Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

the banner and march at the head.’ Turning to the Jewishquestion, he grimly affirmed that there was no need for special legislation to extrudethe Jews from the world of German art. ‘I think the German people will themselvesgradually eliminate them.’An acrid stench filled the Berlin air as Hitler was dining with Auwi the next evening.He heard that an enormous bonfire of books was blazing beneath newsreel floodlightsin the Opera square, and made a wry comment about Goebbels’ revolutionary activism.2In fact Goebbels was not the instigator.3 The party’s student organisation had firstapproached his ministry a month earlier for financial support for this symbolic burningof decadent and anti-German literature. Although they had listed him as princi-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 305pal speaker in a draft programme as early as April 10 for several weeks he had kepthis distance: he had after all studied under famous Jewish teachers like Waldberg andGundolf. It was not until a week before the event that his adjutant finally conveyed tothe students his agreement to deliver the main speech.4 Between the Opera and theuniversity they had erected a criss-cross log pyre, some twelve feet square and fivefeet high, on a thick bed of sand. Some streets away, five thousand students assembledin their full regalia and solemnly marched to the square carrying flaming torches,with an S.A. marching band at their head. Forty thousand Berliners packed the square.As the students hove into sight, followed by motorized tumbrils charged with thecondemned books and pamphlets, the Berliners’ cheering turned into mass hysteria.‘I thought they’d all gone stark raving mad,’ wrote Bella Fromm privately, ‘particularlythe womenfolk.’5The students marched around the bonfire tossing books onto it. Indictments wereread over the loudspeakers. As each hated author was named, the cheers rang louder—and not just in Berlin: in every German university city the bonfires blazed that night,on the Königsplatz in Munich, the Römerberg in Frankfurt, and the Castle Square inBreslau.At midnight the Little Doctor himself drove up and mounted the swastika-deckedrostrum. Golo Mann, a student witness of the scene, noticed that Goebbels seemeddistinctly ill at ease.6 His brief radio commentary was heard all over Germany. ‘TheAge of Jewish Intellectualism is over,’ he remarked, in a tone that was more reasonedthan inflammatory.7 ‘This symbolic fire is blazing now outside many a German university,to show the world that here the intellectual basis of the November Republicis sinking into the ground.’ ‘If the old men cannot understand what is going on,’ heintoned, ‘then let them grasp that we young men have gone and done it!’The ugly bonfires seized the world’s headlines. The New York Times devoted a wholepage to the bonfires, and published the Nazis’ list of 160 proscribed authors in full.8Not all the confiscated books were burned. A paper mill paid one mark (27¢) perhundred kilos (220 pounds) for the rest. The regurgitated paper reappeared overensuing months bearing the stamp of a very different propaganda.306 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHSpeaking in the Sport Palace the next day Goebbels warned the Jews against continuingtheir international boycott against Germany. ‘We have spared the Jews,’ hesaid, ‘but if they think … that they can again stroll down the Kurfürstendamm as ifnothing at all has happened, let them heed my words as a last warning.’ The Jewswere guests in Germany, he said, and must behave accordingly.9THAT month, May 1933, Goebbels announced extensive overseas trips to explain thenew Germany. He mentioned Danzig, Vienna, Rome and Chicago (he hoped to beGermany’s delegate to the World’s Fair). Reaction was swift. The Danzig Senate bannedhim from speaking, and the Jews orchestrated massive protests in Chicago.10Italy posed none of these problems. Goebbels went there at the end of May takingnot only the Italian-speaking Magda, as Otto Wagener remarked jealously to BellaFromm, but ‘a few of his mistresses who are disguised as his secretaries.’11 The incumbentambassador Ulrich von Hassell struck Goebbels as singularly incompetent.12Officially Goebbels’ purpose was to study the Italian film industry, but he also engagedin secret talks with the king and Mussolini. He had long admired Mussolini asan inspiring orator. ‘Mussolini,’ he once observed, ‘does not like to be photographedsmiling. Why should he? To be a statesman takes instinct, circumspection, and a giftfor both organisation and oratory.’13On parting, Mussolini bade Goebbels assure Hitler that he would go through thickand thin with him.14A MEN’s fashion magazine publishes a photograph taken in Rome—of Goebbels ingala uniform, with the tongue in cheek caption: ‘The Society Dress for Storm Troopers.’15 Magda has similar public relations problems. Commanded by Ullstein’s nowNazi-grovelling Berliner Zeitung to include her in a series on prominent society hostesses,Bella Fromm gags and persuades Bertolt Brecht to write the piece for her.Magda’s secretary politely returns the draft with the directive that ‘Frau ReichsministerGoebbels … does not desire the public to be told of her interest in Buddhism.’ Areference to her playing chess is also to be deleted.16GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 307With the Frau Reichsminister, as the Goebbels Diary hints that spring, the firstproblems are arising. The honeymoon is over, and his lifestyle is to blame. After onefrigid drive to Koblenz, he writes that he has sorted things out with her—‘We werebeginning to fall out… She really is a sweet and lovely woman.’17 While omitting thisprivate passage from ‘Kaiserhof’, he does leave in their subsequent visit to Freiburgwith ‘its Castle Hill, and old chestnut trees’—surely a little subtle flagwaving toAnka, whom he fondly imagines among the book’s millions of readers.In his view there is no room for women in politics.18 To his irritation howeverMagda becomes a patron of the new National Socialist Welfare organisation (N.S.V.),and a few days later she broadcasts on Mother’s Day.19 Goebbels angrily attends herinaugural reception for the N.S.V. at the Kaiserhof. His diary takes note only of theother gorgeous women there.20 When her millionaire ex-husband is arrested for taxevasion, Goebbels, jealous of their continued clandestine meetings, refuses to intercede;bail is set at four million marks (a million dollars).21 On May 10 he recordstersely, ‘Row with Magda.’ He has told her while in Italy that they should now add totheir little family,