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75bf632	BERLIN, September 27 A motorized division rolled through the city's streets just at dusk this evening in the direction of the Czech frontier. I went out to the corner of the Linden where the column was turning down the Wilhelmstrasse, expecting to see a tremendous demonstration. I pictured the scenes I had read of in 1914 when the cheering throngs on this same street tossed flowers at the marching soldiers, and the girls ran up and kissed t..			William L. Shirer
d34af07	Like most great revolutionaries he could thrive only in evil times, at first when the masses were unemployed, hungry and desperate, and later when they were intoxicated by			William L. Shirer
ee047dc	But the fact remains that according to the testimony of one of his own Nazi followers in the column, the physician Dr. Walther Schulz, which was supported by several other witnesses, Hitler "was the first to get up and turn back," leaving his dead and wounded comrades lying in the street. He"			William L. Shirer
19793b3	Germany no longer feels bound by the Locarno Treaty. In the interest of the primitive rights of its people to the security of their frontier and the safeguarding of their defence, the German Government has re-established, as from today, the absolute and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone!" Now the six hundred deputies, personal appointees all of Hitler, little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped ha..			William L. Shirer
47f7677	If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even a moderate resistance.			William L. Shirer
b8e7e74	He made it clear enough that there would be no "democratic nonsense" and that the Third Reich would be ruled by the Fuehrerprinzip, the leadership principle--that is, that it would be a dictatorship."			William L. Shirer
9a89f50	This is bad luck for radio. Berlin reports Hitler has demanded--and Chamberlain more or less accepted--a plebiscite for the Sudeteners. The government here says it is out of the question. But they are afraid that is what happened at Berchtesgaden. In other words that Mr. Chamberlain has sold them down the river.			William L. Shirer
4a9c0eb	BERLIN, October 29 I've been looking into what Germans are reading these dark days. Among novels the three best-sellers are: (1) Gone with the Wind, translated as Vom Winde Verweht--literally "From the Wind Blown About"; (2) Cronin's Citadel; (3) Beyond Sing the Woods, by Trygve Gulbranssen, a young Norwegian author. Note that all three novels are by foreign authors, one by an Englishman. Most sought-after non-fiction books are: (1) The Col..			William L. Shirer
578c332	People are talking about the action of the British yesterday in sinking three French battleships in Oran to save them from falling into the hands of the Germans. The French, who have sunk to a depth below your imagination, say they will break relations with Britain. They say they trusted Hitler's word not to use the French fleet against Britain. Pitiful. And yet there will be great bitterness throughout France. The Entente Cordiale is dead...			William L. Shirer
595c994	We broadcast from coast to coast every utterance of Hitler, but the German people are not permitted to know a word of what Roosevelt speaks.		war-reporting world-war-two	William L. Shirer
300ab59	Coffee, ever since it became impossible to buy it in Germany, has assumed a weird importance in one's life.		war-reporting world-war-two	William L. Shirer
4c22f15	About ten o'clock tonight I got caught in a mob of ten thousand hysterics who jammed the moat in front of Hitler's hotel, shouting: "We want our Fuhrer." I was a little shocked at the faces, especially those of the women, when Hitler finally appeared on the balcony for a moment. They reminded me of the crazed expressions I saw once in the back country of Louisiana on the faces of some Holy Rollers who were about to hit the trail. They looke..			William L. Shirer
9ed7f09	NUREMBERG, September 5 I'm beginning to comprehend, I think, some of the reasons for Hitler's astounding success. Borrowing a chapter from the Roman church, he is restoring pageantry and colour and mysticism to the drab lives of twentieth-century Germans.			William L. Shirer
a61f77c	If you have sacrificed my nation to preserve the peace of the world," he finally said, "I will be the first to applaud you. But if not, gentlemen, God help your souls!"			William L. Shirer
baa2a67	Himmler announced today that a Polish farm labourer had been hanged for sleeping with a German woman. No race pollution is to be permitted. Another			William L. Shirer
71dabe7	To sum up these three years: Personally, they have not been unhappy ones, though the shadow of Nazi fanaticism, sadism, persecution, regimentation, terror, brutality, suppression, militarism, and preparation for war has hung over all our lives, like a dark, brooding cloud that never clears.			William L. Shirer
