consequential decrees and ordinances. And these had to be agreed with Lammers, Bormann, and Himmler (in the capacity he had adopted when becoming Interior Minister, as Plenipotentiary for Reich Administration). Any directives related to the Party itself had to have Bormann’s support (and, behind Bormann, to correspond with Hitler’s own wishes). Any unresolved objections to Goebbels’s directives had to pass to Lammers for Hitler’s own final decision. Beyond the wording of the decree itself, Hitler let Goebbels know that those authorities directly responsible to him — those involved in the rebuilding plans for Berlin, Munich, and Linz, his motor-vehicle staff, and the personnel of the Reich Chancellery, Presidential Chancellery, and Party Chancellery — were also excluded from the directives. 118 The Wehrmacht, under Himmler’s authority, had been exempt from the outset.
Such restrictions on his powers left Goebbels’s enthusiasm for his new task undimmed. In a radio address on 26 July, the day after his appointment, the Propaganda Minister conveyed the impression that, far from having its manpower reserves exhausted by five years of war, total mobilization was just beginning and would ‘set free, all over the country, so many hands for both the front and the munition factories that it will not be too hard for us to master in sovereign fashion the difficulties that are bound to arise in the war from time to time’.119 The belief that ‘will’ would overcome all problems was immediately put into action as Goebbels, with his usual forceful energy, unleashed a veritable frenzy of activity in his new role. The staff of fifty that he rapidly assembled from a number of ministries, most prominently from his own Propaganda Ministry, prided themselves on their unbureaucratic methods, swift decision-making, and improvisation. As his main agents in ensuring that directives were implemented in the regions, leaving no stone unturned in the quest to comb out all reserves of untapped labour, Goebbels looked to the Party’s Gauleiter, bolstering their already extensive powers as Reich Defence Commissars. They could be relied upon, in his view, to reinvoke the spirit of the ‘time of struggle’, to ensure that bureaucracy did not get in the way of action. (In practice, the cooperation of the Gauleiter was assured as long as no inroads were made into the personnel of their own Party offices. Bormann ensured that they were well protected.)120
Behind the actionism of the Party, Goebbels also needed Hitler’s backing. He ensured that this was forthcoming through a constant stream of bulletins on progress
Nevertheless, Hitler did not give blanket approval to all measures suggested by Goebbels. He could rely upon Bormann to bring to his attention any proposals which his own still sharp antennae would tell him might have an unnecessarily harmful impact on morale, both at home and quite especially among soldiers at the front. He rejected, therefore, the Total War Plenipotentiary’s proposals to save manpower in postal services by ending delivery of small parcels and private telegrams on the grounds that such changes would, for little return, be highly unpopular among families divided in war. Similarly, he blocked suggestions of ending supplies of newspapers and periodicals to the front because soldiers looked forward so much to reading them.123
Elsewhere, Goebbels encountered successful resistance to his proposals when Lammers and Goring combined to head off the suggestion to abolish the office of Minister President of Prussia along with the Prussian Finance Ministry (which had been deflected by Lammers the previous year, but now made enticing through the involvement of the Minister, Popitz, in the conspiracy against Hitler). Measured against the bureaucratic effort to transfer the business elsewhere, even the closure of the Prussian Finance Ministry proved counter-productive as a manpower-saving exercise. The complex problems of administrative reorganization which Lammers raised were the Minister Presidency to be abolished were eventually sufficient for Hitler to decide on its retention.124
An obvious problem was how the labour savings were to be redeployed. As Armaments Minister, Speer wanted to make use of the newly available labour in the factories under his control. Goebbels, on the other hand, saw his main task in freeing up new reserves for service at the front. The short-lived alliance between the two rapidly, therefore, came to grief. Speer saw his own powers now undermined by Goebbels, and by the Gauleiter who, spurred on by the Total War Plenipotentiary and seizing the new opportunities that the revitalization of the Party provided, intervened frequently and arbitrarily in his domain of armaments production. Matters came to a head over Goebbels’s demand to conscript 100,000 men from the armaments industry. On 21 September, Speer presented Hitler with a lengthy letter setting out his demands for restriction of Party intervention in armaments questions.
