[00:00.00]Lesson Nine
[00:02.98]Text
[00:05.54]Only Three More Days
[00:09.48]William L. Shirer
[00:18.63]was limited to four words.
[00:22.47]"Only three more days!"
[00:26.31]Next day, December 3:
[00:31.76]The Foreign Office still holding up my passport and exit visa which worries me
[00:38.01]Did my last broadcast from Berlin tonight."
[00:42.27]"Berlin, December 4:Got my passport and official permission to leave tomorrow.
[00:51.04]Nothing to do now but pack. "There was one other thing to do.
[00:58.80]For weeks I had thought over how to get my diaries safely out of Berlin.
[01:05.75]At some moments I'had thought I ought to destroy them before leaving.
[01:12.02]There was enough in them to get me hanged if the Gestapo ever discovered them.
[01:18.26]The morning I got my passport and exit visa
[01:23.02]I realized I had less than twenty-four hours
[01:27.77] to figure out a way of getting my Berlin diaries out.
[01:32.73]I again thought of destroying them,
[01:36.50] but I wanted very much to keep them, if I could.
[01:41.17]Suddenly, later that morning, the solution became clear.
[01:47.34]It was risky, but life in the Third Reich had always been risky.
[01:53.58]It was worth a try.
[01:56.85]I laid out the diaries in two big steel suitcases I had bought.
[02:02.31]Over them I placed a number of my broadcast scripts,
[02:07.66]each page of which had been stamped by the military
[02:12.21]and civilian censors as passed for broadcast.
[02:15.68]On top I put a few General Staff maps I had picked up from friends.
[02:24.82]I had a couple of suitcases full of my dispatches,broadcastsand notes
[02:30.99]that I wanted to take out of the country, I said.
[02:36.87]As I was flying off early the next day,
[02:40.94]there would be no time for Gestapo officials at the airfield
[02:45.98]to go over the contents.
[02:49.22]Could they take a look now,
[02:52.59]if I brought them over; and if they approved,
[02:57.84]put a Gestapo seal on the suitcases so I wouldn't be held up at the airport?
[03:04.01]"Bring them over," the official said.
[03:08.06]After I hung up, I had some more doubts.
[03:12.44]Wasn't I tempting fate how could these hard nosed Nazi detectives
[03:20.10]help but smell out the diaries beneath my broadcasts?
[03:25.37]That would be the end of me.
[03:28.72]Maybe I had just better begin to flush them down the toilet.
[03:33.97]On the other hand ...
[03:36.92]I calculated that the secret police would seize the General Staff maps.
[03:43.48]That's why I had put them there on top.
[03:47.24]Customs officials always felt betterif they found aomething in your bags to seize
[03:53.20]and so would these Gestapo officials.
[03:57.27]Then they would look at the layers of my broadcast scriptsand
[04:03.20]I would point to the censors' stamps of approval on each page.
[04:08.35]That would make a Gestapo.official sit up and take notice.
[04:14.41]It would give me prestige in his eyes,
[04:18.38]or at least make me less suspect,foreigner though I was.
[04:24.54]I was going to gamble on their inspection ending there,
[04:29.40]before they dug deeper to my diaries.
[04:33.66]The feared Gestapo, I knew, was really not very efficient.
[04:39.30]Everything at Gestapo headquarters worked out as I had planned.
[04:44.87]The two officials who handled me seized at once my General Staff maps.
[04:51.40]I apologized.I had forgotten,I said that I had put them in.
[04:58.48]They had been very valuable to me in reporting the army's great victories.
[05:04.04]I realized I shouldn't take out General Staff maps.
[05:08.48]"What else you've got here?" one of the men skid,
[05:13.21]putting his paw on the pile of papers"The texts of my broadcast," I said,"...
[05:21.04]every page,as you can see,stamped for approval by the High Command
[05:26.61] and two ministries.
[05:29.77]"Both men studied the censors' stamps.
[05:33.82]I could see they were impressed.
[05:37.35]They put their hands in a little deeper,
[05:41.21]each man now looking into a suitcase.
[05:45.16]Soon they would reach the diaries.
[05:49.73]I now wished I had not come.I felt myself beginning to sweat.
[05:56.28]I had deliberately got myself into this jam.What a fool!
[06:02.03]"You reported on the German army? "One of the agents looked up to ask.
[06:08.20]"All the way to Paris, " I said."A great army it was,and a great story for me
[06:16.06]It will go down in history!"That settled everything
[06:21.81]They put half a dozert Gestapo seals on my suitcases.
[06:26.66]I tried not to thank them too much.
[06:30.32]Out side,I called a taxi and drove away.
[06:34.58]The last entry I would ever make in my diary from Hitler's Berlin:December 5.
[06:41.24]It was still dark and a storm was blowingwhen I left for the airport this morning
[06:48.32]As my taxi drove to the airport
[06:52.16]I wondered if my plane could take off in such weather.
[06:56.84]If the flight was canceled it might mean I would have to stay for weeks.
[07:03.39]At the customs there was literally a herd of officials.
[07:08.36]I opened the two bags with my perspnal belongings,
[07:12.72]and after pawing through them two officials chalked a sign of approval on them
[07:19.20]I noticed they were from the Gestapo.
[07:22.96]They pointed to the two suitcases full of my diaries.
[07:28.00]"Open them up!" one of them said rudely.
[07:32.68]"I can't," I said "They're sealed by the Gestapo.
[07:38.24]"I felt grateful that there were at least a half-dozen seals,
[07:43.60]The two officials talked in whispers for a moment.
[07:47.75]"Where were those bags seated?"; one of them snapped.
[07:52.50]"At Gestapo Headquarters," I said.
[07:56.16]This information impressed them.
[07:59.61]But still they seemed suspicious.
[08:03.37]"Just a minute," one said.
[08:07.13]His colleague pieked up the. phone,at a table behind them.
[08:11.78]Obviously he was checking.
[08:15.12]The man hung up, walked over to me,and without a word chalked the two suitcases
[08:22.10]I was free at last to get to the ticket counter to check my luggage.
[08:27.74]"Where to?" a Lufthansa man asked."Lisbon,"' Lsaid.
[08:34.90]The thought of the German airline delivering my diaries to me safely in Portugal
[08:40.96]beyond the reach of the last German official who could seize them,
[08:45.82]extremely pleased me.
[08:49.16]The airport tower kept postponing the departure of our plane.
[08:53.42]I went to the restaur ant and had a second,breakfast.
[08:58.75]I really was not hungry.
[09:01.91]But I had to do something to relieve the tension.
[09:06.04]I started to glance at the morning papers,
[09:10.19]I had bought automatically on arriving at the airport.
[09:14.95]"I don't have to read any of this trash anymore!" I thought.
[09:19.99]Before the end of this day, when we wouldn't have to put up with anything Reich
[09:30.04]The sense of relief I felt was tn out this one more day,
[09:34.30]and the whole over,though it would go on and on for millions of others.
[09:46.37]We had survived the Nazi horror and its mindless suppression of the human spirit
[09:53.53]But many others,I felt sadly,had not survived the Jews above all,
[10:00.97]but also the Czechs the great mass of Germans who now the Poles.
[10:06.12]Even for the great mass of Germans who supported Hitler,
[10:10.98]I felt a sort of sorrow.
[10:14.45]They did not seem to realize what the poison of Nazism was doing to them |