The Berlin Diaries Of Marie Vassiltchikov Part Two

July to December 1943

Now the daily diary resumes with dramatic descriptions of the air raids and their effects on the populace, buildings, and locations.

“Wednesday, 28 July. Hamburg is being bombed daily. There are very many victims and it is already so badly hit that practically the whole town is being evacuated. There are stories of little children wandering around the streets calling for their parents. The mothers are presumed dead, the fathers are at the front, so nobody can identify them. The NSV [the Nazi Social Service] seem to be taking things in hand, but the difficulties are enormous.”

“Sunday, 24 October……I have a new urgent assignment: the translation of the captions for a large number of photographs of the remains of some. 4,000 Polish officers found murdered by the Soviets in Katyn forest near Smolensk…… Roosevelt has expressed the wish to receive the full, unadulterated story – a thing he is, apparently unable to do in the States because his entourage….. intercept and suppress any report unfavourable to the Soviet Union.”

“Wednesday, 24 November…….She soon returned with an old lady on her arm, wrapped in a white shawl. She had stumbled into her at the street corner and, peering into her grimy face, had recognised her own eighty-year-old mother, who had been trying to reach her, walking through the burning town all night…..”

“Friday, 26 November……. The park looked like a battlefield in France in the 1914-1918 war, the trees stark and gaunt and broken-off branches everywhere, over which we had to clamber…… These last days innumerable inscriptions in chalk have appeared on the blackened walls of wrecked houses: [e.g. ‘Dearest Frau B, where are you? I have been looking for you everywhere….. or ‘[Everyone from this cellar has been saved!’]….. Gradually as people return to their homes and read these messages, answers start to appear, chalked underneath…..”

“Saturday, 27 November…….Everywhere in town large fires are still burning in the backyards and it is, apparently, impossible to put them out. These are Berlin’s recently-delivered coal supplies for the winter! We often stop before them to warm our hands, for these days it is colder indoors than out…… “

January to 18 July 1944

This section continues with details of the worsening daily lives of Germany’s residents and the build up to 20th July.

” Sunday, 2 January …..My nerves are not improving and I was jolly frightened when some bombs came whizzing down in our vicinity. Also, having to sit up every night, sometimes for hours, is becoming exhausting.”

” Monday, 3 January ……I find the harassed faces of the people more depressing even than the desolate aspect of the town. It must be this constant insomnia, that never gives one time to recuperate, be it only a little.”

” Tuesday, 4 January…… Haeften himself asked Loremarie to quickly fetch some twenty-pfennig stamps for him. She fund none and came back trailing a snake of one-pfennig stamps in her wake…..”

” Sunday, 30 January ….. I am deeply depressed: Tatiana has still no news of Paul Metternich and Heinrich Wttgenstein is dead…..”

” Sunday, 6 February …. On 26 December, our old postman….. fell ill with pneumonia. His family had been evacuated, so Maria and Heinz brought the old man downstairs and fixed up an improvised bed in the kitchen. No doctor could be reached and he died on 28th……he lay in state on the kitchen table, surrounded by candles….[ for another six days ]”

” Friday, 23 June…….The journey was pretty awful. At Görlitz I had to wait hours for the Dresden train and when it arrived I could hardly squeeze in. Somebody tossed a bouncing baby into my arms and jumped into another carriage and I had to hold it all the way to Dresden. It screamed and fidgeted and I was in agony….. At Dresden the mother retrieved the infant and I waited another three hours for a train…..”

” Sunday, 2 July…. After dinner we had a long discussion with a famous zoologist about the best way to get rid of Adolf. He said that in India natives use tigers’ whiskers chopped very fine and mixed with food. The victim dies a few days later and nobody can detect the cause. But where do we find a tiger’s whiskers?…..”

” Monday, 10 July…… we discussed the coming events which, he told me, are now imminent…….I continue to find that too much time is being lost perfecting the details, whereas to me only one thing is really important now – the physical elimination of the man…….”

19 July to September 1944

Here the author relates the failure of the 20th July plot and the savage retribution meted out to many, involved or not.

” Thursday, 20 July…… Gottfried Bismarck burst in, bright red spots on his cheeks….He told me I should not worry, that in a few days everything would be settled…..

“Count Claus Schenck von Stauffenberg, colonel on the General Staff, had put a bomb at Hitler’s feet during a conference at Supreme HQ at Rastenberg in East Prussia. It had gone off and Adolf was dead….

“….it was past six o’clock…… “There has just been an announcement on the radio: “A Count Stauffenberg has attempted to murder the Führer, but Providence saved him…..”

” To the very end of her life Missie was reluctant to admit how much she knew about Count von Stauffenberg’s plot prior to 20 July. But the many random hints she keeps inadvertently dropping, starting with that first mention of ‘The Conspiracy’ on 2 August 1943, through the plotters’ persistent urging that she help keep Loremarie Schönburg away from Berlin, and ending with that all-revealing entry of 19 July 1944 with its ‘We [i.e. Adam von Trott and she] agreed not to meet again until Friday’, show that she was far better informed than she claimed and that she even knew the exact date of the planned coup!”(George V.)

Large scale arrests of actual or suspected plotters and their families followed immediately. “Many of those arrested were indeed not only savagely beaten but cruelly tortured, the most common practice being finger-screws, spiked leggings and even the medieval ‘rack’. It is to the lasting credit of the 20th July plotters that only a few were broken…..” (George V.)

A People’s Court was convened to rival Stalin’s Moscow Show Trials. Almost all those summoned were summarily executed. ” Thursday, 22 August ….. It appears they are not simply hanged, but are slowly strangled with piano wire on butchers’ hooks and, to prolong their agony, are given heart booster injections…..”

“To this day, the exact number of those executed in connection with the 20th July Plot remains a subject of controversy. According to official Nazi sources those arrested after the coup numbered some 7,000. A total of 5,764 persons were charged with high treason and were executed in 1944 and a further 5, 684 in the five remaining months of Nazi rule in 1945….” (George V.)

January to September 1945

With the Russians advancing on Vienna and with constant air raids to endure, Missie worked as a hospital army nurse and eventually as an escort to many refugee children and tells of her ultimate journey to freedom.

EPILOGUE

Tells of Missie’s marriage to American Peter G. Harnden on 28th January 1946, and brings us up to date with many more of the protagonists of the diary.

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