d7da12e	Nietzsche, with his grotesque exaggeration, goes much further. The strong men, the masters, regain the pure conscience of a beast of prey; monsters filled with joy, they can return from a fearful succession of murder, arson, rape and torture with the same joy in their hearts, the same contentment in their souls as if they had indulged in some student's rag... When a man is capable of commanding, when he is by nature a "Master," when he is v..			William L. Shirer
bad5bdf	But Germany is stronger than her enemies realize. True, it is a poor country in raw materials and agriculture; but it is making up for this poverty in aggressiveness of spirit, ruthless state planning, concentrated direction of effort, and the building up of a mighty military machine with which it can back up its aggressive spirit. True, too, that this past winter we have seen long lines of sullen people before the food shops, that there is..			William L. Shirer
1c206be	Much of what is going on and will go on could be learned by the outside world from Mein Kampf, the Bible and Koran together of the Third Reich. But--amazingly--there is no decent translation of it in English or French, and Hitler will not allow one to be made, which is understandable, for it would shock many in the West. How many visiting butter-and-egg men have I told that the Nazi goal is domination! They laughed.			William L. Shirer
35d6eee	Footnote to May 20.--Returning from Brussels to Aachen, we ran across a batch of British prisoners. It was somewhere in the Dutch province of Limburg, a suburb, I think, of Maastricht. They were herded together in the brick-paved yard of a disused factory. We stopped and went over and talked to them. They were a sad sight. Prisoners always are, especially right after a battle. Some obviously shell-shocked, some wounded, all dead tired. But ..			William L. Shirer
78c3d9f	VIENNA, March 11-12 (4 a.m.) The worst has happened! Schuschnigg is out. The Nazis are in. The Reichswehr is invading Austria. Hitler has broken a dozen solemn promises, pledges, treaties. And Austria is finished. Beautiful, tragic, civilized Austria! Gone. Done to death in the brief moment of an afternoon. This afternoon.			William L. Shirer
0534190	About half of them were from offices in Liverpool; the rest from London offices. Their military training had begun nine months before, they said, when the war started. But it had not, as you could see, made up for the bad diet, the lack of fresh air and sun and physical training, of the post-war years. Thirty yards away German infantry were marching up the road towards the front. I could not help comparing them with these British lads. The ..			William L. Shirer
f0cd478	never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.			William L. Shirer
2b0a63a	Such were the men whom Hitler gathered around him in the early years for his drive to become dictator of a nation which had given the world a Luther, a Kant, a Goethe and a Schiller, a Bach, a Beethoven and a Brahms.			William L. Shirer
2f7ca1b	But certain difficulties lay in his way if he were himself to lead the counterrevolution, and he was not much interested in it unless he was.			William L. Shirer
e78cb26	In Moscow last night Ribbentrop and Molotov signed a treaty and a declaration of purpose. The text of the latter tells the whole story: "After the German government and the government of the U.S.S.R., through a treaty signed today, definitely solved questions resulting from the disintegration of the Polish state and thereby established a secure foundation for permanent peace in eastern Europe, they jointly voice their opinion that it would ..			William L. Shirer
6da553c	I miss the old Berlin of the Republic, the care-free, emancipated, civilized air, the snubnosed young women with short-bobbed hair and the young men with either cropped or long hair--it made no difference--who sat up all night with you and discussed anything with intelligence and passion. The constant Heil Hitler's, clicking of heels, and brown-shirted storm troopers or black-coated S.S. guards marching up and down the street grate me, thou..			William L. Shirer
39d41f4	Benito Mussolini, tired and senile though he was only going on sixty, he who had strutted so arrogantly across Europe's stage for two decades, was at the end of his rope. When he returned to Rome he found much worse than the aftermath of the first heavy bombing.			William L. Shirer
0282ce0	Not a gun was fired--not even by the Fascist militia--to save him. Not a voice was raised in his defense. No one seemed to mind the humiliating nature of his departure--being hauled away from the King's presence to jail in an ambulance. On the contrary, there was general rejoicing at his fall. Fascism itself collapsed as easily as its founder.			William L. Shirer
857510d	So fell, ignominiously, the modern Roman Caesar, a bellicose-sounding man of the twentieth century who had known how to profit from its confusions and despair, but who underneath the gaudy facade was made largely of sawdust. As			William L. Shirer
