This morning, at the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Jäger-strasse, I saw two men, S A men, unscrewing a red Der Stürmer showcase from the wall of a building. Der Stürmer is the anti-Semitic journal that’s run by the Reich’s leading Jew-baiter, Julius Streicher. The visual impact of these display cases, with their semi-pornographic line-drawings of Aryan maids in the voluptuous embraces of long-nosed monsters, tends to attract the weaker-minded reader, providing him with cursory titillation. Respectable people have nothing to do with it. Anyway, the two SA men placed the Stürmerkästen in the back of their lorry next to several others. They did their work none too carefully, because there were at least a couple which had broken glass covers.

An hour later I saw the same two men removing another one of these Stürmerkästen from outside a tram-stop in front of the Town Hall. This time I went up to them and asked what they were doing.

‘It’s for the Olympiad,’ said one. ‘We’re ordered to take them all down so as not to shock the foreign visitors who will be coming to Berlin to see the Games.’

In my experience, such sensitivity on the part of the authorities is unheard of.

I drove home in my car - it’s an old black Hanomag - and changed into my last good suit: made of light-grey flannel cloth, it cost me 120 marks when I bought it three years ago, and it is of a quality that is becoming increasingly rare in this country; like butter, coffee and soap, new wool material is ersatz, more often than not. The new material is serviceable enough, all right, just not very hard-wearing, and rather ineffective when it comes to keeping out the cold in winter. Or, for that matter, in summer.

I checked my appearance in the bedroom mirror and then picked up my best hat. It’s a wide-brimmed hat of dark-grey felt, and is encircled by a black barathea band. Common enough. But like the Gestapo, I wear my hat differently from other men, with the brim lower in front than at the back. This has the effect of hiding my eyes of course, which makes it more difficult for people to recognize me. It’s a style that originated with the Berlin Criminal Police, the Kripo, which is where I acquired it.

I slipped a packet of Murattis into my jacket pocket, and, tucking a gift-wrapped piece of Rosenthal porcelain carefully under my arm, I went out.