Germany 1937

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Germany 1937, the Goering stories

Germany 1937

Schramberg 1938

Germany 1938

Germany and Prague 1938

Germany 1939

Germany 1937

In Germany during normal times the equivalent of our "Yours faithfully" at the end of a business letter is "Hochachtungevoll", which means literally "Full of the highest respect," but in the times of which I write it been replaced by the ubiquitous "Heil Hitler."

I had occasion when running the factory at Mannheim to buy fifty tons of sodium phosphate and decided the best and cheapest source would be Rotterdam, so I dictated a letter to my German secretary making the enquiry. When I signed the letter I carefully checked the technical details of which phosphate I was ordering and whether the railway rates were c.i.f. or f.o.b. and what the demurrage on the railway wagons would be and it was only the next morning, when looking through the copy letters that I noticed that she had ended the letter with "Heil Hitler". I pointed this out to her and suggested she should enquire of the office manager, an ardent Nazi, whether this was the correct protocol. Nothing could be done, whatever the office manager said, because the letter had gone.

Five days later came the answer from the firm in Rotterdam, replying to all my questions in a most businesslike way and in impeccable German. Above the signature was the single word "Hochachtungsvoll". There was, however, further down the page a P.S. which read "Koenigin Whilhelmina laesst gleichsfalls gruessen", which can best be translated by the words "Queen Whilhelmina also sends her kindest regards." Who says the Dutch have no sense of humour?

Germany 1937

After finishing some Saturday shopping in Mannheim one summer afternoon, I ran into a friend who was Professor of Botany at Heidelberg University. After accepting a lift back to Heidelberg, he asked me if I was in a desperate hurry and prepared to make a slight detour, instead of taking the Autobahn, which went south-east. So we went due south along the old Landstrasse which runs parallel with the Rhine and about half a mile from it. At about the turn of the century the course of the Rhine, which is about 400 yards wide at this point, was straightened, cutting out the many wide loops that was its natural course, leaving enormous semi-circular meadows, which are cropped for their hay for the cattle, which are always stall-fed in this part of the world.

He told me when to stop and, being no ardent botanist, watched him bending down, searching perhaps 400 yards away. I was quite happy reading the continental edition of the Times when he returned in about half-an-hour. He was carrying a flower on a three inch stalk with a few leaves. I do not remember the botanical name, but it was the size of a forget-me-not, but dark blue. I dropped him at the University and he invited me up to his room. He left me to fetch a large tome from the University library and looked up his little flower in it. It was illustrated in colour and botanically described, including its habitat. This stated that the plant was never found west of the Ural mountains and here we were perhaps a thousand miles to the west. He explained. The Huns, on one of their invasions of the west, were stopped by the Rhine and made their camp there. They always carried hay for their horses with them and it was then that the seed of our little blue flower had planted itself.