Locker-Room Visit

END OF A BERLIN DIARY (369 pp.]--William L Shirer--Knopf ($3.50).

Late in 1940, when Broadcaster William Lawrence Shirer found it wise to clear out of Germany, he contrived to smuggle out several pounds of his day-to-day private notes on the Nazis and their antics. These became Berlin Diary, which nearly a million Americans bought for a sideline view of Hitler Germany in action. Now, on a return visit to Berlin, Shirer conducts his readers into the whipped team's locker room, where all is groans, whimpers--and hopes of war between the U.S. and Russia.

That some of the German people consider their defeat a dirty trick to be revenged some day is hardly spot news. Shirer, however, is convinced that the feeling runs wide and deep. As early as 1943, with the war's end still two years off, the feeling of being put upon by the world began creeping into the General Staff's hush-hush memoranda, many of which Shirer quotes practically in full. It reaches a climax in Hitler's absurd will, and is still, says Shirer, an article of faith today. Though expressed repeatedly and in a dozen ways, it adds up to one bleat: we was robbed.

Drang nach Osten. Among the documents which Shirer quotes is Hitler's pronouncement on the Russians to his supreme command, November 1939: "Russia is at present not dangerous. It is weakened by many factors today. Moreover, we have a pact with Russia. Pacts, however, are only held as long as they serve the purpose. . . . Let one think of the pact to assure our back. Now Russia has far-reaching goals; above all, the strengthening of her position in the Baltic. We can oppose Russia only when we are free in the West. [France had not then been overrun, and Hitler was still thinking of trying to cross the Channel.] Further, Russia is striving to increase her influence on the Balkans and is striving toward the Persian Gulf. That is also the goal of our foreign policy. . . ."

Shirer's comment on this is ". . . mad ... a magnificent resume of all that has gone through [Hitler's] diseased mind." Actually, it is a clear statement of the old

German Drang nach Osten, and an immoral but not insane reaction to a pact entered into cynically by both sides.

Germany's Chance. A minor street incident six years later helped convince Shirer that Germany still dreamed. Shirer, picking his way through ruined Berlin, saw two Russian soldiers arresting a mild, elderly U.S. colonel. Charges: snapping a picture of Russian MPs rounding up some black marketeers. A crowd of Germans formed out of nowhere to see the fun. ". . . Off to the jug he was marched while the Germans guffawed. Perhaps, I thought, they saw their first glimmer of hope in this little incident. In the end -- Ja? -- the Russians and Americans would never understand each other, never get along. If so, that was a German chance."

Shirer's book is at its best when it quotes from captured diaries and secret memoranda. It is poorest when he fills it with infuriatingly personal and flat comments on yesterday's news ("Second thoughts on Potsdam : It is a milestone in history"). He writes much as he broadcasted,* with a strong accent on emotion. Even the most devoted admirers of the late President Roosevelt will find a long entry on F.D.R.'s death a bit on the sticky side.

* Shirer ended ten years of CBS broadcasts last March, after a row over what is news and what isn't.

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