From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William L. Shirer, 1960, 2011) p778-80
Berlin was well defended by two great rings of antiaircraft and for three hours while the visiting bombers droned above the clouds, which prevented the hundreds of searchlight batteries from picking them up, the flak fire was the most intense I had ever seen. But not a single plane was brought down. The British also dropped a few leaflets saying that “the war which Hitler started will go on, and it will last as long as Hitler does.” This was good propaganda, but the thud of exploding bombs was better.
The R.A.F. came over in greater force on the night of August 28-29 and, as I noted in my diary, “for the first time killed Germans in the capital of the Reich.” The official count was ten killed and twenty-nine wounded. The Nazi bigwigs were outraged. Goebbels, who had ordered the press to publish only a few lines on the first attack, now gave instructions to cry out at the “brutality” of the British flyers in attacking the defenseless women and children of Berlin. Most of the capital’s dailies carried the same headline: COWARDLY BRITISH ATTACK. Two nights later, after the third raid, the headlines read: BRITISH AIR PIRATES OVER BERLIN!
The main effect of a week of constant British night bombings [I wrote in my diary on September 1] has been to spread great disillusionment among the people and sow doubt in their minds . . . Actually the bombings have not been very deadly.
September 1 was the first anniversary of the beginning of the war. I noted the mood of the people, aside from their frayed nerves at having been robbed of their sleep and frightened by the surprise bombings and the terrific din of the flak.
In this year German arms have achieved victories never equaled even in the brilliant military history of this aggressive, militaristic nation. And yet the war is not yet over or won. And it was on this aspect that people’s minds were concentrated today. They long for peace. And they want it before the winter comes.
Hitler deemed it necessary to address them on September 4 on the occasion of the opening of the Winterhilfe campaign at the Sportpalast. His appearance there was kept secret to the last moment, apparently out of fear that enemy planes might take advantage of the cloud cover and break up the meeting, though it was held in the afternoon, an hour before dark.
I have rarely seen the Nazi dictator in a more sarcastic mood or so given to what the German people regarded as humor, though Hitler was essentially a humorless man. He described Churchill as “that noted war correspondent.” For “a character like Duff Cooper,” he said, “there is no word in conventional German. Only the Bavarians have a word that adequately describes this type of man, and that is Krampfhenne,” which might be translated as “a nervous old hen.”
The babbling of Mr. Churchill or of Mr. Eden [he said] – reverence for old age forbids the mention of Mr. Chamberlain – doesn’t mean a thing to the German people. At best, it makes them laugh.
And Hitler proceeded to make his audience, which consisted mostly of women nurses and social workers, laugh – and then applaud hysterically. He was faced with the problem of answering two questions uppermost in the minds of the German people: When would Britain be invaded, and What would be done about the night bombings of Berlin and other German cities? As to the first:
In England they’re filled with curiosity and keep asking, “Why doesn’t he come?” Be calm. Be calm. He’s coming! He’s coming!
His listeners found that crack very funny, but they also believed that it was an unequivocal pledge. As to the bombings, he began by a typical falsification and ended with a dire threat:
Just now . . . Mr. Churchill is demonstrating his new brain child, the night air raid. Mr. Churchill is carrying out these raids not because they promise to be highly effective, but because his Air Force cannot fly over Germany in daylight . . . whereas German planes are over English soil every day . . . Whenever the Englishman sees a light, he drops a bomb . . . on residential districts, farms and villages.
And then came the threat.
For three months I did not answer because I believed that such madness would be stopped. Mr. Churchill took this for a sign of weakness. We are now answering night for night.
When the British Air Force drops two or three or four thousand kilograms of bombs, then we will in one night drop 150-, 230-, 300 or 400,000 kilograms.
At this point, according to my diary, Hitler had to pause because of the hysterical applause of the German women listeners.
“When they declare,” Hitler continued, “that they will increase their attacks on our cities, then we will raze their cities to the ground.” At this, I noted, the young ladies were quite beside themselves and applauded phrenetically. When they had recovered, he added, “We will stop the handiwork of these night air pirates, so help us God!”
On hearing this, I also noted. “the young German women hopped to their feet and, their breasts heaving, screamed their approval!”
“The hour will come,” Hitler concluded, “when one of us will break, and it will not be National Socialist Germany!” At this, I finally noted, “the raving maidens kept their heads sufficiently to break their wild shouts of joy with a chorus of ‘Never! Never!’ ”
Ciano in Rome, listening to the broadcast, which was made from records some hours later, confessed to being perplexed. “Hitler must be nervous,” he concluded.35
His nerves were a factor in the fatal decision to switch the Luftwaffe’s winning daylight attacks on the R.A.F. to massive night bombings of London. This was a political as well as a military decision, made in part to revenge the bombings of Berlin and other German cities (which were but pinpricks compared to what the Luftwaffe was doing to Britain’s cities) and to destroy the will of the British to resist by razing their capital. If it succeeded, and Hitler and Goebbels had no doubt it would, an invasion might not be necessary.
And so on the late afternoon of September 7 the great air attack on London began. The Germans threw in, as we have seen,* 625 bombers and 648 fighters. At about 5 P.M. that Saturday the first wave of 320 bombers, protected by every lighter the Germans had, flew up the Thames and began to drop their bombs on Woolwich Arsenal, various gas works, power stations, depots and mile upon mile of docks. The whole vast area was soon a mass of flames. At one locality, Silvertown, the population was surrounded by fire and had to be evacuated by water. At 8:10 P.M., after dark, at second wave of 250 bombers arrived and resumed the attack, which was kept up by successive waves until dawn at 4:30 on Sunday morning. The next evening at 7:30, the attack was renewed by two hundred bombers and continued throughout the night. Some 842 persons were killed and 2,347 wounded, according to the official British historian, during these first two nights, and vast damage was inflicted on the sprawling city.“ The assault went on all the following week, night after night.
And then, stimulated by its successes, or what it thought were such, the Luftwaffe decided to carry out a great daylight assault on the battered, burning capital. This led on Sunday, September 15, to one of the decisive battles of the war.
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