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March 4, 1936

Talk in the office with Dr. Schay, a Jewish refugee who escaped from the Nazis; he was the editor of the second largest newspaper in Germany–was sitting with a friend playing chess in a cafe in Berlin, when he heard of the burning of the Reichstag. He telephoned at once to his wife to bring his suitcase to the station, reached Aachen, and walked across the border to Belgium. I asked him; “The Nazis burned the Reichstag, didn’t they?” “Of course,” he replied and added that there was a “will to war” among the Nazis as soon as they could arm; they were then lacking in fortresses, and in heavy artillery; their aviation was now the largest in Europe. They mean to get the Danzig corridor back; Poland was to be “compensated” by annexing the northern part of the Ukraine–war would be made by Germany and Poland on Russia in the Spring of 1937–but things could change before that. Schay means to open a school for Filipinos in Manila.