German invasion of Russia (p. 71). The American reporters figured that Dietrich's statement was probably true, since a lie of that magnitude would come to light soon enough and cause him enormous embarrassment (p. 63). The German public, too, was tremendously elated (although Goebbels prudently prevented the German press from quoting Dietrich's statements directly, p. 65, and had the triumphalism toned down over the next few days, p. 77), and began dreaming of the prosperity and opportunities that would soon open up in the forthcoming German colonial empire in the East (p. 76). Soon, of course, reality began to set in and the regime's media lost all credibility with the German public (pp. 78–80).

By the way, you've got to love mid-20th-century slang: by attacking the Soviet Union, “[s]heerly on the bases of geography and numbers Hitler had pulled a boner.” (P. 52.)

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One interesting change that Smith describes as occurring in 1941, after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, was the massive and surprisingly fast decline in the amount and quality of food and consumer goods available to the German population (p. 96). During the times of easy victories in the first couple of years of the war, Germany was able to cover its deficiencies by looting the resources of the occupied countries (p. 85), but these were being looted too quickly (for a time there had actually been a kind of unnatural prosperity in Germany; p. 86), and had been largely exhausted by the time the German invasion of the Soviet Union began.

Smith describes the various ways in which the Nazis tried to cope with the resulting shortages: for example, first they reduced the meat rations; then, fearing the bad effects on morale of further reductions, they simply supplied less meat to shops and restaurants without officially decreasing the rations (p. 89), resulting in massive queueing as people tried to buy meat before the shops ran out. Various other foodstuffs were replaced by ersatz versions concocted with foul-smelling chemicals of dubious nutritional value (p. 93). The territorial gains made in Russia in the first few months after the invasion didn't really help either, as the Soviets had evacuated all industry to the east before retreating (p. 104).

All this led to an overall air of seediness and a decline in industrial production (pp. 100, 103). “I never thought it was possible for a country to go so universally trashy so quickly.” (P. 116.) The people's health declined, they turned pale, weary and irritable, and resorted widely to drugs and patent medicines in an effort to regain some energy (pp. 119–21). The seediness even extended to government: “the whole Nazi civil government is in a state of unbelievable chaos” (p. 125) because Hitler and the other bigwigs largely lost interest in anything but military affairs.

Smith makes an interesting observation that by late 1941, most Germans weren't supporting the Nazi regime out of any real enthusiasm for it any more, but because they were afraid what would happen to them if Germany lost the war (a fear which Nazi propaganda, of course, was very keen to stoke; p. 123). The only section of the population that still believed zealously in the Nazi system were the children, who had been exposed to its propaganda full-time all their lives (pp. 127–8) and to whom the regime had always taken special care to appeal (p. 225).

There's an interesting chapter on the development of the Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Smith begins with the observation that “when people become discontented, they can get angry at one of two things: at conditions, or at people. The one reaction is generally that of maturity; the other, of immaturity.” (P. 130.) This latter reaction is often deliberately encouraged by the ruling elites to give the people an easy scapegoat for their problems, and Smith points out that this was the basis both of anti-Semitism in Germany as well as of the anti-black activities of the KKK in America (p. 130). Anti-Jewish propaganda and persecution actually slackened a little in the first couple of years of the war, when the German people were pretty content due to the string of easy victories, but it was ramped up again once the campaign against the Soviet Union started to go badly (p. 132). By late 1941 the Jews still remaining in Berlin were being ‘resettled’ to the East (pp. 138–40). Smith's understanding was that they were mostly being taken to occupied Soviet territories to be worked to death building roads and the like (p. 140). Of course we now know that a lot of Jews were killed outright without being put to work, but most of that would have started in 1942 (e.g. the Wannsee Conference was in January 1942), after Smith's departure from Germany.

When the requirement for Jews to wear the star of David on their clothes was introduced in September 1941, it proved unpopular with the German public; and the authorities apparently tried to justify it with the bizarre fake claim that the U.S. authorities had similarly forced German-Americans to wear a swastika on their clothes :S (pp. 146–7). What is also interesting is that apparently the Nazi authorities didn't make this latter claim openly and officially, but had their low-level officials put it into circulation amongst the public as a rumour (p. 147).

It is deplorably popular nowadays amongst libertarians and other such vermin to claim that nazism was a form of socialism — iT's RiGhT tHeRe In ThE nAmE, bRo! — and I was glad to see that Smith doesn't go in for that sort of nonsense in the least. “Too many observers have allowed themselves to be fooled by the fact that, for reasons of expediency, Hitler chose to call his party the National Socialist German Workers Party” (p. 181), but his mass support during the years of his rise to power really came from the small bourgeoisie, the lower middle class, much more than from the proletariat; and if you look at the practical results of Nazi policies, the only class that really benefited from them was the topmost layer of capitalists. “The state is allegedly national ‘Socialist’, but for a socialist state it maintains the finest, fattest crop of unadulterated plutocrats you ever dreamed of.” (P. 125.) “In actual fact, Nazism is the most reactionary and vicious form of capitalism hat has ever existed” (p. 179). The economy was controlled by a system of boards that consisted mostly of the biggest capitalists in their respective branches of the economy, and their profits flourished enormously; meanwhile the workers found their wages and their standards of life decline steadily from year to year; and the petite bourgeoisie — the small business owners, shopkeepers and the like — found themselves squeezed out of the market by big business even harder than before Hitler's rise to power (pp. 182–4, 188). Nazism “is not socialism, but a form of capitalism that is virtually feudalistic in safeguards granted to and preserved for the wealthy, as well as in the total servitude it demands of those who possess nothing but their hands and brains to work with.” (P. 184.) The SA, being the mass organization through which a certain kind of revolutionary aspirations of the lower middle class could perhaps express themselves, was gradually sidelined by Hitler and, in August 1941, as good as shut down for all practical purposes (pp. 190–2). The disappointment of the lower middle class can be summarized in the bitter joke: “What is the difference between Germany and Russia? In Russia the weather is colder.” (P. 195.)