cf503b3	But as dictator he had made the fatal mistake of seeking to make a martial, imperial Great Power of a country which lacked the industrial resources to become one and whose people, unlike the Germans, were too civilized, too sophisticated, too down to earth to be attracted by such false ambitions. The Italian people, at heart, had never, like the Germans, embraced fascism. They had merely suffered it, knowing that it was a passing phase, and..			William L. Shirer
8059c39	Who were these leaders? What was the strength of the storm troops they were throwing into the streets? And what exactly were they up to? I worked long hours those first weeks in Paris to try to find out. It was not easy. Even the government and the police, as the rioting grew day after day, seemed to be ignorant and confused about the forces opposing them. The origins of these forces went back much farther than I had suspected. As early as ..			William L. Shirer
d772256	The depression which spread over the world like a great conflagration toward the end of 1929 gave Adolf Hitler his opportunity, and he made the most of it. Like most great revolutionaries he could thrive only in evil times, at first when the masses were unemployed, hungry and desperate, and later when they were intoxicated by war.			William L. Shirer
2008db6	The hard-pressed people were demanding a way out of their sorry predicament. The millions of unemployed wanted jobs. The shopkeepers wanted help. Some four million youths who had come of voting age since the last election wanted some prospect of a future that would at least give them a living. To all the millions of discontented Hitler in a whirlwind campaign offered what seemed to them, in their misery, some measure of hope. He would make ..			William L. Shirer
42e627e	the Almighty had called upon him to do in this cataclysmic world and the philosophy, the Weltanschauung, that			William L. Shirer
b95121f	Roosevelt: "Please for the sake of the future, nail every Communist"			William L. Shirer
6962a3e	NBC had cleaned out its last two liberal commentators, John Vandercook and Bob St. John, the year before. CBS recently had edged Quincy Howe out of his 6 P.M. daily spot as soon as a sponsor had bought it and had given it to Eric Sevareid, the new head of the Washington bureau. The era of McCarthy lay just ahead, but already there were signs foreshadowing it. I had not taken the change of climate as seriously perhaps as I should. I had been..			William L. Shirer
0abc0d9	At home, American critics of that system, especially in the American Medical Association, had derided British "socialized medicine" as impossible and unwanted. But this was not true. It was extremely popular among all classes, all parties. While I was in England, even the Conservative party, girding"			William L. Shirer
0c77514	Every person's life is of importance to himself, of course: ... But in the universe of infinite space and time, it is insignificant. ... Perhaps Carl Becker, the historian, and one of the most civilized men I ever knew, grasped best our piddling place in the infinite. Man [he wrote] is but a foundling in the cosmos, abandoned by the forces that created him. Unparented, unassisted and undirected by omniscient or benevolent authority, he mus..		humanity life	William L. Shirer
851fee2	Three youths in Hanover who snatched a lady's handbag in the black-out have been sentenced to death.			William L. Shirer
56ef03c	In the summer of 1931," Otto Dietrich, Hitler's press chief first for the party and later for the Reich, relates, "the Fuehrer suddenly decided to concentrate systematically on cultivating the influential industrial magnates."14 What magnates were they? Their identity was a secret which was kept from all but the inner circle around the Leader. The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow Strasser, Goebbels and the crank F..			William L. Shirer
973f845	The masses of the people, however, did not realize how much the industrial tycoons, the Army and the State were benefiting from the ruin of the currency. All they knew was that a large bank account could not buy a straggly bunch of carrots, a half peck of potatoes, a few ounces of sugar, a pound of flour. They knew that as individuals they were bankrupt. And they knew hunger when it gnawed at them, as it did daily. In their misery and hopel..			William L. Shirer
199f540	The secret police announced that two men were shot for "resisting arrest" yesterday. One of them, it is stated, was trying to induce some German workers to lay down their tools in an important armament factory. Himmler now has power to shoot anyone he likes without trial."			William L. Shirer
6665f60	All of us in the West, our political leaders and our newspapers above all, had underestimated Adolf Hitler and his domination of this land and its people. His ideas might seem half-baked and often evil - to me they did. But the unpleasant fact was not only that he believed in them, fanatically, but that he was persuading the German people to believe in them. He might seem like a demagogue... but his oratory, his drive, his zeal, his iron wi..		history politics nazism	William L. Shirer

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