British Embassy, Berlin

The British Embassy, Berlin, is the destination for Paul von Hartmann’s urgent delivery of Hitler’s reply to Neville Chamberlain. In a city that seems to have fallen silent, the embassy becomes the point where a secretarial errand crosses into high-stakes diplomacy: Sir Nevile Henderson receives the letter, singles out its final sentence, and orders it sent to London immediately.

Setting and Arrival

Hartmann reaches the embassy after leaving the Reich Chancellery with the official letter. He climbs five deeply worn stone steps to a locked iron entrance beneath a large portico, lit by a single gloomy lamp. When he rings, the chime sounds somewhere inside and then fades into a silence that extends across the road to the Adlon, Berlin’s most fashionable hotel. The delayed answer and the bolts and lock being drawn back make entry feel like a threshold crossed under pressure.

A young man admits Hartmann and leads him up another flight of stairs into an imposing reception hall, two storeys high beneath an oval glass roof. The building had been constructed in the previous century by a railway tycoon who soon went bankrupt. Inside, porcelain-balustraded staircases rise along opposing walls and meet in the middle; the narrator describes the lavish interior as having an air of “opulent bad taste.” These details set the embassy’s grand, old-fashioned surroundings against the urgency of Hartmann’s mission.

The Delivery to Henderson

Henderson descends one staircase in a dinner jacket, with a red carnation in his buttonhole and a cigarette in a jade holder. Hartmann addresses him in English and explains that he has an urgent message from the Reich Chancellery that must be delivered to the Ambassador or First Secretary in person. Henderson already expects him. Hartmann identifies the envelope as containing the Führer’s reply to the Prime Minister, and Henderson takes it and reads the three typewritten pages where he stands.

The letter’s final sentence receives particular emphasis. Hartmann reports that the State Secretary wanted Henderson to take special note of it and had said that it had not been easy. Henderson rereads the last page, judges the sentence a slender hope but something nonetheless, and gives the letter to his young aide with instructions to translate it and telegraph it to London immediately, without cipher. The encounter turns the embassy from a guarded address into a channel for the message’s rapid transmission.

Diplomatic Channel and Narrative Significance

The embassy’s role extends beyond the face-to-face delivery. In a later telephone exchange, Paul von Hartmann tells Erich Kordt that Hitler will see Henderson at twelve-thirty; Kordt replies that he will inform the British Embassy. The contact places the embassy within the continuing chain of arrangements between the German offices and the British diplomatic representatives, even as Hartmann observes that the Chancellery is busier than he expected.

After reading the letter, Henderson insists on showing Hartmann to the door. His exquisite manners, cigarette and elegant clothes contrast with the strained business being conducted inside. Hartmann privately wonders why the British have sent such a man to deal with the Nazis, giving the embassy scene a note of uncertainty even as the letter is dispatched. The building’s formal welcome and prompt communications cannot settle the political crisis; they make possible the exchange on which the next diplomatic move depends.