MY holiday went caput. Twenty-four hours later I was in a car with Marc Lauer, a friend of Bobby Casa Maury, headed for Paris. A good many other people were headed for Paris too, for the news of the German Pact was like the proverbial wind before the storm. One minute summer visitors were going evenly about their lives; the next they were scattering pell-mell in a hundred directions, trying to get home before the lightning struck. The French Government had already begun calling up its reservists; the roads were crowded with trucks and motor-cycles, and you could almost hear the moan of the gale.

French people are never unhappy in a dim way: they become sullen and angry. All along the way we were greeted by dark looks and irritable comments. When we stopped for lunch at Valence the waiter vented his feelings by rattling the dishes, and banging the door as though we were personally responsible for what was happening. Later on, when we went into a café at Lyons and asked the proprietress if there had been any news on the radio, she replied sharply: “I am too busy to listen.” Then added: “Besides, there is nothing I want to hear.” Never, I thought, was a country going to war with so little stomach for it.

The roads were so crowded we didn’t reach Paris until four o’clock in the morning. We came in by way of Fontainebleau. It had grown cold, and the great forests on either side of us had an eerie silence. The mist was thick on the ground and strange white shapes rose up in front of our headlights; ghosts, I thought, of twenty years ago coming to life again.

Paris was as beautiful as ever, but it had a troubled look, like a lovely woman who has lost her usual composure. Everything seemed to move faster: people, taxis, cyclists—even the water that sprayed up from the fountains at the Rond Point.

The hotels were filled with frightened American tourists badgering the porters and offering large sums of money for tickets to get them away before the trouble started. I went to see the Baroness, and found her alone in the flat. Her two maids, Yvonne and Germaine, had already left to join a hospital staff somewhere in the north.

The Baroness was a slender woman with a small scar on her nose from a piece of shrapnel that had fallen when she was standing on her balcony in the last war. No one hated the Germans more than she. Once one of her friends had brought an Austrian girl to call; later Madame had upbraided her indignantly for bringing a Boche into the house. The friend had argued that she was Austrian, but Madame fiercely insisted they were all the same.

Madame cried a little when she saw me and asked if I really thought there was going to be a war this time, but it was only a conversational question for she already knew the answer. She had worked in a Paris hospital during the last war and told me she had arranged to work there again. I said good-bye to her unhappily.

Before I left, I went to see the concierge, the woman who always argued so fiercely with the baker. The year before, when I had come back from Prague and asked her what she thought of Munich, she had shrugged her shoulders and replied with a single sentence: “Ce n’est pas chic, ça.” This time she again commented with a single sentence. “Il faut en finir.”

I was lucky to get back to England, for the trains and boats were overflowing with holiday travellers and tickets were at a premium; there were so many delays the trip took nearly twelve hours. When at last we arrived at Dover we were confronted by a press poster, saying: “Hitler’s Patience at an End.”

But Hitler’s ‘patience’ lasted five more days, and one lived keyed up on hourly radio bulletins and news flashes: “A Thousand Tanks on the Polish Frontier”; “Midnight Talks In Whitehall”; “Children Leave Paris”; “Two Million Under Arms In Poland”; “Roosevelt Sends Message to Italy”; “Henderson Flies Home”; “Hitler Receives British Note”; “Hitler Replies”.

You knew that none of it made any difference—whether Henderson flew home or stayed in Berlin, whether Hitler replied or didn’t. The end was going to be the same. When you walked through Hyde Park with the sun streaming down on the flowers, it seemed unreal: I remember thinking it was almost indecent of Nature not to behave more lugubriously.

But the unreality of the weather was no stranger than the people around one. English people react to a crisis unlike any other people I know. The more tense the situation the calmer they become. In fact, no one referred to the impending war at all. Taxi-cab drivers, waiters and porters went about their work as though they were oblivious to the fact that soon they would be caught up in one of the greatest storms the world had ever known. The most you could get out of anyone was a short comment such as: “Things aren’t too bright, are they? “and you suddenly felt guilty of bad taste for having referred to it.

I had let my flat when I left London, and spent the crisis with Maureen and Oliver Stanley at their house in Romney Street. The telephone rang continuously and Oliver went to endless Cabinet meetings, but the household revolved in such an ordinary way it might have been any week—except the one it was. Yet underneath, everyone knew what was in store for them. Oliver had fought in the last war at the age of eighteen. Now his son was eighteen and would soon fight in this one. Millions of people’s happiness was at stake, yet they were powerless to prevent the future from exacting a terrible repetition of the past.

