[The following takes place during World War II, after Franco’s Fascist government has taken power in Spain. Here, the American correspondent William L. Shirer has fled Germany after receiving information that the Gestapo was building a case against him as an international spy (which he wasn’t). This is an excerpt of his account of arriving in Spain, and finding it a very different place from the country he had known before the Spanish Civil War.]
The plane landed in Barcelona, and Shirer walked to the terminal to stretch his legs and look around. He had not been in the city since he and Tess lived on the Spanish coast, and he remembered it as a joyous place. Now, Fascism had brought nothing but misery. A horsedrawn wagon – there was no gas or oil for automobiles - took Shirer and other passengers to the Ritz Hotel, and along the way he saw frightened, hungry faces. A man he encountered told him that Barcelona and Spain had been crushed. “There is no food. There is no organization. The jails are jammed and overflowing. If we told you about the filth, the overcrowding, the lack of food in them, you would not believe us. But no one really eats any more. We merely keep alive.”
Source:
Wick, Steve. “A Warning From a Friend.” The Long Night: William L. Shirer and the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 218. Print.
Source:
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