Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

the Völkischer Beobachter and head of the press association,would explain later that it was Goebbels’ own draconic press laws that had reducedits fifteen thousand journalist members to gibbering servility (which still persiststoday).64The fire had gone out of the media. It needed an identifiable, flesh-and-blood enemy.With the Jews now fled or fleeing, the protestant church emerged slowly to fillthe role. One village church had disobeyed Goebbels’ order for bells to toll whenHindenburg died. The pastor had told local party officials, ‘I don’t take orders fromJoseph the catholic.’65 This attitude was symptomatic of the church problem., ‘Anation of sixty-six millions,’ said Goebbels at Stettin, ‘cannot afford twenty-eightdifferent churches.’66Speaking at Trier a few days later he suggested that only National Socialism had atruly Christian programme, as witness its Winter Relief fund.67 He had launched thisWinterhilfswerk fund in September 1933; after glowering at the sumptuous farewellrepast for guests at Bayreuth that summer he had there and then decided that mil-354 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHlions of Germans could easily forego one meal each month and donate the proceedsto a national fund to feed and clothe the poor.68 Only the churlish would deny thereal benefits that this WHW fund brought to the hungry and unemployed. In thewinter of 1933–34 it had raised 358,136,040·71 marks, and helped 16,617,681needy Germans, almost a quarter of the population.69 His motives were of coursepartly political. Emigrés, he warned party officials in Cologne, were banking on thecollapse of the regime during the coming winter.70 He would devote much time toWinter Relief, tyically visiting a Berlin depot where party volunteers were preparingbread and potato meals for the capital’s starving thousands.71 In Moabit the S.A.set up a Christmas table eight hundred yards long for three thousand starving localBerliners, laden with food and gift packs, each bearing a green label reading, ‘Germanyfor You, and You for Germany!’72 Magda invited the next of kin of killed S.A.men to bring her their Christmas lists; one widow wrote a touching thank-you: ‘TheFührer loves justice,’ she wrote. ‘So he will look after us too.’73Germany was Hitler, Hess had said at the Nuremberg rally, and Hitler was Germany.Goebbels had certainly cast his lot permanently with the Führer. Hang togetheror be hanged separately: the saying is much the same in German. On December13 his pathological dependence on Hitler was documented again when HansFrank told him that Hitler believed he might be dying, and caused the Cabinet thatsame afternoon to pass a law allowing him to name a successor.74 ‘He thus seems tobe assuming the worst,’ recorded Goebbels, shocked. ‘I am very downcast. I go homefull of worry and cares… We’ve got to find a good doctor. The Führer must bebrought back to health. The people around the Führer are too lackadaisical.’ AtBremerhaven the next evening however he found Hitler looking well. Words failedhim, he was so relieved. ‘Our Führer! Long, long may he live!’75 On the nineteenthHitler nominated Göring as his successor, but kept it to himself and a few others—not including Goebbels. A few weeks later, discussing how to compensate Göring fortaking the Reich reform programme away from him, Hitler told Goebbels he was‘thinking’ of nominating Göring as his successor. Goebbels could not even bear tothink of that sad eventuality. ‘Hitler’s got to outlive us all,’ he pleaded in his diary. ‘WeGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 355need him like our daily bread.’76 That Christmas Hitler wrote to Goebbels, tellinghim how dear he and Magda were to him.77WHAT of Goebbels’s private life during that turbulent year, 1934? As minister, he is amagnet for Berlin’s nouveau chic society; he is a host to dazzling starlets, and lessfrequently their male counterparts. His motor yacht cruises the Wannsee with Magdaand a glittering array of twittering females of stage and screen in its well, like RenateMüller, Lil Dagover, Jenny Jugo, Gretl Slezak, Maria Andergast, and Magda’s sisterin law Ello, who says she’s being dragged through a messy divorce by her husband’scunning Jewish lawyer.Ello is all eyes and ears. Once that September her friend Maria Strehl makes abitchy comment in Magda’s hearing about Petra Fiedler, another of the minister’sfriends. ‘Female hysteria,’ he scoffs guiltily in his diary. The ensuing row with Magdaleaves him aggrieved and sleepless for days afterwards.78 For a while Magda shuts herears to Ello’s gossip, mindful perhaps of her eccentric pre-nuptial bargain with Joseph.In his official villa their separate bedrooms are divided by an ante-room and bathroom.One night that autumn she hears a door banging in the wind: she goes to closeit: she finds the connecting bathroom inexplicably locked. Toward morning she hearsJoseph softly unlocking the door. She makes no scene; she tells Ello, and over breakfastshe icily informs his house guest, a certain countess, ‘My car will be taking you tothe station in half an hour.’79She punishes him in a subtle but cruel way. To see in the New Year, 1935, she dragshim down to the Black Forest—on a skiing holiday. She goes off skiing all day, leavingher lame husband with the infants and a nanny at the hotel.TO keep him company Hitler’s press chief sent down to the Feldberger Hof hotel asenior journalist, Dr Alfred Detig, with instructions to let him win every hand atcards. Detig’s newspaper, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, had just carried a critiqueby Furtwängler of Goebbels’ recent persecution of the composer Hindemith.80 ‘Doyou know,’ snapped Goebbels arrogantly, ‘why we allow the DAZ to keep publishing?356 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHIt’s because if you’ve got a plague of rats you always leave one or two holes open tosee which rats peep out. That way you can trash them better.’He was facing, unfortunately, a man with literally a better hand of cards than his.By lunchtime Detig had taken him to the cleaners. As the gong sounded and Goebbelsmade to leave, Detig detained him. ‘Minister,’ he said, holding out his hand, ‘gamblingdebts are always settled on the nose.’Goebbels forgave him—temporarily. While Magda went off skiing, he took hisfriends down into Freiburg to see his old university. He refreshed nostalgic memoriesof Anka and Castle Hill, of Dattler’s, and