Berlin, 1940; Moscow, 2025
Page 492 of the 2002 edition of Berlin Diary: The Journal of a Foreign Correspondent, 1934-1941 by William L. Shirer. Shirer reported for US media from Germany since 1934, including the initial period of the World War 2. His official reporting was subject to German censorship, so when he was leaving Germany in December 1940 he had to smuggle his notes, which were published later.
Here's an entry from 31 August 1940 whose language bears shocking resemblance to the modern times. The highlighted fragments are verbatim clones of today's statements from Russian state media and diplomats...
Berlin, August 31. Laid up with the flu for a bit. When the maid came in last night just before the bombing started, I asked: “Will the British come over tonight?”
“For certain,” she sighed resignedly. All her confidence, all the confidence that five million Berliners had ‘that the capital was safe from air attack', is gone. “Why do they do it?” she asked.
“Because you bomb London,” I said.
“Yes, but we hit military objectives, while the British, they bomb our homes.” She was a good advertisement for the effectiveness of Goebbels’s propaganda.
“Maybe you bomb their homes too,” I said.
“Our papers say not,” she argued. She said the German people wanted peace. “Why didn’t the British accept the Führer's offer?” she wanted to know. This woman comes from a worker's family. Her husband is worker, probably an ex-Communist or Socialist. And yet she has fallen a complete victim to the official propaganda.
“The British gave us a good strafing last night and even German officials admitted that the damage was greater than ever before. A German friend dropped in to tell me the great Siemens works had been hit. The Bersen Zeitung headlines tonight: “BRITISH AIR PlRATES OVER BERLIN!”
I’ve turned down the Propaganda Ministry’s offer to take me along with other correspondents on a conducted tour each morning after a raid to see the damage. I know the German military authorities have no intention of showing us any military objectives that may be hit. To make an honest check-up would take several hours of motoring over the vast area of Berlin.
For comparison, check:
- Peskov as always says the opposite of truth as it comes to attacks on civilian infrastructure
- Vasily Nebenzya on civilian casualties caused by Russian rockets in Ukraine
- Compilation of Russia's statements of “not targeting civilian objects” and the hits on civilian objects they conducted
—
Paweł Krawczyk https://krvtz.net/
Fediverse @kravietz@agora.echelon.pl