Smith's departure from Germany was not without a touch of excitement. Relations between the U.S. and Germany had been deteriorating for some time and by late 1941 it was almost impossible for journalists like him to work. The German authorities stepped up their pressure and, no longer content merely with censoring them, increasingly tried to pressure them into including actual German propaganda talking-points in their reports and broadcasts (p. 259). At that point Smith decided to quit and return to America, but the Nazi authorities refused to let him leave unless his employer, the CBS, sent a replacement, evidently to function as a hostage to prevent Smith from badmouthing the Nazis after returning to America! (P. 260.) Fortunately the Germans allowed Smith to leave once the CBS promised to send someone, without waiting for that someone to actually arrive. Smith crossed the border into Switzerland in the morning of December 7, 1941 (see pp. 264–5 for a wonderful description of the contrast between the bleak, dreary Berlin and the peaceful and prosperous Switzerland; it was like stepping from a black-and-white movie to a colour one). In the evening of the same day, Pearl Harbor was attacked; had Smith waited but half a day longer, it would have been impossible for him to leave Germany.

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Smith concludes the book with a couple of chapters discussing how nazism might be defeated. There was some internal opposition, coming from the communists (with whom a lot of German workers still sympathized; p. 203), the catholic church (p. 205), and the traditional Prussian officer class (p. 209); but in Smith's view it was unlikely that any of these would topple the regime from within. Besides, Hitler had protected himself well by building up institutions such as the Gestapo and (as a sort of counterweight to the army) the Waffen-SS, both of which were absolutely loyal to him (pp. 213, 226). Apparently Himmler even suggested setting up an SS air force and navy, but Hitler did not adopt this plan (p. 218).

As for defeating Nazi Germany from outside, Smith says that the situation actually looked fairly promising. As of his writing, probably in early 1942, Germany was clearly getting badly exhausted in her unsuccessful attempts to defeat the Soviet Union, and was meanwhile also facing a lot of resistance in other occupied territories (pp. 230–1). Smith expresses admiration for the tenacity of the Soviet defense (p. 240), and says the democratic Allies should emulate the Soviets' commitment to total war: “there is still too much slack in our war effort” (p. 239). He even finds a good word for the pre-war purges in the Soviet army: “Had Russia not ‘liquidated’ a few thousand officers and bureaucrats, there is little doubt that the Red Army would have collapsed in two months, and left us holding a bag, many times bigger, containing Hitler and all Europe, and most of Asia. Had we liquidated a few, the war might never have happened.” (P. 240).

But his boldest suggestion is to carry out sweeping social and economical reforms in the Allied countries as a way of giving the German public a vision of what a better post-war order might look like (p. 247). Countries like the U.S., Smith says, had mostly achieved “political democracy [. . .] in which each individual possesses one unit of political power”, but they were far from the state of “economic democracy [. . .] in which each individual has approximately one unit of economic power” (p. 250). This inequality in turn leads to political inequality because the rich people can influence the political process far out of proportion to their numbers. He ends with some concrete proposals: nationalize the mines and the arms industry, and give independence to the colonies, immediately where possible, or in at most five years (p. 253).

I was really pleasantly surprised to see such openly leftist ideas, as I wouldn't have expected anyone but dreary boring Marxist doctrinaires advocating such things back then, and it's clear enough that Smith is not one of those — it's obvious from the style of the book if nothing else, for it is the style of your typical hard-boiled, red-blooded 1940s American journalist. Anyway, as we now know, some of his ideas would in fact get implemented, though in a massively watered-down form; there was some nationalization of industries in the first few decades after the war (probably more so in Europe than in the U.S., though), and the colonies did eventually get their independence, though not as quickly or as smoothly as he had suggested. Alas, the forces of capital then rallied again and we now live in a more unequal society than at any point in the last hundred years.

ToRead:

• Stephen Roberts: The House that Hitler Built (1937). [Also an updated edition in 1938.] Mentioned here on p. 123: “as nearly perfect a picture of that strange complicated mechanism [i.e. the Nazi system] as it was in peace time, as it is possible for a human to draw.”
• Jan Valtin: Out of the Night (1940). An autobiographical work of somewhat doubtful authenticity, mentioned here on p. 228.