Given both his personal standing with Hitler and the priority nature of his work, such a personal appeal by Speer would in the past have had a good chance of success. On this occasion, Hitler took the letter from Speer without comment, rang for his adjutant, and had it passed to Bormann who was asked, along with Goebbels who was in the Fuhrer Headquarters at the time, for his views. It was as if, Speer wrote much later, Hitler was too weary to involve himself in such a difficult conflict.125
A few hours later, Speer was asked to Bormann’s office nearby, where he met the head of the Party Chancellery, in shirt-sleeves and braces over his large stomach, and the more formally dressed diminutive Goebbels. Speer was no match for the new alliance, resting on mutual self-interest, controlling the Party, in charge of propaganda, calling on the principles of National Socialism, appealing to the Gauleiter — and with Hitler’s ear. The discussion was heated. But Speer’s references to his ‘historic responsibility’ and threats to resign did not impress. ‘I think we have let this young man become somewhat too big,’ Goebbels coolly noted in his diary. Bormann told Speer he had to accept Goebbels’s decisions, and forbade any further recourse to Hitler. Goebbels informed Speer that he intended to make full use of the powers bestowed on him by Hitler. Discussion ended with Goebbels declaring that he would put the — wholly rhetorical — question to Hitler, as to whether he was prepared to dispense with the 100,000 men.126
Two days later, Hitler signed a proclamation by Speer to directors of armaments factories which, in the eyes of the Armaments Minister, granted most of the demands he had made in his letter. Hitler was typically appearing to grant both sides in a dispute what they wanted. But Speer recognized this was no victory over Bormann and Goebbels. Hitler was unwilling — Speer thought unable — to hold his Party leaders in check.127 At any rate, he could do nothing to bring the conflict between two of his most important ‘feudal’ — and feuding — barons to a halt. The dispute rumbled on for weeks.128 If there was no outright winner, the signs were plain enough that Speer’s once unique influence on Hitler was on the wane. With a reversion to Party activism, on the other hand, the position of Goebbels as well as that of Bormann had been strengthened. And now, as before, all positions of power in the Third Reich still hinged on Hitler’s favour.
Backed by this favour, Goebbels certainly produced a new, extreme austerity drive within Germany in the first weeks in his new office as Total War Plenipoteniary. In the cultural sphere, many theatres and art schools were closed, orchestras run down, the film industry drastically pruned of staff, three-quarters of the Reich Cultural Chamber axed. Big restrictions were imposed on printing, with many newspapers being shut down. Firms producing goods unnecessary for the war effort, such as toys or fashion items, were shut. Employment of domestic servants — most of them non-German — was tightly restricted, freeing up as many as 400,000 women for work (with an increase of registration age from forty-five to fifty-five years of age). Postal and railway services were cut back. Local government offices were forced to simplify administration and weed out their staff. From mid-August, leave was banned. Business and administration were working a minimum sixty-hour week. By October, 451,800 men had been made available for the war effort.129
The figures were deceptive. A large proportion of the men sifted out of the administration and economy were too old for military service. Goebbels was forced, therefore, to turn to fit men in reserved occupations — work thought essential for the war effort, including skilled employment in armaments factories or food production. Their replacement, where possible, by older, less fit, less experienced, less qualified workers was both administratively complicated and inefficient. The net addition of women workers numbered only little over quarter of a million. Many of the half a million mobilized overall replaced older women, or were tied to the home. There were only 271,000 more women in employment in September 1944 than there had been in May 1939. And, despite the draconian measures deployed, German men employed in industry had dropped by no more than 848,500 over the same period (more than compensated, numerically, by foreign workers), while even the much-purged administrative sector had only lost 17 per cent of its employees. The German economy was, in fact, only holding together at all because of the employment of foreign conscript labour — now accounting for 20.8 per cent of the work-force (a far higher
