Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

communities abroad,and the whole mass melted into a giant swastika. Germany, Goebbels told the youthfulaudience, wanted peace.1 At a ceremony marking the 250th anniversary of thefirst German settlement in America he spoke of a new era of understanding betweennations.2 ‘I am calling over the Rhine,’ he said at Bad Honnef a few days later, gesturingtoward France. ‘We want peace. We are ready to expunge the past.’3 He usedsimilar language as the guest of the Foreign Press association in Berlin, but joked tothe American Louis Lochner that he was glad there was a foreign press to blamethings on, now that there was no opposition in Germany.4 That October, Hitler tookGermany out of the League of Nations. On November 12 after a typical Goebbelspropaganda drive ninety-three percent of the German electorate voted their approval.A campaign of anti-Nazi Big Lies began—many of them uncomfortably close tothe truth. In London, the Saturday Review published a forged article, attributed toGoebbels, demanding the revision of the east German border at Poland’s expense.5In France, the Petit Parisien reproduced instructions which Goebbels had allegedlyissued to his propaganda offices overseas, backing up these territorial claims; theseGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 323too were a forgery.6 Fighting back, Goebbels took up an idea which the party’s propagandaoffice had already mooted as a fund-raising gimmick in 1932, an anti-Comintern,as the counterpart of the Comintern, the Soviet Union’s international subversionagency. ‘The Moscow Jews,’ wrote Dr Eberhard Taubert, head of his anti-communistsection, in a later overview explaining Goebbels’ tactics, ‘had to be defeated withtheir own weapons.’7 Taubert’s anti-Comintern plugged the seductive line that bolshevismwas a Jewish swindle aiming for world domination, and that Hitler was theonly remaining obstacle. With the trial of the alleged Reichstag arsonists approaching,Goebbels told Taubert to publish a documentation alleging that the communistshad been plotting a coup d’état; the book, ‘Armed Uprising,’ appeared a week beforethe Leipzig trial.Simultaneously Taubert devised a cunning indirect propaganda assault on the SovietUnion. Highlighting the Soviet policy of exporting food while millions of Ukrainiansstarved, Goebbels set up a charitable welfare organisation as a front named ‘Brothersin Need’ to collect food for the ‘starving Volga Germans’; thus the propagandamessage (‘starvation in the Ukraine, the world’s granary’) was effectively conveyedto the German workers. The phoney charity sucked hundreds of gullible clergymeninto becoming what Taubert called ‘the puppets of our propaganda.’ The high pointwas when the Archbishop of Canterbury naïvely stated in the House of Lords thatnot three but six million Russians had starved to death the year before—a wilfulexaggeration by Goebbels.The Reichstag Fire trial confronted Goebbels with a difficult conundrum. At thebeginning of September a leftwing propaganda cell in Paris had published a convincing‘Brown Book of the Hitler Terror’ accusing him and Göring of burning down theReichstag, and listing 250 people allegedly murdered by the Nazis since then. Onesuch alleged victim was Dr Ernst Oberfohren, a D.N.V.P. politician (who had actuallytaken his own life in May).8 The book claimed that Goebbels had ordered hismurder to silence him. He set his propaganda the task of establishing that Moscowlay behind the blaze. On October 10 the court came from Leipzig to Berlin to heartestimony. Göring testified on November 4, and Dr Goebbels four days later. Magda,324 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwith eye-shadow discreetly applied to her beautiful eyes and her blonde, Aryan tressesgathered up beneath a black chapeau, as a court observer wrote in his notes that day,applauded vigorously as her husband testified: he did so, the same expert observernoted, in an extraordinarily suggestive manner—thus, when he appended the wordabsurd to a train of thought he did so in such a persuasive manner that no otherverdict seemed conceivable.9 ‘As a layman,’ Goebbels stated, ‘I cannot conceive howjust one individual could carry out and execute the preparations for such an arsonattack.’ He reminded the court how often the communists had lied during the yearsof struggle—the Pharus rooms battle, the drowning of Hans Kütemeyer, the smearingof Horst Wessel as a pimp, the Goebbels–Ulbricht debate.The ultra-civilized word-duel that ensued between Ernst Torgler and Goebbelsshowed how similar their intellects were, as they bandied rival quotations about thenature of revolutions. His clash with Torgler’s fellow-defendant the Bulgarian agitatorGeorgii Dimitroff was less urbane. After one stinging rebuff, Goebbels repliedwith a quotation from Schopenhauer: ‘Every man deserves to be looked at. But hedoes not deserve to be spoken to!’ (The quotation had been recommended to him ina letter tossed into his open Mercedes by an anonymous well-wisher the day before.)10‘I shall expect a loyal hearing from the foreign press,’ Goebbels said, concludinghis personal defence in terms of injured innocence, ‘and I hope they will find space intheir columns for this detailed rebuttal; because it is not right that the government ofa decent, diligent, and honourable people should be discredited before the wholeworld like this.’11WITH the domestic German press he had fewer qualms. His new press law kept thejournalists tightly muzzled, although it was not without its positive elements as well.It imposed on journalists a duty to report truthfully and to refrain from writinganything that might ‘injure illegally anybody’s honour or well-being, or damage hisreputation or hold him up to ridicule or contempt.’GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 325Like all such attempts to regiment the liberal professions, ludicrous situations developed.The chamber of literature addressed warning letters to the Brothers Grimmfor not having filled in membership forms (they had been dead for eighty years).12One Nazi censor banned an advertisement because it showed a girl clutching a bar ofsoap to a part of her anatomy ‘which could not be identified for reasons of decency.’13Operating through Max Winkler, who had a shrewd business brain, Goebbels beganto buy up or close down printing and newspaper concerns, beginning withHugenberg’s Verlagsanstalt (‘Vera’) and Ullstein, the big Jewish-controlled newspaperpublisher in Berlin.14 The Reich paid 8·5 million marks for Ullstein’s stock, includingtwo millions to liquidate Ullstein’s debts. Goebbels renamed it DeutscherVerlag, and proceeded ruthlessly against its recalcitrant editors.15 When Ehm Welk,editor of the Ullstein magazine Grüne Post, took too literally Goebbels’ invitation tocriticize, the minister shut the publication down for three months and