On Sunday, September 5, 1937, Shirer met Claire Trask at a café near the government buildings. They walked to the Post and Telegraph center, where Shirer was to read a script prepared by Trask. Minutes before they were to begin, however, Trask discovered to her horror that she’d left the script in the café. She ran out to get it, promising she’d be back in time. Shirer felt his nerves begin to fray.
When she returned, the engineer signaled that there were a few minutes to go. His panic rising, Shirer now realized that the microphone he was supposed to speak into towered over his head. It had “apparently been set up for a man at least eight feet tall.” He told the engineer to lower it, but it would not come down.
”It is stuck, mein Herr,” the engineer said. It would be helpful, the man explained, if Shirer titled his head toward the ceiling.
As the clock ticked, Shirer tried speaking with his face pointed at the ceiling. His voice, on which the job rested, came out like a squeak. One minute to go, the engineer shouted.
Knowing he could not make his voice acceptable if he were speaking into a microphone far above his head, Shirer climbed up on a mound of packing crates, his face now opposite the microphone. “Quiet,” the engineer shouted, and Shirer began reading from the script. A few minutes later, it was over.
Source:
Wick, Steve. “Drinks at the Adlon.” The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 107. Print.
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