Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

by the police.’17 Hereturned to this theme, his concern about the S.A., several times in his diaries.18Relaxing with Count von Helldorff later that evening at the Goebbels villa, Hitlersighted Prince Schaumburg-Lippe in his S.A.uniform and asked curiously: ‘—Andwhere did you spend Saturday?’ Goebbels’ adjutant replied that he had been on dutyat the ministry. ‘You’re lucky,’ remarked Hitler. ‘I doubt I could have spared youotherwise.’19348 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHIn Cabinet on Tuesday July 3 Hitler explained that firm action had been necessary,and took full responsibility for ‘forty-three’ executions. General von Blomberg, speakingfor all of them, welcomed his action. Goebbels said nothing.20 Papen arrived halfway through, belatedly released from house arrest— ‘quite broken,’ observedGoebbels without sympathy, ‘pleads for mercy. We all expect him to resign. His menhave all been shot. Edgar Jung too. He had it coming to him.’ They enacted thirtytwolaws that day, all garbage in his view, and a mockery under the circumstances.21He travelled to Kiel and told audiences of gauleiters, naval officers, and sailorswhat he knew about the Röhm affair; which was not much. Back in Berlin on thesixth, Hitler told of his visit to the now dying president. Hindenburg, recordedGoebbels, had been a real sport. Papen was to stay in office until September 15, andthen be turfed out (abgemeiert)—‘There must be no suggestion he was one of Röhm’smen.’22 He kept hearing fresh details about the death roll. ‘[Karl] von Wechmar wasshot too,’ he wrote indignantly on July 6, referring to the S.A. Brigadeführer inBreslau. ‘Terrible! A lot of things happened that did not entirely accord with theFührer’s will. Fate! Victims of the revolution! You learn to think little of human life,once it gets lost like that.’ He also noted soberly that the murder of the CatholicAction leader Klausener was having an anti-Nazi backlash in the catholic Saar region.

Goebbels23Hitler flew down to the Obersalzberg. In his absence wild rumours swept Berlinand the foreign press. According to one Goebbels had ordered five young S.A. menexecuted in his ministry garden and directed his staff to watch.24 Less implausiblewas the story that Goebbels had Röhm’s villa raided and staged an exhibition of thespoils in his ministry—delicately holding up silk lingerie and perfume sprays for hisstaff’s inspection. One rumour had Goebbels personally ordering Strasser’s murder.The gullible foreign journalists named thirty-nine other victims who were, as ReinhardHeydrich indignantly protested later to Goebbels, still very much alive, includingHelldorff, Alvensleben, Manfred von Killinger, Lossow, Seisser, and the widowedbride of Karl Ernst.25 (Goebbels offered Helldorff command of Berlin’s S.A. butwarned him to stop putting on airs.) As the foreign press hysteria grew louder,GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 349Goebbels noted nervously: ‘High time that the Führer speak and announce that thelists of those shot and the heaps of documentary evidence are being checked and willbe publicized. Meanwhile: turn a deaf ear, and keep our nerve.’26 Since Hitler delayedspeaking, Goebbels broadcast a diatribe against the British, French, and Russiannewspaper stories—‘the direst kind of revolver-journalism,’ he exploded, drawingon his characteristically inventive vocabulary.27 Stung by his language, at theirnext ministerial tea party the normally hardbitten foreign journalists in Berlin weptinto their teacups with rage and, as Louis Lochner put it, nobody minced their languageto Goebbels. ‘I don’t think he’ll invite us to teas hereafter!’28GOEBBELS rejoined Magda out at their lakeside cottage at Cladow. She was plagued byfears of assassination.29 Both needed a vacation. Hitler too came out to Cladow severaltimes that week. ‘He now sees things quite clearly,’ recorded Goebbels cryptically,adding: ‘Lutze has become suspicious too.’30 Did this mean that Hitler realizedthat he had been manipulated, as he had, by Göring, Himmler, and the armed forces?31On July 7 Goebbels and Helldorff made a Sunday day trip up to Heiligendamm, aBaltic seaside resort.32 On the thirteenth Hitler spoke to the Reichstag about thepurge. Goebbels, Göring, Hess, Lutze, and their respective wives gathered roundthe exhausted Führer that evening and congratulated him.33 The next day Goebbelsand Hitler drove up to Heiligendamm. ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl, who had just returnedfrom America, found them there. ‘Hitler,’ he wrote years afterwards, ‘had a flushed,evil look, as though gorged on the blood of his victims.’ It was not a pleasant vacation.The crowds gawped and cheered them wherever they went, and they had tobreak off their stay.34HITLER had begun to plot against his neighbour, Austria—he mentioned it at lunch onJuly 10.35 Although he would protest his innocence in later years, there is no doubtthat he was fully apprised of the coup being prepared by Austrian Nazis under TheoHabicht. Habicht claimed army backing for a plot to replace the dictatorial chancellorDr Engelbert Dollfuss with Dr Anton Rintelen, a prominent right-wing politi-350 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHcian. Goebbels’ unpublished diary shows that he considered Habicht a hothead whomHitler, as was typical of his indecisiveness, was hanging on to far too long. WhenHabicht brought the latest news on Austria on April 10, Goebbels again decided:‘He’s obviously not up to the job.’36 After discussing Austria with Habicht and Haegerttwo weeks later Goebbels noted: ‘We’ll be intervening there more strongly now.Otherwise dilettantism rules.’37 Intervene—but how?Attending Bayreuth for the annual Wagner festival on Sunday July 22, he foundHitler conferring secretly with Habicht, Rosenberg, General Walther von Reichenauand the former S.A. commander Franz Pfeffer von Salomon. They had decided on acoup. In his diary Goebbels inked the terse comment: ‘Will it come off? I’ve verysceptical.’38 For three days they went their normal ways: Hitler entertained Goebbelsand the others by reading from his Landsberg prison notes, and talking of the past;once they all went for a picnic in the forests. Back at the Wagner household, Goebbelshad a little scene with Magda whom he caught ‘snooping’ through his mail.39The coup was to take place the next day, Wednesday July 25. General WilhelmAdam, army commander in Bavaria, was ordered to report at nine A.M. on Wednesdaymorning to Bayreuth, where Hitler boasted to him that the Austrian army wasgoing to overthrow the Dollfuss government that day: Adam was to arm all the AustrianNazis who had fled to Germany. The army general was also deeply sceptical.40Goebbels was with Hitler