Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Prussia Göring appointed reliable new policechiefs, and added to the provisional arrest-lists of communists already preparedby his predecessors; Göring also banned the police force’s rubber truncheons. Aflurry of bans descended on their enemies—the social democrat newspapers Vorwärtsand Acht Uhr, and ‘all those Jewish organs,’ as Goebbels wrote, ‘that have been such apain in our necks.’The disappointment at being excluded from office gnawed at Goebbels. Never inrobust health, he fell ill, his days and nights troubled by feverish fantasies. ‘I am tiredand disheartened,’ he wrote in mid-February 1933. ‘I have no aim and no longer takeany pleasure in my work.’ The party was in power, and he was an outcast! ‘The Göringsreign supreme,’ he observed ironically. When Karl Hanke, his chief aide, now toldhim not to expect any government funds for the coming election battle, Goebbelsscoffed, ‘Then let Fatso Göring do without his caviar for once!’ (He prudently cutthis suggestion out of the published text.) After a week in bed he went to the SportsPalace with Hitler and listened to His Master’s guttural Voice intoning against marxism,setting the tenor of the coming final election battle. Hitler actually ended with theword ‘Amen!’—a brilliant touch in Goebbels’ view.In the run up to election eve, which Goebbels proclaimed to be the Day of theAwakening Nation, he developed a propaganda campaign of a depth and breadthsurpassing anything before. Partial control of the radio stations ensured that everynight his or Hitler’s voice was heard. With the Prussian police now in Göring’s hands,of course, the going was much easier. But the Jews and communists who had fled toPrague, Paris, and London poured vitriol over the new Hitler government. Irresponsibleforeign journalists did the rest. Even ex-chancellor Brüning, still in Germany,watched in fury as they filed blatantly untrue stories exaggerating the plight ofthe Jews. ‘In the spring of 1933,’ Brüning would write, ‘foreign correspondents reportedthat the River Spree was covered with the corpses of murdered Jews.’ At thattime, he pointed out, hardly any Jews had suffered except for the leaders of thecommunist party.13294 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHThis year, 1933, was however the year of the Big Lie. On Monday evening February27 occurred one of the most controversial episodes of the whole era. Hitler hadcome to dine with the Goebbels family. Shortly, Goebbels was called away to take aphone call from Hitler’s friend Ernst ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl, a well-known prankster.Hanfstaengl shouted excitedy that the Reichstag building was on fire. Since Goebbelshad twitted him with a phone call only days before, he ignored the call. Hanfstaenglphoned again, this time to report that he could see flames leaping out of the Reichstag’scupola.14 Hitler and Goebbels tried to phone the Reichstag; nobody answered—small wonder, because a phone call to the Brandenburg Gate police station confirmedthat the Reichstag was on fire. They drove off at top speed down the CharlottenburgChaussee.Afterwards the world’s press clamoured that the Nazis themselves had started theblaze. With this author’s discovery of the missing Goebbels Diary entries in Moscow,that version is finally laid to rest. He, Hitler, and Göring were equally stunned by thenews.Hitler summons me to the Kaiserhof [the unpublished entry begins]. He’s enthusiasticabout my [radio] commentaries. Says Munich and Nuremberg werereally great… Hitler fabulous as always…Back home to work. Much to do. At nine P.M. Hitler and Auwi come over.Music and gossip. Then Hanfstaengl phones: says the Reichstag’s burning. Whatan imagination! But turns out to be true. Race straight down there with Hitler.The entire building a mass of flames. [We] go in. Göring follows. Papen, whoseacquaintance I thus make, is also there. Thirty arson sites. Fires set by the communists.Göring rampant, Hitler raging, Papen clear-headed. The main assemblychamber a picture of devastation. So take action now! … To work! Hitler consultswith Papen. We meet back at the Kaiserhof. Everybody beaming. This wasthe last straw. Now we’re well away. Culprit caught, a twenty-four year old Dutchcommunist.15GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 295‘He’s being interrogated now,’ Göring told them. ‘We decided straight away,’Goebbels related at the subsequent trial, ‘to ban the communist press and later thesocial democrat press too, and to take the top communist officials into custody.’16Göring ordered the S.A. to stand by in case of an all-out communist uprising.At midnight Hitler and Goebbels hurried over to the Völkischer Beobachter’s Berlinoffice. It took half an hour even to get into the sleeping building, and more time waswasted while printworkers, compositors and a surly sub-editor were found. Therewas no sign of Rosenberg himself, the editor. Devouring the proofs of the next day’sedition, Hitler finally found the sensational news tucked away in the Berlin in Briefcolumn (‘Fire damage to the Reichstag’). ‘Man, are you mad,’ he shouted at the subeditor.‘This is an event on a colossal scale!’17We drove over to the VB [Goebbels’ diary continues]. It is really badly laid out.Hitler sets to work there straight away. I dictate a new gau poster and a fabulousarticle18… During the night all communist party officials are arrested. Entirecommunist and social democrat press banned. Good work done… Over to Hitlerat Kaiserhof. He’s delighted with my article. It is half-past five in the morning…Two S.A. men shot in Berlin. To sleep at seven. Three hours. Then straightback to work !The fire was a Godsend to the Nazi radicals. Goebbels was already disquieted bythe speed with which Hitler and even Göring were succumbing to Hindenburg’sbourgeois spell. This lone communist fire-raiser had rescued the revolution. Duringthe night he sent for the journalist Alfred-Ingemar Berndt to take down a fiery pressrelease. (Berndt, twenty-eight, later became one of his most ruthless and accomplishedpropaganda tacticians; he had joined the party in 1923, seen the young S.A.man Werner Doelle shot at his side in 1925, been injured by a chair in the fight thatfollowed the rowdy debate between Goebbels and Ulbricht in 1931, and repeatedlysacked by Jewish firms since then.19) Goebbels’ press release announced the sweepingarrests, and described the Reichstag fire as a communist beacon, a signal for amarxist insurrection. This was as much a lie as the claim by Jewish and communist296 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHagencies worldwide