Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

concentration camp.’ Operating primarily from the safety of Prague, the emigrésaround Bernhard (‘Isidor’) Weiss orchestrated a raucous outcry about alleged Naziatrocities: they claimed that two Jews had died in a pogrom at Gunzenhausen, andthat the former social democrat deputy Heilmann was being maltreated in concentrationcamp. The stories were fictional, but fact would inevitably follow fiction.35Ingeniously, the emigrés paraded a live Nazi ‘victim’ in Prague for pathologists to seehis ‘strangulation’ marks. The Czech newspapers headlined this gruesome stunt ENTERA HANGED MAN. (The Gestapo finally identified the alleged victim as a notoriouscommunist confidence trickster.36) He reprimanded the Czech envoy, and Praguepromised to silence the emigrés.37Goebbels bided his time. Addressing foreign newspapermen at the end of February1934 he took a robust line. ‘If anybody gives greater credence to marxist emigrésthan to us,’ he said, ‘then we can’t help them.’38 But he was aware that even hispowers were limited. When a Mrs Ebeling asked him to get somebody out of prison,he refused. ‘I’m not burning my fingers,’ he noted privately.39THROUGHOUT this time he had turned a deaf ear on the growing internal unrest generatedby the inequities of the Nazi revolution. The S.A. were once again in revolutionaryferment, and he broadly sympathised. But Hitler needed the regular armedforces more than he needed the S.A., the party’s two-million strong Brownshirtarmy. Not caring to offend the stormtroopers he was putting out ambiguous signalswhich Goebbels was not alone in misinterpreting. Hearing Hitler declare to the assembledgauleiters in Berlin in February 1934 that there were still ‘fools’ aroundwho argued that the revolution was not yet complete,40 Goebbels nodded approvingly;he did not realize that Hitler was talking about the S.A.To Goebbels, the unseen enemy throughout the first six months of 1934 was theReaktion—a nebulous concept, best translated as ‘diehards’, which embraced theGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 329conservative politicians, journalists, intellectuals, reserve officers, and the catholicclergy but never the S.A.41 ‘The diehards,’ he told a working class audience in Berlin’sLustgarten, ‘are putting on airs right across the country. But if they imagine wecaptured these high offices for them, or that we’re just keeping them warm for them,they’re very much mistaken.’42The young minister found strong support in the now expanding armed forces.Impressed by an ideological lecture in the defence ministry at the end of November1933, the new minister General Werner von Blomberg had persuaded Goebbels toaddress officers based at Jüterbog; the official record shows that his remarks weregreeted with ‘storms of applause, ending with a hooray for the minister.’43 He spoketoo to officers at Dresden, Hanover, Kiel, and Wilhelmshaven.44 As tensions grewbetween the army and the S.A., particularly in Silesia, Blomberg asked Goebbels toarrange a second tour; but when he spoke in the Silesian capital Breslau on March 15he insisted on the presence of the local S.A. and S.S. officers as well.45 His famespread among the army officers. In April he spoke in Frankfurt-on-Oder and Stettin.General Walther von Brauchitsch, the commanding general in Königsberg, persuadedhim to address seven thousand of his officers and men too. To all of these audiencesGoebbels explained the Party’s ideology, the nature of revolutions, the Jewish problem,and the relationship between the Party, army, and state.46In all these speeches, slavishly adhering to Hitler’s line, he confirmed that only theregular soldier had a ‘sovereign right’ to bear arms for Germany.47 But he had nursedhis own relations with the S.A. high command as well—ever since the Stennes ‘putsch’of 1930. Not for nothing had he appointed an S.A. officer, Schaumburg-Lippe, as hisadjutant. For all his professed loathing of the homosexual cliques, he had learned toget along with Ernst Röhm and with S.A. Obergruppenführer Edmund Heines, thepolice chief in Breslau; indeed, he had testified during the Reichstag Fire trial that hehad spent a recent election evening with Heines roaring with laughter about the liesabout them in the ‘Brown Book’.48 Count Helldorff, now police chief in Potsdam,was a regular cruising companion aboard his yacht.49 On February 24 a glowing DrGoebbels presided over a Sport Palace display by the Berlin S.A. at which the ban-330 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHners and uniforms of the prohibition era were paraded. ‘Is the world to believe,’ heintoned in his speech, ‘that we have forgotten all of this? That all this was for nothing?No! The Führer knows, as do we all, to whom we owe this Third Reich.’50And why should he not utter sentiments like these? Hitler too was still fraternizingclosely with Röhm. He had appointed him to Cabinet rank in December, writtencordial New Year’s greetings to both Goebbels and Röhm, and shared with both menhis innermost thoughts on foreign policy during a train journey to Munich on January1, 1934. If anything, he was marginally more critical of Hitler—impatient at hiscontinued lethargy in foreign affairs and Reich reform. ‘We’re not making any headwayat all,’ he wrote in March. ‘Hitler doesn’t want to hurt anybody. But there’s noother way.’51 On the eve of Hitler’s birthday in April, however, Goebbels privatelyprayed: ‘God save our Führer. He’s everything to us. Happiness, hope, and future.’‘The people are right behind Hitler,’ he wrote after the Führer’s 1934 birthday. ‘Neverdid one man command such confidence in them as he.’52 He could not overlook thatHitler valued Goebbels’ wife Magda—perhaps his only protection in the shark-infestedwaters of the Third Reich. Goebbels used more old-fashioned methods to winHitler’s affection too: he donated ‘a wonderful Bechstein’ piano to him for his newofficial residence53 and brought him all the latest American movies, particularly thosestarring John Barrymore.54 Visiting Dresden for the national theatre week at the endof May 1934 with his own new female interest, the beautiful dark-blonde BaronessSigrid von Laffert, Hitler would invite only the Goebbels couple to share dinnerwith them at the Bellevue hotel, and they stayed up until three A.M. talking politics.55Goebbels had seen nothing wrong in fraternising with Röhm. When a wrangle haddeveloped that spring between Magda and ex husband Günther Quandt over thecustody of Harald,56 he canvassed Röhm’s backing as well as Hitler’s and Göring’s,and he noted one evening, ‘Röhm makes a magnificent speech about the S.A.’57 Hehad obviously still not singled out any