Lesson Nine
Text
Only Three More Days
William L. Shirer
was limited to four words.
"Only three more days!"
Next day, December 3:
The Foreign Office still holding up my passport and exit visa which worries me
Did my last broadcast from Berlin tonight."
"Berlin, December 4:Got my passport and official permission to leave tomorrow.
Nothing to do now but pack. "There was one other thing to do.
For weeks I had thought over how to get my diaries safely out of Berlin.
At some moments I'had thought I ought to destroy them before leaving.
There was enough in them to get me hanged if the Gestapo ever discovered them.
The morning I got my passport and exit visa
I realized I had less than twenty-four hours
to figure out a way of getting my Berlin diaries out.
I again thought of destroying them,
but I wanted very much to keep them, if I could.
Suddenly, later that morning, the solution became clear.
It was risky, but life in the Third Reich had always been risky.
It was worth a try.
I laid out the diaries in two big steel suitcases I had bought.
Over them I placed a number of my broadcast scripts,
each page of which had been stamped by the military
and civilian censors as passed for broadcast.
On top I put a few General Staff maps I had picked up from friends.
I had a couple of suitcases full of my dispatches,broadcastsand notes
that I wanted to take out of the country, I said.
As I was flying off early the next day,
there would be no time for Gestapo officials at the airfield
to go over the contents.
Could they take a look now,
if I brought them over; and if they approved,
put a Gestapo seal on the suitcases so I wouldn't be held up at the airport?
"Bring them over," the official said.
After I hung up, I had some more doubts.
Wasn't I tempting fate how could these hard nosed Nazi detectives
help but smell out the diaries beneath my broadcasts?
That would be the end of me.
Maybe I had just better begin to flush them down the toilet.
On the other hand ...
I calculated that the secret police would seize the General Staff maps.
That's why I had put them there on top.
Customs officials always felt betterif they found aomething in your bags to seize
and so would these Gestapo officials.
Then they would look at the layers of my broadcast scriptsand
I would point to the censors' stamps of approval on each page.
That would make a Gestapo.official sit up and take notice.
It would give me prestige in his eyes,
or at least make me less suspect,foreigner though I was.
I was going to gamble on their inspection ending there,
before they dug deeper to my diaries.
The feared Gestapo, I knew, was really not very efficient.
Everything at Gestapo headquarters worked out as I had planned.
The two officials who handled me seized at once my General Staff maps.
I apologized.I had forgotten,I said that I had put them in.
They had been very valuable to me in reporting the army's great victories.
I realized I shouldn't take out General Staff maps.
"What else you've got here?" one of the men skid,
putting his paw on the pile of papers"The texts of my broadcast," I said,"...
every page,as you can see,stamped for approval by the High Command
and two ministries.
"Both men studied the censors' stamps.
I could see they were impressed.
They put their hands in a little deeper,
each man now looking into a suitcase.
Soon they would reach the diaries.
I now wished I had not come.I felt myself beginning to sweat.
I had deliberately got myself into this jam.What a fool!
"You reported on the German army? "One of the agents looked up to ask.
"All the way to Paris, " I said."A great army it was,and a great story for me
It will go down in history!"That settled everything
They put half a dozert Gestapo seals on my suitcases.
I tried not to thank them too much.
Out side,I called a taxi and drove away.
The last entry I would ever make in my diary from Hitler's Berlin:December 5.
It was still dark and a storm was blowingwhen I left for the airport this morning
As my taxi drove to the airport
I wondered if my plane could take off in such weather.
If the flight was canceled it might mean I would have to stay for weeks.
At the customs there was literally a herd of officials.
I opened the two bags with my perspnal belongings,
and after pawing through them two officials chalked a sign of approval on them
I noticed they were from the Gestapo.
They pointed to the two suitcases full of my diaries.
"Open them up!" one of them said rudely.
"I can't," I said "They're sealed by the Gestapo.
"I felt grateful that there were at least a half-dozen seals,
The two officials talked in whispers for a moment.
"Where were those bags seated?"; one of them snapped.
"At Gestapo Headquarters," I said.
This information impressed them.
But still they seemed suspicious.
"Just a minute," one said.
His colleague pieked up the. phone,at a table behind them.
Obviously he was checking.
The man hung up, walked over to me,and without a word chalked the two suitcases
I was free at last to get to the ticket counter to check my luggage.
"Where to?" a Lufthansa man asked."Lisbon,"' Lsaid.
The thought of the German airline delivering my diaries to me safely in Portugal
beyond the reach of the last German official who could seize them,
extremely pleased me.
The airport tower kept postponing the departure of our plane.
I went to the restaur ant and had a second,breakfast.
I really was not hungry.
But I had to do something to relieve the tension.
I started to glance at the morning papers,
I had bought automatically on arriving at the airport.
"I don't have to read any of this trash anymore!" I thought.
Before the end of this day, when we wouldn't have to put up with anything Reich
The sense of relief I felt was tn out this one more day,
and the whole over,though it would go on and on for millions of others.
We had survived the Nazi horror and its mindless suppression of the human spirit
But many others,I felt sadly,had not survived the Jews above all,
but also the Czechs the great mass of Germans who now the Poles.
Even for the great mass of Germans who supported Hitler,
I felt a sort of sorrow.
They did not seem to realize what the poison of Nazism was doing to them
用户评论