German Diary 1936

Tim’s Diary 1936 tour of Germany etc with Ted.

 [Notes by Hugh Michael Sandars

Main feature is their visit to one of the notorious Hitler Nuremburg Rallies  and Tim’s assessment of Hitler.

Also

 Distances travelled – 16 days London – Brussels – Berlin – Prague – Innsbruck – Nuremburg – Italy  back to Nuremburg – Cologne I suspect typical of 30s idea of touring by car.  But did admit both tired! People having tea at airport watching aeroplanes also sign of the times

Tim’s assessment of terrain from military viewpoint and of German military etc organisations and troops – partly atmosphere of likely war, partly normal practice from travelling and working in India China North West Frontier etc   .

Always had lunch and dinner – no sandwiches!

 Photos not kept – all are of sights still visible on websites. Poignant are the Berlin stadia Reichssportsfeld & Olympic which when he was in Berlin 1951/2 were scene of horse shows and parades with the stables housing the British Berlin Saddle Club.]

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Aug 29.  Dined with Ted at Jules Hotel & motored to Dover – Lord Warden Hotel expensive and nasty.

Aug 30.  The Dover coast would be difficult to make a landing on …cliffs sheer.  Ostend – Brussels – country dull – dined at Plaza – night Monaco Hotel.

31 Aug.  Much impressed with parks .. compare favourably with facilities for Londoners.  Belgian Congo Museum – animals interested me and musical instruments interested Ted…obscene figures…. the Belgians only attempt to deal with a fringe near the rivers, .. .  Malmedy which seems to be entirely German; German notices and boys giving the Nazi salute…

Much impressed with the beauty of the girls … very fair type…Men the young ones looked lean & hard ..some of the older men have the heavy Bismarkian type of face.

My first impression of Germany was of a light hearted happy people…may be because fine summer evening ..complete lack of uniforms and Hitler salutes. No apparent sign of modern efficiency ….horses & carts.

Coblenz –  dined on verandah on Rhine gaiety rather forced …some drunks … ….hotel….not much welcomed….resort of a certain set .. pictures of Fuhrer and Hindenburg.

 Sep 1.  Hotel Preuss. …to Cologne…Reichsautobahn …dull apart from apart from Rhine…cheered by good lunch …  to  Kassell  enormous amount of woodland… tea at Marburgh..people look hard and fit… dull town in a dull valley but bedrooms with private bathrooms for eight marks each.

 2^nd  crossed the Harz mountains lunched at Braunleben…top of the mountains ..charabanc full fo hausfrauen arrived..  Leipzig….Baumesse (fair) on…met American ..interesting about politics ..whether Roosevelt Fair Deal win, over big business.

3^rd  Monument to Battle of L …drive dull….miles of pave roads….  Potsdam… HQ of the German Guards …interesting garrison museum, lunched in restaurant with balcony overlooking river – 3/4 life size oil of Frederick the Great with all his generals. Stadtpalast….company of mechanised troops passed through...looked very efficient and always wear steel helmets ..motor cycles with sidecars & light machine guns & small cars like our Austins for officers .Most of their front line transport seems to be six wheeled…..cars & trucks very like ours ..I believe they have modelled their MT on ours.

Kaisers Palace… appalling ..worst taste…

Berlin ..dined at Kranzler restaurant Unter Den Linden.. ..cinema ..night life . .unsuccessful….too early .. .club only one purpose …

Places of interest …new Air Ministry impressive …Reichstag, Tiergarten… lunched on Kurfurstendamm .. there to see sights but reluctantly dragged by Ted to play golf at Wannsee  ..got there by Avus one of the new trunk roads also used for motor racing …dined Taube .. nightlife,,.. place with telephones on tables …quite fun.

5^th.  Stadpalast ..Kaiser’s …..room where Kaiser signed order to mobilise contained a good many English books & a copy of De Lisle on Polo…impression of the people of Berlin ..extremely well behaved and disciplined…. perhaps a  little bored……one seldom sees a well dressed man or woman .. traffic problem negligible compared with London. No evidence of reason why so well mannered….police charming …  few SA or SS men and no saluting…continue to be much impressed by the soldiers …fine physique and look intelligent and more responsible than ours. I should think they are older… always perfectly turned out and their officers give the impression of being full time soldiers.

