Escape from the Balkans

Words at war presents, Escape from the Balkans, with Robert St John as guest narrator. Railroad Station, April 1939, the greeting ceremonies are over. I stand with a newspaper friend watching the cultured gangsters depart for the banquet halls.

They're all there, gevils, ribbon-trot, raider, Hess, noirat, Noirat, Rahuich, Kaitel, Hemler, Göring, and Adolf Hitler. Michael, better, but I was wondering if you'd come. Well, here I am. Worth while? Certainly. At least it proves one thing.

What? It would not be impossible to kill Hitler. I could have killed him myself. He was less than 20 feet away from me. Oh, I didn't you, Michael. Your fame would be assured you to go down in history.

Well, who knows? Maybe one day I'll be sorry I didn't have a go at it. Not to mention the headlines you're a possible confession. Why I kill Hitler. A front page story in every paper in the world.

Yes, and as it is, all I can write is, why I didn't kill Hitler. Which wouldn't make a front page story anywhere. Words at war. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Council on Books in War Time brings you another in the series of radio treatments of important books of this war.

Tonight our presentation is Escape from the Balkans by Michael Padeff, former correspondent in Bulgaria for the London Times. Our narrator will be NBC's own Robert St. John, who as a representative of the Associated Press, was with Michael Padeff at the time this story begins.

This is Robert St. John. Let me tell you about the Balkan Peninsula. It juts out from the southern part of Europe, west of Turkey and east of Italy across the Adriatic Sea. Its people are Bulgarians, Greeks, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Albanians, and Turks. There are no clear geographical boundaries between any of the Balkan states.