Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

outline of subsequent events that Saturday is well known. Hitler informedGoebbels of his intention to arrest Ernst Röhm and the mutinous S.A. commanders;Goebbels, prudently, decided to say nothing on their behalf. After touching down atOberwiesenfeld airfield at four A.M., Hitler received further alarming reports fromthe army and S.S.—Röhm’s rivals for power—that in Munich and Berlin S.A. unitshad been alerted hours before and had ordered a full mobilization for that afternoon.Panicked by these (probably exaggerated) reports Hitler took his party to the Bavarianministry of the interior building. Here he stripped two sleepy-eyed S.A. generalsof their badges and sent out S.S. squads to pick up other S.A. commanders fromtheir hotels and trains on their arrival. Gripped by paranoia he announced that heproposed to set off at once to arrest Röhm. In three open Mercedes limousines thesize of small trucks, provided by Gauleiter Wagner, he and his posse sallied forth atfive-thirty A.M.—Hitler, Lutze, and Hess riding in the first car, a bunch of detectivesin the second, and Goebbels and one of Wagner’s men in the third.Out at Wiessee Röhm was vacationing in the lakefront Hotel Hanslbauer. He waswakened in his Room 21 by Hitler himself, a loaded pistol gripped in his hand, screaming:‘You are a traitor!’ Goebbels and Lutze said nothing as Röhm, ashen faced, wasled away. They found Edmund Heines, aged thirty-six, sharing Room 31 with a youth,which made it easy for Goebbels to draw odious conclusions. (‘May I be excused,’ hewould say in his broadcast the next day, ‘from rendering a description of the loathsomeand almost nauseating sights that met our eyes.’) He wrote in his diary: ‘Thechief was brilliant. Heines pitiful. With a rent boy. Röhm remained calm. Everythingwent off very smoothly.’ As Heines too was dragged away, he appealed: ‘Lutze, I’vedone nothing! Help me!’A chartered omnibus took away the arrested S.A. officers. Hitler’s limousine convoyfollowed, making a prudent detour to the south in case the S.A. had summonedhelp. Safely back at party HQ in Munich, Hitler ordered the codeword phoned throughto Göring in Berlin to trigger the purge in Prussia. Later that morning, addressing abewildered audience of middle-ranking S.A. officers, he laid it on thick about Röhm’s346 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHmurky financial dealings, his opulent HQ in Berlin, and his treachering dealings withan unnamed ‘foreign power.’ To those around him he revealed that some of the arrestedmen were to be shot. The Gestapo showed Lutze a list of names; Lutze thoughtfullynoticed that several were already marked @ . Hitler proposed however to spareRöhm, a former close friend. Hess argued that there was no justice in sparing Röhmif others were to be executed. Lutze, asked his view, evaded clear comment.11 Röhm’swas however the only one not checked on the list of seven names which Hitler handedat five P.M. to Sepp Dietrich, commander of his S.S. bodyguard. The six others faceda firing squad at Munich’s Stadelheim prison later that day.Goebbels’ contribution to these shocking events is not recorded. They had beenmirrored in Berlin. Operating from Göring’s villa, Himmler, Göring, and the army’sgeneral Walter von Reichenau had settled many old scores while Blomberg and GeneralWerner von Fritsch looked in from time to time. While Franz von Papen hadbeen spared—to Goebbels’ annoyance—he learned that afternoon that Papen’sspeechwriter Edgar Jung, and his senior aides Herbert von Bose and Erich Klausenerhad been shot in cold blood and that Berlin’s S.A. commander Karl Ernst had beenshot by firing squad. The orgy of murder had embraced even General Kurt vonSchleicher, Hitler’s predecessor as chancellor, and Gregor Strasser, once Goebbels’most powerful rival in Berlin.12 ‘Strafgericht,’ was his only terse comment: judgementday. At eight P.M. he flew back to Berlin with Hitler. Witnesses said that he looked likedeath as their Junkers plane landed at Tempelhof airfield two hours later. Göring metthem and nonchalantly told Hitler he had somewhat expanded on the original hitlist. Hitler was not pleased by this. ‘Göring reports that all went to plan in Berlin,’recorded Goebbels. ‘Only cock-up: Mrs Schleicher bought it too. Tough, but can’tbe helped.’13Back at the chancellery, Hitler vanished to take a bath, after which he nonchalantlytold his secretary, ‘Now I feel clean as a new born babe again!’14THE NEXT day, Sunday July 1, 1934 Goebbels found that Hitler’s reputation had soared.15Over lunch he found Hitler pale and consumed by bitterness. ‘Göring tenders hisGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 347report. Executions almost over. A few still needed. It’s tough but necessary. Ernst,Strasser, Senle [Stempfle?], Detten ?. One final sweep and we’re through the worst.It’s tough but can’t be avoided. For twenty years there must be peace.’ He spent thewhole afternoon with Hitler. ‘I cannot leave him on his own,’ felt Goebbels. ‘He’ssuffering badly, but hanging tough. The death sentences are pronounced with theutmost gravity. Around sixty all told.’Relenting to his more bloodthirsty colleagues’ pressure Hitler ordered his friendErnst Röhm—still in a Munich prison cell—added to the list. ‘Twice,’ recordedGoebbels, ‘Röhm is given twenty minutes alone with a pistol. He doesn’t use it andis then shot. With that, it’s all over.’That evening Goebbels broadcast his own version worldwide for twenty minutes,his own version of the purge. In the script he placed himself carefully right at theFührer’s side throughout—in intimate, unchallengeable proximity. He spared nonasty detail about Röhm & Co. They had brought discredit to ‘our S.A.’, indeed:‘They were about to bring the entire party leadership into disrepute by their sordidand disgusting sexual abnormality.’ Hitler had lanced the abcess, he said; nor did henot stint his praise for the S.S.16 ‘The Führer was very nice to me and Magda,’ observedGoebbels. ‘As was Göring, who was around all day. A stream of fresh news.[Sepp] Dietrich reports on the executions. A bit white about the gills. We’re not cutout to be executioners.’ On Monday July 2 Hitler told him the final toll of executedwas sixty—‘terrible losses,’ wrote Goebbels without explaining the adjective;Hindenburg however had sent a ‘fabulous’ telegram, congratulating Hitler on havingsaved Germany. ‘For God’s sake,’ recorded Goebbels, ‘let’s have an end to the shooting.And the S.A. must not be too humiliated, above all not