Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

officers, intellectuals, journalists andclergymen and not to those worthies themselves. ‘You need a sharp eye to detectthese people.’ He had had no intention of attacking the actual people named, onlythe renegades whom they had already cast out of their ranks.94 If all of this verbiageproved anything, it was that Goebbels still had no idea of which of many windmillshe was supposed to be tilting at.HITLER had his sights on clearly defined if very different prey. Deferring to the generals,he had decided to decapitate the S.A. On June 22 he summoned Viktor Lutze byplane from Hanover, swore him to secrecy, and told him that the Gestapo had informedhim of that Röhm was plotting against the ‘reactionary‘ Reichswehr on theGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 337pretext that it was plotting against the Führer and the S.A. He was going to retireRöhm, he said; Lutze, a reliable if colourless S.A. commander, was to stand by fororders.95Goebbels knew nothing of any S.A. ‘plot’. His target was still Franz von Papen.96‘There is a ferment around,’ he wrote on June 27. ‘The Reichswehr is not quiteclean. Führer’s too good-natured. Hess has made a good broadcast, against revolution.Siding strongly with Führer, veiled attack on Papen. Latter’s calmly carrying onhis intrigues. His [Marburg] speech was drafted by E[dgar] Jung.’ Compromisingletters, Goebbels learned, had been found. ‘We must watch out. If things get critical,then hit hard.’97 Lunching at the chancellery on June 26 he found Hitler on the alerttoo.98After gossipping with Hitler on Wednesday June 27, Goebbels left for engagementsin Kiel. He was still none the wiser. Writing that Friday he would recall vaguelythat the situation had deteriorated. ‘The Führer must act. Otherwise the Reaktion’—which he still did not identify—‘will get out of hand.’99 In Kiel he found ‘universalconcern about the Reaktion,’ and ‘embitterment within the Reichswehr.’ The public,he felt, was waiting for them to do something. Flanked by his adjutant Schaumburg-Lippe, himself an S.A. Sturmführer, Goebbels delivered his stock ‘whinger’ speechto eighty thousand people in and outside the North Baltic Hall in Kiel. By what right,he challenged them, did somebody who had not lifted a finger before 1933 nowpoint at those who had toiled day and night for power?100Back in Berlin that Wednesday he again noted that Papen’s seditious Marburg speechhad been written for him by Jung, whom the Gestapo had now arrested.101 Later KarlHanke brought him the latest equally seditious catholic pastoral letter. ‘Now,’ wroteGoebbels, still wholly misjudging Hitler’s intentions, ‘let’s go for them.’102Hitler had gone to Essen for Gauleiter Terboven’s wedding to Ilse Stahl, an oldflame of Goebbels’. He was on the brink of committing his first mass murder. OnThursday Goebbels took the afternoon off at Cladow. ‘Gloomier and gloomier,’ herecorded, adding the vague and helpless comment: ‘The Reaktion is at work everywhere.’After a cruise with Magda and the children out on the summery lake, he338 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwent downtown to speak at Spandau. ‘Talked tough and grim,’ he said. ‘The peopleunderstand.’ He drove back out to Cladow. ‘How much longer?’ he exclaimed in hisdiary, writing the next day as the uncertainties suddenly began to clear.1031 Basil Newton to Sir John Simon, Sep 13, 1933 (PRO file FO.371/16728).2 NYT, Oct 9, 1933.3 Phipps to FO, No.224, Oct 16, 1933 (PRO file FO.371/17368).4 NYT, Oct 27; Lochner to Betty, Nov 12, 1933, loc. cit.5 The forged article was entitled, ‘Germany’s Aim: She wants More Territory.’ See NYT,Nov 18, 19, 22, 1933.6 NYT, Nov 18, 1933.7 ‘Querschnitt durch die Tätigkeit des Arbeitsgebiets Dr Taubert (Antibolschewismus)des RMVP bis zum 31.12.1944’ (Yivo Inst., file GÊ PA-14); cited hereafter as Taubert report.— For records of Anti-Comintern see BA files R55/70, 207, 369, 373, 374–6, 730.8 Diary, May 8, 1933; at the Reichstag Fire trial an incriminating memorandum allegedlyby Oberfohren was produced. JG commented (transcript, p.23), ‘Why pick as the author ofsuch a document a dead man who can’t defend himself any more?’9 Trial observations of Professor Justus Hedemann, a Jena lawyer (BA file Kl. Erw. 433.)10 Court record; Borresholm, 122.11 Court record, Nov 8, p.114; cf. Vossische Zeitung, Nov 9, 1933. At the press desk wasLouis Lochner—see his descriptive letter to Betty, Nov 12, 1933 (Lochner papers, box 47).12 Borresholm, 118f.13 DNB release, Jan 27, 1934: ‘Dr Goebbels favours saying yes to life and joy’; NYT, Jan27, 1934.14 Ullstein’s Morgenpost sold 4–5m daily, Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung 1m, Grüne Post 400,000,Berliner Zeitung 100,000, Berliner Allgemeine Zeitung 80,000, and Vossische Zeitung 60,000.15 Unpubl. diary, May 11, 1934.—Interrogations of Amann: Nuremberg Sep 30, 1947(IfZ: ZS.809) and Jan 10, 1948 (NA: RG.260, box 15); by Frank Korf, May 1, 1948 (HooverLibr., Korf papers), and CSDIC(UK) PIR.79.—And CSDIC(UK) report, SS OGruf. OttoOhlendorf, ‘Notes on Corruption and Corrupted Personalities in Germany,’ PW papers133, Aug 11, 1945 (PRO file WO.208/4174), and CSDIC(WEA) BAOR report on Winkler,op.cit.16 Unpubl. diary, Apr 30, May 2 and 11: ‘The gentlemen from Ullstein. Bluntly told themmy opinion. About Jews and suchlike. Ban on Grüne Post won’t be lifted. They should eliminatethe Jews.’— NYT, May 9, 1934.17 CSDIC(WEA) BAOR report FIR.80, appendix Jul 6, 1946: ‘Winkler’s connectionwith Party publishing firms’ (NA file RG.332, Mis-Y, box 18).GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 33918 Diary, Jan 2, 1934.19 Ibid., Sep 1, 1933.20 JG to Frau Dr Mumme, Nov 3, 1933 (Irene Prange papers).21 See JG’s unpubl. diary, Mar 20: ‘Marianne Hoppe tells me about her new film. I’ll helpher;’ on May 13 he added, ‘Talk with Marianne Hoppe. She evidently went shooting hermouth off. Now she’s cut down to size.’ On Jun 20, JG notes eloquently: ‘Marianne Hoppe:I’ve become thoroughly sick of her.’22 Ibid., Apr 24, 1934: ‘Käthe Dorsch, with whom I discuss film matters. She is verycharming.’23 Diary, Dec 11, 1936.24 Interview of Irene Prange, Sep 6, 1990; see the letter written by Deutscher Verlag toAnka Oswald, Apr 20, 1943 (Irene Prange papers).25 Eher Verlag to JG, Feb 3, 1933 ( ZStA Potsdam, Rep.90 Go 1, Goebbels, vol.3).26 Diary, Mar 25, 31, Apr 4, 6, 13, 1394.27 Unpubl. diary, Mar 11, 12, 17, 1934.27 Ibid., Apr 9, 1934.28 Ibid., Apr 13–14, 1934.29