BERLIN, Saturday, March 2, 1940.
 
          At eleven o'clock several Foreign Office officials, headed by Herr von Doernberg, came 
 
for me at my hotel to take me to my interview with Hitler at the new Chancery, which had been 
 
completed last year within a period of eight months. Workmen had worked night and day in order 
 
to have it ready for the Chancellor's New Year's Day reception for the Diplomatic Corps so that 
 
they might have a taste of what the new Berlin was going to look like.
 
          Kirk accompanied me at my request. He had never before been permitted to see the 
 
Fuehrer except at a distance.
 
          The facade of the new building on the Wilhelmstrasse reminds me of a factory building. 
 
My car drove into a rectangular court with very high blank walls. At one end was a flight of broad 
 
steps leading into the Chancery. Monumental black nudes flanked the patico to which the steps 
 
led. The whole impression of the court was reminiscent of nothing other than a prison courtyard. 
 
A company of soldiers was drawn up on each side to give me the Nazi salute as I entered.
 
          At the head of the steps I was greeted by the Reichsminister Meissner, the head of Hitler's 
 
Chancery. He spoke to me most cordially in English, as did all the other officials present.
 
           We then formed a orocession of some twenty couples headed by Meissner and myself, 
 
and with very slow and measured tread first traversed a tremendously long red marble hall, of 
 
which the walls and floor are both of marble; then uo a flight of excessively slippery red marble 
 
steps into a gallery which, also of red marble, has