Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Bratwurstglöckl tavern;Strasser’s only evidence was the liquidation of Karl Zehnter, the bar’s owner, in thecoming purge. Goebbels certainly spoke in Munich’s Künstlerhaus on June 4, but hisdiary makes no mention of Röhm or the tavern.76 The ubiquitous Bella Fromm alsoclaimed that Goebbels met with Röhm that day (‘That little S.A. man Ulicht told methat,’ she wrote in her diary, ‘the one on the Morgenpost staff.)77 British diplomatswent further: they learned late in June that Goebbels backed Röhm’s attack on thearmed forces clique, hoping that Göring might ‘finally be eliminated.’ Later howeverhe had withdrawn his backing for Röhm, fearing to jeopardize his relations with334 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHHitler.78 On June 7 Count Helldorff came to relate to Goebbels how Röhm had oncedone him wrong. Goebbels gave it only the briefest mention; he was preoccupiedwith his feud with Rosenberg.79ONE small episode during June 1934 showed that Goebbels was still padding out hispersonal reputation. Envious of Göring’s recent visits to Italy and the Balkans,Goebbels secured an invitation to stage the first visit by a member of Hitler’s cabinetto Poland although Poland’s great game reserves would have made Göring the moreobvious choice.80 His diary shows that Hitler was seriously alarmed by the prospectthat an ‘intransigent’ France might invade Germany to prevent further violations ofthe Versailles treaty; Germany needed to ensure that Poland and Italy stayed out.81Goebbels flew to Poland for two days on the thirteenth to a chorus of protestsfrom the country’s socialist and Jewish newspapers (Jews made up one-tenth of Poland’sand one-third of Warsaw’s population.) Lecturing an invited audience includingthe Polish prime minister, his cabinet, and many ambassadors, Goebbels reassuredthem that National Socialism was not for export, and repeated that Germanydesired rapprochement.82 He had consulted Hitler and Neurath closely on the textof this speech.83 Afterwards he drove round Warsaw, saw the Jewish quarter (‘stinkingand filthy. The eastern Jews. There they are’), had meetings with Marshal Pilsudskiand foreign minister Beck, then flew on to Cracow. At the same time Hitler had beento Venice to meet Mussolini on a similar mission.Back in Germany Goebbels resumed his round of ‘grouser’ speeches—in Freiburg(‘I get quite nostalgic. Here I lived, loved, and suffered’84) and Gera. Here Hitler,just back from Venice, confided to him the outcome of his first talks with Mussolini:1. Austria. Out with Dollfuss! New elections under a neutral man of confidence.Influence of Nazis depending on number of votes. Economic issues to be resolvedjointly by Rome and Berlin. Both are agreed. Dollfuss will be notified.2. Disarmament: Mussolini fully endorses our position. ‘France has gone mad.’He’ll back us.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 3353. The East: we must build further on friendship with Poland. (Vide my visit).Seek a modus vivendi with Russia.85ON their return to Berlin that evening Goebbels learned that Vice Chancellor vonPapen had delivered an amazing speech attacking him at Marburg university, speakingof the public’s revulsion at the S.A., expressing veiled support for a monarchy,and siding with what Goebbels called the ‘whingers and whiners.’ ‘A genius,’ saidPapen, in a pointed criticism of Goebbels himself, ‘is never created by propaganda.’A transcript of Papen’s words reached Goebbels’ villa that evening. His adjutant foundhim in a blue dressing gown and a tantrum, hurling clothes-hangers downstairs. ‘I’llteach this scoundrel a lesson,’ he was screaming. ‘Humiliating me like this!’ On Hitler’sorders—or so he claimed in his diary—he ordered the speech suppressed atonce. It was almost too late, as his ministry’s foreign desk had already released it andthe Frankfurter Zeitung had already plated it up. Annoyed that a junior minister hadsuppressed his speech, Papen threatened to resign. Hitler undertook to censureGoebbels.86The Papen speech was a slap in the face for Goebbels. On June 21 he presided overthe monthly tea party for the foreign press and listened in delight to the Reichsbankgovernor Dr Schacht’s witty speech; his grin vanished as Papen arrived uninvited,nonchalantly planted himself in Schacht’s vacant chair just to his left, and sat noddingaffably to the journalists.87 He repaid Papen at his gau’s midsummer festival thatnight in Neukölln, delivering another speech against the ludicrous armchair criticswho had been too weak to seize power themselves.88 Although he mentioned byname the Crown Prince, whose hand he wrongly suspected behind the Marburgspeech, the foreign journalists recognized his real target as Papen. Hitler told him onthe twenty-second that he had seen through his vice-chancellor: ‘He’s caused himselfa heap of trouble.’For the next week Goebbels continued to fulminate about Papen and the Marburgspeech—to Ruhr coalminers, to Berlin civil servants, and to his diary. Papen enjoyedevery minute of Goebbels’ discomfiture. Sunday June 24 found them both at336 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHthe Hamburg Derby. According to Papen’s account, when the more expensiveracegoers sighted him, sporting a light grey top hat, there were cheers of ‘HeilMarburg!’ Goebbels, pink-faced and piqued, flaunted himself before the cheapergalleries; the workers’ applause turned to cheers when they sighted Papen however.‘This fellow Papen,’ Goebbels told his deputy gauleiter Görlitzer, ‘is getting too bigfor his boots.’89 Thus Papen’s account; Goebbels’ unpublished diary puts a very differentspin on the episode: ‘Derby. One big mess. Public sharply against Papen. Hardput to avoid a scandal. Ambassadors there. Embarrassing scene. At the end togetherwith Papen. Public totally on my side. I walk right into their midst. These ovations!Poor Herrenklub, if it ever comes to the crunch.’90 Licking his wounds and seekingscapegoats, the next day Goebbels had the entire racecourse management sacked.91On June 22 he had delivered his stock speech against the grousing ‘diehards’ to agigantic audience of two hundred thousand in Halle.92 He repeated this theme atDuisburg and Essen on the twenty-fourth. ‘There are,’ he defined at Essen, ‘the reserveofficers, the intellectuals, the journalists, the clergymen. You need a sharp eye todetect this type of person… The public has got to see through this clique.’93 Thesewords caused uproar among those classes thus branded by Goebbels. After the comingbloody events showed that he had been way off-target, he was forced to issuewhat he called an ‘unabridged’ text of what he had said, making plain he was referringonly to those who put on the airs of reserve