Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

and try this time for something more useful, perhaps, than a girl.22With the necessary act still unperformed, Magda betakes herself and their infantHelga to fashionable Heiligendamm for the summer, leaving the little doctor to coolhis heels and ardour in Berlin for a while. When Goebbels briefly joins her he againbrings several females with him: among them, Bella Fromm learns, is the lovely HelaStrehl, a fashion editor at Scherl Verlag. ‘Relations between Hela and Magda Goebbels,’records the journalist, ‘are inevitably strained.’23The Goebbels’ apartment on Reichskanzler Platz is now overcrowded, what withthe chauffeur and burly S.S. bodyguards. At the end of June 1933 Hitler assignsHugenberg’s former official residence to them. It is a secluded little villa built in1835 in an overgrown park and shielded from the street—soon to be renamedHermann-Göring Strasse—by centuries old trees. The villa stands next to the Americanembassy. Goebbels hands the villa’s keys to Magda on July 1. She swiftly turns itinto a fairy-tale castle, furnishing it with expensive antiques from a store in NettelbeckStrasse. Two weeks later they can move in. A week after that Director Jakob Werlin of308 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHDaimler-Benz brings them a new Mercedes motor car.24 What more can the modernGerman minister’s heart desire?HIS propaganda ministry has a lavish budget from the first day. He had boasted that itwas going to cost the taxpayer nothing, and kept his word. It would have an incomein fiscal 1933 of 10,737,500 marks (around $2·7m at that time), largely from radiolicence fees. Its projected expenditure was 13,528,500 marks; the shortfall wouldbe more than matched by the money, put at 4,247,000 marks, consequently saved bythe ministry of the interior, the Reich Chancellery, and the foreign ministry. ForGoebbels himself the ministry’s budget provided an annual expense allowance of4,800 marks plus a net ministerial income of 59,500 marks (around fifteen thousanddollars). The 1933 budget also allowed 25,000 marks for the purchase of two automobilesfor Dr Goebbels and Funk, as well as 190,000 marks for setting up provincialpropaganda agencies, Landespropagandaämter (from 1937, Reich Propaganda Agencies);of these there would eventually be forty-one. A quarter of a million markswere set aside for enlarging the ministry building by fifty rooms, and eighty thousandmarks for expanding its telephone network from seventy-four to 150 extensions.25His own instrument had over fifty pushbuttons coded in a kaleidoscope of colours:his ministry would eventually sprawl over fifty-four buildings in Berlin alone.His corruption aside, he was a model minister. By enforcing economies on theBerlin radio network alone he would save one million marks and use this money forother cultural activities.26 He regrouped the regional networks under one nationalradio authority. In his first months of office he replaced the top echelons in broadcastingwith trusty Nazis with the self-important and humourless Eugen Hadamowskyas national director.27 Once he had tucked most of the old radio station directorsaway in Oranienburg concentration camp, broadcasting in Nazi Germany prosperedas in no other European country at that time. From four million listeners in 1933 thefigure would soar to twenty-nine million in 1934 and ninety-seven million in 1939,with a corresponding leap in his licence income. He was thrilled by the technologicaladvances. At the radio exhibition he found himself telephoning with Siam, andGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 309with the captain of the liner BremenÊ on the high seas. People told him that televisionwould follow within months.28A biography is not the place for a full analysis of the ministerial structure which DrGoebbels created and ran. He changed its organisational chart frequently—an amorphousstructure of vertical sections (Abteilungen) which split, subdivided, spawned,and coalesced against over the ministry’s twelve year existence. His office was largebut not lavishly furnished, boasting only a desk, some book cases, and a globe. Hehad selected tough young Nazis as his lieutenants and their verve, coupled with thebureaucratic skills of the civil servants, initially assigned by other ministries ensuredhis success. Eighty-two percent of his initial staff came from outside the civil service;they were Angestellte (salaried staff), not Beamte (civil servants)—an importantdistinction.29 Ninety percent were veteran party members. One hundred of his initial350 staff members had the party’s badge in gold.30 He preferred revolutionaryfervour to bureaucratic ability.31 He promoted on performance, not age or seniority—Dr Werner Naumann, quickwitted, lean, and ambitious, would become his lastStaatssekretär in 1944 at the age of only thirty-four.At first there was a shambles as his erstwhile desperadoes and bare-knucklestreetfighters learned the ropes of government service. But they soon had the ministryup and running. Most outstanding amongst his minions was Karl Hanke, not yetthirty: bullet-headed, dour, and handsome, he was put in charge of Goebbels’ privateoffice (Ministerbüro). Goebbels persuaded the Cabinet to allow Hanke the civilservice rank of Ministerialrat.32 He remained a loyal Nazi, defending his native Silesiaagainst the Russians until the bitter end, when Hitler would appoint him to succeedHimmler as Reichsführer of the S.S.Now Goebbels not only chose the game, he laid down the rules. ‘Why the complaints?’he boasted to cheering Nazis at the Sport Palace, explaining his new presslaws. ‘The foxes outsmarted the sheep, and it’s only right that the foxes now forbidthe sheep to attack them.’33 That the professions in Germany were regulated wasnothing new: there was already a Literary Academy, of which Heinrich Mann waschairman. The press association had also existed before Hitler.34 But within six months310 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHGoebbels would force everybody working in the field of German cultural endeavourto toe the party line—from journalism, writing, and publishing right across the spectrumto the opera, theatre, and film.On August 14 his diary first mentioned a Chamber of Culture.35 Concerned byRobert Ley’s attempts to force all cultural workers into his monolithic Labour Front,a month earlier Goebbels had written hastily to the Reich chancellery stating that heintended to set up such a chamber himself.36 He had set out his ideas to harnessGermany’s creative artistes to the new National Socialist state in a memorandum toHitler three days later.37 Hitler gave him the go-ahead on the Obersalzberg on August24.38 This awesome governing body would become the umbrella authority forseven sub-chambers, controlling the press (presided over by Nazi press baron MaxAmann),39 literature