Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

removed Welkto one of Göring’s new concentration camps.16 Through Winkler, Goebbels alsosquared accounts with the Jewish Mosse publishing empire, whose Berliner Tageblatthad been one of his most dedicated enemies. Real-estate speculation had landed theowner Lachmann Mosse in financial difficulties and he had already fled to Paris beforeHitler seized power; the sequestrators were more than pleased to sell off theTageblatt to Goebbels after they found that Mosse had plundered his employees’ pensionfunds. Winkler also acquired for him by more or less forceful methods the sharecapital of the non-Jewish Börsenzeitung, the Frankfurt Generalanzeiger, and Hugo Stinnes’Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.17GOEBBELS’ marriage is still faltering. On New Year’s Day 1934 he decides that it’s allover between them; but he relents because she is pregnant again.18He has all but forgotten Anka Stalherm. At the 1933 Nuremberg rally he spottedher insufferable husband Mumme, now a middle-rank party dignitary.19 But nowthey are divorced and Goebbels hears she is going to the dogs—‘Lost!’ he records,‘What a comedown!’ On his birthday, greetings come from her; in a typed reply, hemechanically suggests she drop in some time.20 The magic has gone. Besides, as over-326 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHlord of Germany’s burgeoning film industry he has legions of willing, supple starletslike Marianne Hoppe21 and Käthe Dorsch22 at his beck and call. He will follow therest of Anka’s story with only half an eye. ‘Frau Mumme tells me her woes,’ he writesyears later. ‘She is to be pitied. But what can one do?’23 She remarries; her husbanddies in action. Taking pity on her Goebbels has her appointed editor of the fashionmagazine Dame. In an editorial she will fondly mention the book of ballads that theminister lovingly inscribed for her as a fellow-student at Heidelberg, by HeinrichHeine, the Jew. Goebbels has her reduced to the ranks as a mere staff writer.24During 1933 he has earned 4,317 marks (about a thousand dollars) from his sevenbooks in print.25 Unlike modern German government officials he is almost pathologicallyproper in personal money matters. He draws his salaries as minister andgauleiter but claims only his proper expense entitlements, not charging Magda’s caror their household overheads against the ministry. His tailoring is equally punctilious.Gone is his clothes’ slept-in look. He polishes his shoes himself. He takes deliveryof a motor yacht, and belatedly learns how to drive a car as well.26 ‘I’ll get thehang of it soon,’ he writes confidently in his unpublished diary on April 6. ‘It’s justthe details that still elude me.’ At Easter 1934, as the time for Magda’s confinementapproaches, he rents a secluded, idyllic little property at Cladow on the Wannseelakeshore.27 She often accompanies him to lunch with Hitler now, and he is a surprisinglyfrequent visitor to her in the clinic. Goebbels meanwhile pursues his old ways,inviting Hela Strehl and Petra Fiedler on boating jaunts on the city’s lakes and waterways,and taking them back to the cottage for late-night private film showings.28 OnApril 12 after a farewell meal with him Magda is taken off to the clinic for the birthof their second child. ‘Hope it’s a boy,’ prays Dr Goebbels, only to open the nextday’s entry with a surly outburst: ‘It’s a girl and her name’s Hilde. At first it broughtdisappointment, but then joy and happiness… Once more the Führer has provenright. It’s a little girl.’29 The unhappy task of breaking the news to Goebbels has fallento his adjutant, Prince Schaumburg-Lippe. ‘If fate thinks it can play silly pranks onme,’ snaps the minister, stalking up and down in irritation, ‘it’s got another thinkGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 327coming!’ He hurries over to the clinic and finds Magda lying flushed but happy surroundedby pillows and flowers.The rows resume. ‘Armed truce with Magda,’ Goebbels laconically notes in hisdiary after one two-day tiff which ends with him going for a little drive-around.30Documenting her irritation with him, Magda stays on with Ello at Dresden after heleaves. Out at Cladow on June 2 he plays with Helga, his favourite daughter, but hispleasure is alloyed by the presence of Magda’s very plebæian mother. ‘I’m cheesedoff by all this,’ he notes in his diary. ‘I’m often very depressed. I’ve got to workharder.’31 He falls seriously ill with worry, and there are more almost suffocatingrows with Magda—a certain countess is the cause of some of them.32 On WednesdayJune 20 the entire Reich government has been summoned out to Göring’s new estateon the Schorf Heath, Carinhall, to witness the solemn reburial—‘with Twilightof the Gods and Tally-Ho,’ as Goebbels sardonically puts it—of Carin Göring’s remainswhich have been violated in Sweden.33 Late that evening he is confronted byMagda with an ugly scene—perhaps about the countess. He puts a spin on it in hisdiary: ‘In the evening I learn something awful from Magda. It’s midnight, but I driveout to Cladow. Frightful scene. I am quite shattered.’ The next day he keeps thinkingof Magda: ‘I’m fit to burst. Awful mental agonies.’ Magda joins him later and dissolvesinto tears and hysterics. ‘Au fond,’ he writes, setting the scene for future readers,‘she is good. I bear much of the blame too. A bitter pill to bite. A grey, rainy daytoday. Deep down, we have separated.’ On Friday the twenty-third, a nervous wreck,he has a long, late discussion with the lovely Hela Strehl, then settles his differenceswith Magda. ‘She finds her way back to me. But I am more than a little to blamemyself.’ History would of course like to know more about these differences: hisinfidelities? hers? We do not know and cannot speculate: but one lesson is that theGoebbels Diary is becoming more tricky as a source with each year that passes.POLITICALLY too his quagmire deepened. Those who offended the minister joined EhmWelk in concentration camp: there was Dr Jacob Wassermann, the Jewish nephew ofthe onetime director of the Deutsche Bank, sent to Oranienburg camp for slander-328 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHing Goebbels and Magda; there was an engineer who remarked casually that Goebbelswas ‘Germany’s hoodoo’; there was a former Stahlhelm official, convicted for insultingGoebbels.34 ‘Anybody may grumble,’ mocked Angriff on May 18, ‘if he’s not afraidof the