Letters to America Letters to AmericaIn 1936 I was sent to Stuttgart in Germany on a business mission and stayed six days finding the answer to a production difficulty. I knew only a few words of German and had no inclination to increase the number. I have no gift for language apart from my native tongue and therefore I was heavily dependant on an American colleague who was working in the factory. He had been born in Stuttgart and had emigrated to the United States, and the parent company there had sent him out to represent them in the German factory when they had purchased the company in 1932. What later became known as the Nazification of the country had got into full stride as Germany got ready for war. He returned to America in 1938 when a labour permit was denied him, but in 1936 he was becoming aware of what was going on and was anxious that the world in general should also know.
It so happened that during my short stay a new Tool Room was completed and the move into the new building was to be made during the Easter holiday, due to commence that day after the Thursday of my return to England. The new Tool Room had been built underground and he took me on a very brief visit to it. As we neared the entrance he told me to note particularly the immense thickness of the floor above, that is the ground level floor. It was some 3 to 4 feet in thickness and I commented that it probably made the room below bomb-proof, and with the bombs that existed at that time that could well have been the case. What I failed to do was to grasp the need to carry the news back to England and to make sure that somehow it reached the ears of someone in authority. The signs of preparation for war were all there plainly to be seen, and we shut our eyes to them and lived in hope, offering our throats to the murderers-to-be. Living is a strange and awful experience, fortunately not without end or madness would come to all.