In his pamphlet Black Record: Germans Past and Present, Sir Robert Vansittart writes:

At a quarter to one, exactly seventeen hours before German troops began their attack on Poland, Jane Leslie and I landed at the Tempelhof aerodrome in Berlin. From the moment we saw the grim rows of fighter planes lined up in the field—planes painted black with white swastikas—we felt the full drama of the awful moment. The capital was an armed camp. All private cars had been requisitioned and the only traffic in the streets was a stream of military lorries, armoured trucks and gun carriages that rumbled and clattered over the stone surfaces, terrible harbingers of the things to come. The hotels were crowded with the black uniforms of the Nazi storm troopers, and that night, for the first time, men were silhouetted against the sky, manning the anti-aircraft guns on the roof-tops along the Unter den Linden.

Everywhere you felt the sinister force of the German nation on the eve of launching its fifth war on Europe within the space of seventy-five years. You felt it even in the wind that blew through the capital exactly as it had the previous August; it caught up bits of paper and rubbish and sent them scraping along the pavement with a queer noise that sounded like a death rattle.

You knew the machine was ready. This was the moment that Nazi Germany had worked for for six years. Now the planes and tanks were waiting and the guns were in position. Everything had been completed down to the polish on the last button of the last uniform. All that remained was for the lever to be pulled.

I had come to Berlin for only forty-eight hours to write a Sunday story. Jane was a friend from New York who had been spending the summer in Europe. Although I warned her we would probably be caught in Germany at the outbreak of war and it might take weeks to get back to England, she decided to come with me. She had never been to Berlin before and the atmosphere struck her even more forcibly than me. All the way to the hotel she peered out of the cab window, and when we walked into the Adlon lobby, past a group of unsmiling blackshirts, she stared at them as though they were slightly unreal—characters that had stepped out of a Hollywood film.

We went into the Grill and found Pete Huss of the International News Service and Dr. Boehmer, the German Press Chief. Dr. Boehmer had lost his usual air of confidence and looked haggard and ill. He told us gloomily that nothing could save the situation now and prophesied the whole world would soon be involved.

I have never seen a man more depressed. Pete Huss told me that at the morning press conference he had broken down and cried. I had become so accustomed to Nazi self-assurance that the dejection surprised me, but I realized that up till now I had seen German officialdom only when the cards were being played their way. At an afternoon conference in the Foreign Office the official spokesman was almost as melancholy as Boehmer. A dozen journalists sat around the table hurling questions at him, but he kept shaking his head and replying in a low, strained voice: “Ich weiss nicht” (“I don’t know”). Pete Huss, who was sitting next to me, whispered: “‘I don’t know’ is the only thing anyone does know in Berlin.”

The agency correspondents were sending bulletins every few minutes and the diplomats looked harassed and tired. We found Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, the British Counsellor, working in his shirt-sleeves; Alexander Kirk, the American Chargé d’Affaires, had moved a camp-bed into his office and for the last forty-eight hours had been on duty night and day.

The long hours that stretched out that afternoon and evening were like a death-bed vigil: the anxiety, the confusion, the solemnity, the hushed tones, even the false note of cheerfulness. The diplomats adopted a while-there’s-life-there’s-hope attitude, but all the while went ahead making preparations for the funeral; Sir Nevile Henderson left to have a final talk with Goering, but the first floor of the British Embassy was cluttered with luggage ready to be sent out on the diplomatic train when the signal came. Poor Peace! Nothing could bring the colour back into her cheeks, or warm her cold hands now.

Only twenty years before ten million men had died in the most savage conflict the world had ever known. They had died violently: burnt, suffocated, gassed, drowned, bayoneted, and blown to atoms. Now once again the German nation was going to unloose the same, and even greater, horrors. Any hour now, one man would give the signal. A small crowd waited on the Wilhelmstrasse, outside the Chancellery. The special insignia showing that Hitler was in residence was flying from the roof. When I walked past, I suddenly felt ill.

The occasion was so immense that the things you took in with your eyes didn’t seem to have any connection with what was happening. When Jane and I dined at Horscher’s that night it was completely unreal: the dim lights, the excellent food, the attentive waiters, the laughing people, came from another world. I realized with a start that aside from a handful of officials, few people in Berlin were aware of the drama they were living through. They had lived through crises before. Their armies had been mobilized, and their men sent to the front—and each time they had found a bloodless victory in their hands. This crisis probably seemed no more serious to them than the one the year before. Most of them would go to bed that night trusting confidently in the divine inspiration of the Führer. In fact, a German acquaintance joined Jane and myself and told us she had heard a report that Poland was going to accept the German ultimatum—she felt confident there would be a last-minute peace. When we drove past the Chancellery on the way home, at midnight, the lights were still burning.

The next morning we were awakened by the tramp of marching feet—the steps of the funeral cortège. Our rooms overlooked the Unter den Linden and we hurried out on to the balcony to see storm troopers lining the avenue. We telephoned downstairs and learned that Hitler was addressing the Reichstag at ten o’clock. Owing to the fact that the speech had been arranged at the last moment, there had been no time to organize crowds of enthusiastic spectators. Only a handful of people saw Hitler drive past, wearing, for the first time, the field-grey uniform of the German Army. For his most epoch-making declaration, he rode through empty streets.

