Washington Journal., 1943-01-01

occupied by a motley crew of Reds. My Red
passport, scrawled by Holtz, gained us ready
admittance. The hotel keeper, who knew me
well, was surprised to see me. | asked him
whether we could get rooms. He threw up
his hands, looking f~urtively oward the Reds
in the lobby, but then he took me aside and
whispered that they had left him and his
family a suite Of rooms among the servants
quarters on the top floor. For old acqaiHt-
ance's sake he offered to clear two OF those
rooms for Little and me, if we were discreet
and would refrain from boasting of our quart
ers. So he took us upstairs and installed us
in two adjoining rooms provided with beds.
There Little and / made our headquarters
for several days and nights, while we "cov-
ered' the story of Munich under Red rule.
Munich Under Red Rule
1t turned out to be a series of lively stories,
sent out in "~follow-up' dispatches each day
under the nose Of a Red censor through the
Fl iendly connivance of a clerk at the main
telegraph office, who secretly sympathized
with the White Guards. We admired the
telegrapher's courage, for, had his "treach-
cry" to the Red cause been discovered, he
must have paid for it with his life.
The Reds had erected a scarlet draped
scaffold on the Marienplatz, the main square
Of the city. In default of a guillotine, a
headsman with a huge axe, was there to chop
off TRAITORS = heads. When this seemed too
slow, the victims were shot by firing squads.
The Reds published a prescription list of
some five thousand citizens of Munich, marked
for slaughter. Among them were the names
cf public functionaries, former officers, mobiles,
university professors, writer's and artists.
Noting the name Of Franz V. Stuck, a cele-
brated painter and sculptor, whose wife (im-
mortalized in his famous painting ID
Sande") was an American, | FASTENED to
their house on the other bank of the Isar to
warn her of her husbands peril. | found
his studio and house already occupied by the
Reds, littering all over the place. She told
me that Franz had made good his escape only
a few minutes before the Reds burst into the
house, but she had no idea whittier he had
fled. She and a maid we're relegated to the
attic. In some way she had heard that the
Reds also had got into the house of James
Loeb, a retired American fnancier, living
near the English Garden. So | FASTENED
there.
On my way through the Court Garden,
walking along its arcades, [ saw that the
~frescoes depicting exploits of former Wittels-
bach chieftains had been scratched criss-cross
SO as to deface them badly. An old gentle
man, who was viewing the havoc mournfully,
told me it was the work of the Reds.
When they found that old King Ludwig III,
WHO'LL JuCy SOuSuG W CdpJuIC Il muIQGl II
his palace, had eluded them by walking out
alone into the mountains with no other bag
gage but a Rucksack containing a change Of
linen, a pair of slippers and a toothbrush,
they wreaked their wrath on the Wittelsbach
pictures in the arcades.
| found Mr.. Loeb hale and sound, enter
tanning a group Of armed Reds with a break
fast of beer, sausages and p~retzels. He had
surprised the Reds by telling them he would
be glad to have them shoot him because he
was tired Of life anyhow. This disarmed
them.
During the blackouts at night Little and |
played chess by the light of a carefully
screened candle in our covert quarters at the
Continental Hotel. While we were in the
midst of one of our games there was a sound
of mass musketry fire outside, which made us
think it must have come from one of the Reds
firing squads. We went out to explore. A
man, running past us on the street, shouted
that they had just shot a lot of people in
the yard of a nearby high school. We went
there and beheld more than a score of bodies
lying in their blood in the yard. One of the
Reds with a lantern said they were condemned
traitors. Looking them over | recognized the
face of a young Countess Westarp, whom /
had met at a party som years earlier. Among
the dead was a white-haired man with spec
tacles. 1t was explained that he was a pro
%fessor, who had been caught picking up one
Of the fyleaves scatterd over Munich by White
Guard a~viators. The dodgers promised an
early capture Of the city by the Governments
forces.
After Little and | had written and handed
our dispatches for the American press to
our friend at the main telegraph office, we
returned to the hotel. There we were met
by the proprietor. Taking me aside, he begged
me to vacate one of our rooms upstairs to
shelter a lady in imminent peril. OF course