Germany and Prague 1938

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Germany 1937, the Goering stories

Germany 1937

Schramberg 1938

Germany 1938

Germany and Prague 1938

Germany 1939

Germany 1938

In December of that year south-east England, the Channel and the North Sea were hit by force ten gales and for some days all aircraft were grounded and none of the Dover, Folkestone or Harwich boats left harbour, and all these events received international press coverage.

At that time of international tension and muzzled press in Germany, many many Germans, especially the business classes relied on the continental edition of the Times, which was printed on a beautiful thin paper and came over by air, so that one could buy it from the newspaper stands in Mannheim quite early in the morning.

The plane deliveries restarted while the storms were still raging and when I arrived back at my hotel one evening I found fifteen letters waiting for me from all over Germany. Two friends from Holland and one from France had also not forgotten me. It was not my birthday, there were no good wishes, but all contained different sarcastic or humourous remarks and the identical cutting from the previous day's Times. A news item in two paragraphs reporting the storms was headed in heavy type:

"CONTINENT ISOLATED BY STORM".

A wonderful example, I think, of unconscious humour, which the Germans did not fail to notice.

Prague 1938

During the Munich crisis I was so certain that although a war would come, it would not be that year, so instead of coming home, I thought I would have a look at Czechoslovakia and Roumania. Having had a very interesting look at the German army on the southern border, I slept at Bratislava and set off the next morning for Prague. I must explain that I was then driving an Audi two-seater drop-head coupe, which had been exhibited at the Berlin motor show the year before. She was a beautiful car, black and white, very long, with two spare wheels, sunk rakishly into the front wings. Now in Prague as far as I could gather, everybody drives exactly where one pleases and when I saw a lorry with vegetables go the wrong side of an island, I followed it. I was getting on fine following that lorry, until at my third attempt to go the wrong side of an island, two policeman jumped out at me, letting my friend in the vegetable lorry get away with it - if it was a crime, which I did not honestly think it was. As my knowledge of Czech - an impossible language - was nil, I had recourse to my mother tongue. I gathered that the gentleman had no knowledge of that language, so I tried them in excellent French with the same result. I had been warned that the Czechs did not like talking German, but there was nothing for it, so I started off again in German. They were very uneducated Czechs, as they did not speak German either, but they were excellent mechanics because within a minute they had let out all the air from all my six tyres and with a cheery wave of the hand from one and a salute from the other, they walked off. After about ten minutes I stopped a taxi and managed to make him understand that I wanted to go to the British Embassy. Here I got hold of a Secretary, who listened to my story and was I furious during the telling of it. I had kept the taxi waiting, because I should never have found the Audi again and the Secretary followed me to the scene of the wreck. I was obviously not shooting a line, so in his car we drove to the nearest police station, where his position got him an immediate interview with the inspector. It appeared to be all a great mystery and we all three came out of the inspector's office to go back to the scene of the crime, I yelled, "There are the two bastards", since there they were standing not ten feet from us.

After less than a couple of minutes talk in Czech, the two policemen walked over to me to return my passport that I had handed to the inspector. The senior of the two policemen in perfect English asked me which language I would like to discourse in, as like most Czechs, they both spoke all of them. They apologised profusely and I must add most sincerely and as extenuating circumstances pointed out that I was driving a German car, it did have a IIIZ (Ulm-Wurttemburg) number plate, any German in Prague at that moment would try to avoid talking German and, when they did force me into German, it was as good as theirs, viz:- I was a German and got Czech treatment of Germans for going the wrong side of that island. They sent out a police tender and in a very short while my Audi was brought to the door of the cafe where the Secretary, the inspector and I were enjoying our polyglot conversation as much as our glass of Pilsen beer. I never got to Roumania.