The speech was short: he enumerated the ‘atrocities’ the Poles had committed and announced that since five-forty-five that morning the Germans had been ‘returning’ Polish fire. Jane and I listened from the office of Colonel Black, the American Military Attaché. Its windows likewise overlooked the Unter den Linden. Although the avenue was strung with loud-speakers and the words rang through the capital with vehemence, we were struck by the unenthusiastic response they drew. Even the storm troopers showed little enthusiasm.

When it was over we walked down to the Chancellery and instead of the large crowd that usually gathers, found only fifty or sixty people. They shouted for Hitler to come out on the balcony, and, as we stood there, I reflected on the career of the man who had risen from house-painter to generalissimo.

Hitler didn’t appear, but it is perhaps worth recording that two windows away, in a section of the building being redecorated, three painters in white caps and overalls leaned out of the window and stared stupidly at the crowd.

Jane and I lunched with Ogilvie-Forbes and Colonel Daly (the British Military Attaché) in the Adlon garden. They told us no news had been received regarding the British declaration of war, but it was expected any time. A group of German officials at a nearby table stared at the Englishmen curiously, but from Ogilvie-Forbes’s smiling and impervious expression they could have learned little. I thought they seemed perplexed.

Even though the war had begun in the cold-blooded and calculated way everyone had expected, I felt slightly dazed. I wondered what was going through the minds of the Germans. I finally went up to one of the desk-clerks and asked him bluntly how he felt about a world war. I shall never forget my surprise at his reply.

He looked at Jane and me in amazement. “What do you mean, a world war? Poland is Germany’s affair. What’s it got to do with anyone else?”

A few minutes later we saw the clerk in a small group with two or three other people. He was evidently repeating what we had said, for he pointed towards us and the others laughed and made a gesture of disbelief.

“Look at them,” said Jane excitedly. “They don’t believe us. They’re probably saying—‘Oh, those two girls—they’re crazy!’”

I was astonished. I hadn’t realized up till now that the ordinary people were so ignorant as to the true state of affairs. But I suppose it shouldn’t have seemed so surprising. The morning papers had carried no news of the British and French ultimatum. German propaganda had been concentrated solely against Poland and even in Hitler’s Reichstag speech there had been only a slim reference to England and France to the effect that he could “only regret the declarations of foreign statesmen that this (the attack on Poland) affected their interests”. Germany, he had added, had no interest in the West; had no aims of any kind there for the future.

When the waiter brought us tea we sounded him out and got the same reaction the clerk had given us.

“The Poles provoked Germany too far. Now they can pay the price.”

“But how do you feel about fighting Great Britain and France?”

“Who says we are going to fight Great Britain and France? Poland is no one’s concern but Germany’s. We couldn’t sit back and let Poles shoot down German women and children. Why should anyone else interfere?” He gave us an angry look and stamped away.

It was only when we talked to one of the porters—an older man—that we had a glimpse of alarm. When we told him England and France were going to war with Germany, he looked at us in despair, and said: “Mein Gott, I hope not. I had four years in the last one and that was enough.”

German complacency was slightly jarred about five o’clock when air-raid sirens suddenly moaned through the capital. Our first thought was: the British Air Force. We hurried on to the balcony. Below, cars were stopping beside the road and people were running in every direction. A truck pulled up so fast it went over the kerb. We went downstairs and saw people pouring into the lobby from the street. The manager appeared, raised his arms for attention, and told the crowd to follow him to the shelter. He led us through the kitchen into the back garden. The only ceiling was the sky—that was the Adlon shelter.

The crowd looked upwards apprehensively and an elderly German standing next to me asked if I had ever been in an air raid before. I told him I’d been bombed several times by German planes in Spain and he relapsed into silence. Twenty minutes later the‘all clear’ blew and we heard later it was only a rehearsal.

All this took place on a Friday. I had to file my story to the Sunday Times on Saturday, and as the communications between England and Germany were liable to snap at any moment we decided to leave for Holland that night. The train services were already dislocated. We were told we could get tickets only as far as Cologne and would have to make further arrangements from there.

That night, for the first time, the trains travelled through a silent and darkened Germany. The lights were dimmed and the blinds tightly drawn. There were no sleeping-cars and we had to sit up all night in a compartment with six other people. There were three middle-aged Hausfrauen loaded down with parcels and bags; a portly gentleman with cropped hair, who might have posed for a caricature of a German; a fifteen-year-old boy; and a dark wiry little man who spoke English, and told us he was a musician on his way to Düsseldorf. The three women were evidently friends. They kept up a stream of conversation and seemed to regard the black-out as an hilarious adventure. They were in such high spirits we realized they must be as oblivious to the situation as the people in Berlin. We couldn’t resist raising the subject, and this time Jane started. She turned to the musician. “Has there been any news about the British and French declaration of war?”