 5^th…. to Dresden small hotel ..economy having suddenly gripped Ted… incongruous photo of Fuhrer …

At the next table a greybeard who will never see 75 again had or was in the process of getting engaged  to an enormous woman than whom I have never seen anyone more ugly.  She will not see 50 again but both were most coy and skittish; also tight.  The singer came down to their ta ble & sang love songs to them winking at us….

 I was most interested in a young German officer who came in…his girl a lady.. I fancy these German officers hold to themselves a good deal & the right ones have held to their caste.

Picture galley….mostly flesh and fat and ghastly wounds,, ..martyrs… Marillo Madonna with eyes that follow one round…

 6^th.  To Prague… roads excellent to German frontier … and as there is no traffic on them must be strategic… should be prosperous but is not for political reasons… …like Derbyshire….trees small which is always ugly… cabaret …excellent. People gloomy and half alive Ted thought they should be under Germany but I thought they would hate it.   If they want to keep their streets dirty why shouldn’t they …walking through old part was a pleasure..

 6^th  Sunday.. walked to bridge… Prague sombre beauty… centres on river castle… cathedral …. Scruffiest soldiers I have ever seen also some smart …..officers rather Ruritanian dress…..men look unintelligent but tough…

From Prague to Nuremburgh (sic). Here we met Nazism in earnest for the first time. Reichsparteitag next day .. .. streets thronged with SS in their black uniforms & SA in brown.

 7^th …The SS are Hitler’s own Army. They are specially chosen young men who have to join through a waiting list and probation.  They look very well drilled , of excellent physique….as a potential army very good stuff indeed.  The Brownshirts SA are untidy & badly turned out & as they may be of any age some have not the figures for uniforms. They are the core of the party in every remote part of Germany.

The Arbeitsdienst are very smart indeed.  They are young men from every class who do six months in the Labour Corps some voluntary some compulsory. They carry spades and wear a smart khaki uniform with Austrian pattern forage cap. We are going to return on Friday to see a Hitler meeting.

Nurenburgh streets on Sunday evening were full of cheerful people all strolling along in their uniforms & saluting each other.  The soldiers most meticulous in saluting the others.

… Castle etc .. We saw the Eisener Madchen; it has had its spikes removed.. The museum of instruments of torture in which it stands is complete and filled me with a great depression.

In the afternoon we went to Munich …disappointed ..had hear so much about it….beastly weather…both tired and Ted had flu.

9^th.  We left early for Innsbruck…. after lunch we went through the Brenner Pass and round through Bolzano and Merano.  Hills well wooded and smaller and more conventional than the Himalayas. The pass itself is not very high but the approaches on both sides are very difficult…. Hills some of which are rock at the top & for which one would need climbing gear rise to2000′ above the road…  After taking one hill one would be faced with the next as a fresh operation. … The Italian manoeuvres at Bolzano must have been entirely mountain warfare.

We got back to Innsbruck  at 11 pm having sampled ‘wurzel’ at a small inn …not good.

10^{th ….}     motored down Inn valley …lunch at Kitzbuhel …  back to Munich for a late dinner.

12^th Nurnberg….likely to b full so took rooms at hotel in Ansbach.  Afternoon to Nurnberg to attend the rally.  …the Fuhrer was going to address leaders from all parts of Germany of the SA and 25,000 colours were to be present. … roads blocked 3-4 km from stadium Zeppelinweise.  The SA were moving to the stadium some 20-30 abreast – abandoned the car at small garage who refused payment and took a train.

We had a fine conversation with a little bespectacled man of the S A on our way…. He was most helpful and exuded a rather childish enthusiasm & pride in the movement.

… I sat next to an Indian wearing a Ghandi cap.  He was from Calcutta and was able as he spoke German to give me much useful information about SS and SA; it is almost impossible to ask hall porters & people about these: they change the conversation when asked for an explanation. He wanted to know how fascism and Freemasonry fared in England.

The Fuhrer was half an hour late; I think this was deliberate to work up our enthusiasm, but the S A must have been very cold ….suddenly we were in a dome of striped blue; 160 searchlights from all round the arena shone to a point above our heads.  Next we saw through gaps in the stadium the black cars of the Fuhrer & his entourage driving round the outside of the stadium to the back of the platform. There was faint cheering from those in the top row who could see out behind.  A minute or two later the Fuhrer and a following of about 100 appeared on the platform.  They walked rapidly down the steps of the platform up the central aisle& onto the tribunal.  It was easy to pick out Hitler; he was distinguishable by his confident bearing and by the way in which he swung his right arm.  My previous impression of Hitler drawn no doubt from the comic press were immediately reversed.  He is a figure of very great dignity.  The reception was not as noisy as I had expected but no doubt was lost to some extent in the open air and coming as he did from the back the cheers were only given as he drew level with the men.  As he arrived at the Tribunal there was music from a large massed band including Deutschland uber Alles.

