Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

similar atrocity stories during the world war. ‘TheGerman nation today has other business to do than to stage blood baths and indulgein Jew baiting.’37 Berlin wiretaps confirmed that Hearst’s Berlin correspondent wasthe arch culprit.38The upshot of the Jewish campaign overseas was that Goebbels secured from Hitler—or so he claimed—approval to threaten a short, sharp counter-boycott of theJews. He told his Cabinet colleagues on March 29 that this threat had been extremelyeffective and that the main Jewish agency in Berlin, the Central-Verein, had promisedthat the foreign smear campaign would cease. Nevertheless on March 31 he announceda one-day boycott of all Jewish stores: ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, broadcastingfrom a mass rally, ‘not one German man or woman is to enter a Jewish store.’ Therewould follow a three day period to assess the impact of the boycott, and it would berepeated if necessary until, as he put it, ‘German Jewry has been annihilated.’39 Raisingthe boycott at midnight on April 1, he told a cheering throng in the Lustgartenthat he could easily reimpose it. ‘If it must be resumed,’ he threatened, ‘we shallcrush German Jewry.’40The world’s press greeted Goebbels’ crude but effective boycott with uproar (whileignoring the Jewish boycott which had triggered it.) Speaking to an official Britishvisitor Goebbels quoted in justification the familiar figures on the preponderance ofJews among Germany’s lawyers, doctors, and other wealthy professions. As for isolatedanti-Jewish outrages reported during the boycott, he claimed that communistsdisguised in Nazi uniforms had perpetrated them.41He enjoyed the thrill of unbridled power; he fancied that the world’s Jews werewhimpering with fear.42 Yet his antisemitism was still broadly tactical, rather thaninnate. He needed the stimulus of a visible enemy. He could still split his sides laughingat the Jewish comedian Otto Wallburg, who would later die in Auschwitz.43 WhenFurtwängler, conductor of the Berlin Phblharmonic, bravely protested at the discriminationagainst Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, and Max Reinhardt, he replied:‘We can see no objection to having Leo Blech [another Jew] direct some German300 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHmasterpiece at the State opera, because no one gets the feeling of any violence doneto the national spirit. But it is not necessary that the majority of opera conductorsshould be Jews… Those of Jewish blood who have real ability should be free toexercise their art: but they must not rule.’44HE attended virtually every Cabinet that year. Intellectually far above the rest, heeasily worsted them in debate. Between them the dialectician Goebbels and the brutalGöring made opposition impossible. ‘They attacked every problem,’ Vice-Chancellorvon Papen recalled, ‘with the furious élan of the rabble-rouser.’45 Goebbels’secret diary now bristled with barbed references to Göring’s pathological ambition,his pompous megalomania, and his ever gaudier uniforms.46 Goebbels had to fighthard to wrest control of the radio from Göring’s porcine clutches.47 He found Göringcavorting with his ladyfriend Emmy (still married to another) at the Berghof in August.Hitler delivered an outspoken speech to his gauleiters about uniforms—‘nonames,’ chuckled Goebbels, ‘but everybody knew what was what.’48 Learning that‘Fatso’ was demanding the rank of general, Goebbels wrote, ‘Why not field marshaland be done with it!’49ON April 25 he returned home to receive the civic dignities that Rheydt hastened tobestow upon him. The townsfolk had hung out a sea of flags; the catholic church bellspealed, no doubt equally willingly. He had let it be known that he desired a torchlightparade past his home. His mother stood beside him at an upstairs window. ‘Foreight years she has been vilified on my account,’ he lectured the mayor. ‘And she wasthe only one who understood me.’50 At his old school he spoke once more from thestage where had had delivered the valediction sixteen years before. Local boy makesgood: but his career in infamy was only just beginning.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 3011 Extracts from the diary of Sir Walter Layton, Apr 3, 1933 (PRO file FO.371/16722).2 Memoirs (UK ed.), 289.3 Interrogation, SAIC/FIR/46, Sep 13, 1946 (NA file RG.407, entry 427, box 1945i).4 Albert Grzesinski, typescript memoirs (BA: Kl.Erw.144).—See too Jürgen Wetzel,‘Monarchie gegen Hitler. Aus der Korrespondenz Otto Brauns mit Albert Grzesinski 1934bis 1936,’ in Der Bär von Berlin, Jahrbuch des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins, 1977, 7–14.5 Rosenberg diary, Mar 1, 1939.6 Interview of Rudolf von Ribbentrop, Jul 20, 1989.7 Goebbels papers (Hoover Libr.)8 Diary, Sep 24, 1933.9 Ibid., Aug 25, 1933.10 Text of the broadcast in Joseph Wulf’s documentation, Presse und Funk im Dritten Reich(Frankfurt, 1983), 284ff.11 Ibid., Feb 1; Kaiserhof, Jan 31, 1933; gau history (NA film T581, roll 5, BA file NS.26/133); Angriff, Jan 31–Feb 6, 1933.—Maikowski, born in Charlottenburg Feb 28, 1908, hadjoined the Berlin S.A. in 1926 and been stabbed by communists in Dec 1927; after shootinga communist in 1931 he fled to Venice, was arrested Oct 1932 and had been released only inDecember (NSDAP archives, Maikowski papers, BA file NS.26/323).—For the trial ofSchuckar et al., murderers of Maikowski and police constable Zauritz, see LandesarchivBerlin, Rep.58, item 30.12 Report by Eberhard Assmann, Sep 20, 1934 (BDC file, Helldorff).13 Unpublished Brüning typescript in Dorothy Thompson papers (Univ. of Syracuse Libr.)14 See JG’s testimony of Nov 8, in Vossische Zeitung, Nov 9, 1933.—Heinrich Hoffmann,who was also present, confirms this in Hitler was my Friend, 71ff; as does Hanfstaengl in his1970 interview with John Toland (FDR Libr.)15 Diary, Feb 28, 1933; on the microfiche for Feb 16–May 1, 1933 (Moscow archives, JGpapers, box 4).16 JG’s testimony Reichstag arson trial, Nov 8, 1933, pp.6ff; transcript provided by FritzTobias archives.17 Wilfred von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, 148 (‘Jul 27, 1943’); and Table Talk, Aug 21,1942 (Heim, 356f).18 The leading article was published in Angriff, Feb 28, 1933. Communism, JG argued,must now be wiped out so thoroughly that not even the name survived; Hindenburg mustgive Hitler the powers to do so.19 SS Oberführer Alfred-Ingemar Berndt, born in Bromberg 1905. His ancestors for sixhundred years had been farmers near Thorn and in the Warthegau; after the Poles annexedthese regions in 1919 and 1920 and seized the estates he and his family were expelled.Berndt had been sacked by Wolff’s Telegraph Agency—forerunner of the Nazi DNB agency—in Dec