“War? We’re not at war with England and France. Just Poland.”

“I think war’s already been declared,” Jane continued stubbornly.

The women wanted to know what she was saying and the musician translated her remark. They gasped, and the caricature spoke up.

“I don’t believe it. Germany is only taking police action in Poland. No one will go to war for that.”

The musician agreed. “You mustn’t believe rumours. They’re always wrong.” Then he grinned: “After we cut Poland’s throat” (and here he drew his finger suggestively across his throat) “we’ll settle down to peace again.”

Everyone laughed. The women looked reassured and resumed their spirited conversation. What a story, I thought. Germany on the eve of a world war and no one willing to believe it; everyone confident that Hitler would pull it off again—always the palm without the dust.

We arrived at Cologne in the morning and caught a train for Rotterdam. We were in a fever to know what was happening in England and France, but the German papers omitted such details and carried only glowing accounts of the advance into Poland. When we reached Kalden, the German frontier station, it was like scaling the last wall of a terrible prison. A group of S.S. men boarded the train and began searching the compartments. In one of them they even ripped up the cushions. What they were looking for we never discovered, but they took three or four people off—all weeping and protesting.

In our compartment there was an old Jewish couple who told us they were going to America where a professorship was awaiting the old man. When the customs officials came to inspect their visas their hands trembled so much they could hardly show them, and we suffered for their anguish lest something upset their plans. But finally it was all over and the train was heading for Vlissengen, the Dutch station. The professor reached out for his wife’s hand and held it tightly.

But the incident ended in a heart-breaking fashion. When the Dutch customs officials came aboard they asked the couple to show their boat tickets to America, and the old gentleman replied the tickets were awaiting them at Amsterdam. The authorities shook their heads and said there was a rigid law that no Germans could travel through Holland unless they could prove they were going on to another destination. They would have to return to Germany.

The old lady began to cry and the professor argued pathetically. Jane and I became infuriated with the authorities, but, since we couldn’t speak a word of Dutch, were able to be of little help. However a Dutchman in the next compartment interfered and tried to persuade the customs men to let them stay at Vlissengen until they could arrange for someone to bring the tickets to them. But when our train left, the officials were still shaking their heads. Our last glimpse was of the old couple sitting on the platform bench, their bags piled up beside them. We never learned how the story ended.

The rest of the way to Rotterdam Jane and I hung out of the window at every stop and asked for news. Had England and France declared war? Some nodded their heads, some shook them; some said an ultimatum had been sent, some said it hadn’t. No one seemed to know. But one thing was certain—the sympathy of the Dutch for the Poles. People clutched hopefully at any bit of news detrimental to Germany. One of the Dutch papers carried a headline (which a man on the train translated for us) “Poles Shoot Down Six Planes”—and it was selling like hot cakes.

Jane and I had a stroke of luck, for we reached Rotterdam just twenty minutes before a Dutch steamer left for England. Jane spent the afternoon sleeping and I wrote my story. The trip took five or six hours and we didn’t reach England until nine o’clock that evening.

For the first time the English island was darkened. It was a strange experience pulling up stealthily to the dock and only knowing you were there when the steamer bumped against the pier; hearing the shouts of the dock hands, the noise of the ropes swinging over the side of the ship, the splash of the water, and seeing nothing.

At last the gang-way was lowered. When we stepped ashore we asked one of the dockers—a large shadowy bulk—whether war had been declared.

“Not yet. But I hope it won’t be long now. This waiting around is making us all nervous.”

I just had time to put in a telephone call and file my story before the train left. On the way to London we had a nasty start. We hadn’t been going very long before we heard the sound of far-away explosions. We leaned out and saw the sky lighting up with sharp, spasmodic flashes—obviously bursts from anti-aircraft fire. We hung out of the window for some time. But when we got within ten miles of London we felt the rain coming down and realized it was only a thunderstorm.

The next morning at eleven o’clock Neville Chamberlain broadcast to the world that the British Empire was at war with Germany. While he was speaking air-raid sirens pierced the air. That, like the warning in Berlin, was a false alarm. But this wasn’t a rehearsal. I learned later that the assistant French Military Attaché in London, Captain de Brantes, had not expected the British declaration of war until later in the day. He was in Paris when he heard the news and hired a private plane to fly him back to England. He was mistaken for a German.

At any rate, he provided everybody with a good deal of excitement. Before it became known the alarm was a false one I talked on the telephone with a journalist who solemnly assured me he had heard the explosions and that his building had even rocked—ever so slightly. When I saw him the next day he didn’t refer to the matter.