After this a solid cascade of Nazi banners with the searchlights glittering on their metal tops swept over the platform at the back through gaps that had been left in the seating.  These red and sparkling waves advanced slowly filling the central aisle and the gaps which had been left between columns. As they reached the front we could hear their marching and could see that they were doing the goose step.  When they got level with the front of the columns they halted & now all the gaps were filled with banners.

Dr Ley, the organiser of the rally now spoke in welcome to the Fuhrer.  He spoke quickly rantingly & dramatically; the style was admirably calculated as a foil to Hitler’s. Dr Ley stopped and the climax of the evening had arrived, the Fuhrer was speaking.

He commenced his speech with several short sentences spoken slowly with a considerable pause between each sentence & then he suddenly got into his stride.  My German was not good enough to follow very much of what he said, though my Indian friend interpreted some and I read the rest in the German papers next day.  But one realised that he is a very great speaker.  His sentences were beautifully balanced and he had the trick of appearing to deliberate before choosing the right very telling word.  The applause was not as great as I had expected and there was no hysteria.  He only paused for applause about 5 times in a speech of about half an hour.   Only two or three times did he become theatrical or attempt to work his audience up to great enthusiasm.  On the whole the impression was of a man giving very good sound advice.  An appeal to the intellect not to the heart. 

 The gist of his speech was roughly as follows.  Look at the wonderful way in which Nazism has rebuilt Germany.  Germany is now strong, our latest act has been to rearm.  We can now defeat our enemy if he attacks – and here was somewhat of a tirade against Bolshevism – but we do not want to fight – we want to work and to bring up our young in the right way.  The speech also contained a tirade against the Jews and he finished by saying that he regretted that he was unable to meet all of them & that they could not all meet & know him but they were all in his heart always.

Throughout the speech there was a good deal of I.  It was I on the one hand, not the party, and you on the other.

At the end of the meeting Hitler descended from the Tribunal.  There was a certain amount of Heiling.  He came down our side & we were able to get a good view of him from 50x or so.  When he got to the bottom of the tribunal he shook hands with Dr Ley the organiser & with hess who is head of the S A & then with his followers drove off in the front of an open car standing up.

The Germans had listened to the Fuhrer intently but more or less in silence.  Now, when we broke up everyone was in the best of form; full of bonhomie and very pleased with themselves.  It was a spectacle of German kindliness at its best.  It was like the end of a tattoo or a close win to the home side with a football crowd.  We had coffee at an open air restaurant at the Zeppelinweise. There was a notice “Jews are not served here”

The arrangements for getting away were not good .  As no cars were allowed, the only trains were inadequate & all roads were blocked by bodies of S A still more or less formed. We therefore went on foot & marched part of the way in the column of the SS.  They were singing.  They have a song which goes for a few bars then stops & one only hears the tramp of marching & then it starts again for a few bars.  Then we got mixed up wih the SA standard bearers until finally after about 2½ miles walking we got back to our car & so to Ansbach. 

Sept 12^th .  I was to go in the afternoon. So we went  to Rothenburgh.  This is an old walled village town.  The most picturesque thing that I have seen in Germany. Some wonderful old houses & towers & part of the wall.

Troops were doing manoeuvres round here.   There was a constant flow of m/c D Rs and of officers cars.   I saw some cavalry, about a troop.  Their horses were of the Indian C D type & their condition would have shocked an English vet, but no doubt they are hardy.

Sept 13^th I spent the morning in Cologne. …. In the afternoon I went to the Aerodrome.  There was a large crowd of spectators having tea.  Visibility was only fair.  We changed planes in Brussels. My chief impression of the journey was the strip cultivation of the continent compared with the fields and hedges of England which looked so much less tidy.  One saw too what wonderful fighting country the centre of Belgium is.

We arrived over London just as it was dark.  It was a Sunday evening & the lights & particularly the lights of the cars returning to London were fascinating.

I had dinner with Sgt Slow who had come to meet me at the Hotel overlooking the aerodrome.  We watched other planes arriving.

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