Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

from the opera’s premiere, and had it taken off the programme atHeiligendamm where he was on summer vacation.38He was also increasingly sensitive to criticism. In May 1935 the Gestapo drew hisattention to one cabaret, the Catacombs, in Luther Strasse. Agents reported the subversivesketches of comedian Werner Finck, but Reinhard Heydrich reminded S.S.chief Heinrich Himmler that their own Völkischer Beobachter had only recently praisedthis act, and that Finck had been a star performer at Goebbels’ recent film ball.Goebbels sent his own adjutant to spy on Catacombs and a similar establishment,Tingel-Tangel, in Kant Strasse, and closed them down a few days later.39GOEBBELS gets to know Magda better; she tells him about her life, much of it like astage play.40 Pregnant again, in January 1935 she takes their two children out toCladow.41 Late in March he begins a costly five month reconstruction of his officialresidence, for the first of several times and at tax-payers’ expense. Only the finestcraftsmen are employed.42 At the same time he carps about the lavishness of theGöring wedding staged on April 10. ‘Two events keep the world in bated breath,’ hemocks in his unpublished diary on the wedding eve: ‘the conference at Stresa, andGöring’s wedding. The world of reality, and the world of fantasy. Let’s hope the fantasy-world one day stands up to the blows dished out to it by the real one.’ It is asthough he can see Göring’s hour of failure coming. As Berlin goes crazy next day,with thirty thousand troops lining the streets and throngs cheering the wedding couple,Goebbels turns melanocholy thoughts back to his own little country wedding atSeverin: he is not envious at all, he decides, but happy as can be. Unable to get CarinGöring out of his mind, he accompanies Magda to the nuptials and the followingseven-course banquet (‘an impressive picture for the starving’) through whisperingand finger-pointing crowds; the embarrassment is just one more cross he has tobear.43Magda is momentarily quiescent, sunning herself in the Führer’s affections. Hitleroften comes out to Cladow and goes cruising with the minister across the lake to seeGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 369Potsdam’s trees in blossom, listening absently to Goebbels’ litanies against their turbulentpriests and their arrogant Jews. Hitler finds it hard to get worked up aboutthe Jews, now that he is in power.44 At other times the Cladow villa is filled withbrainless chatter as Goebbels invites over actresses like Angela Sallocker and againthe gorgeous Jenny Jugo, currently filming the Elisa Doolittle role in George BernardShaw’s Pygmalion.45Magda Goebbels’ family world revolves around her children—Joseph grumblesonce that she has forgotten to make Easter a bit nicer for him too. He takes a monthlong seaside vacation at Heiligendamm, leaving her in Berlin. Indifferent to her feelings,he invites stage actress Else Elster (Helldorff’s mistress) and film starlet LuiseUllrich to join him.46 Ever present is Ello Quandt, who arrives with her nubile friendHela Strehl. ‘Both very nice,’ Goebbels records circumspectly, ‘and clever and goodlookers too.’47 When Hitler joins this beach party for two days Magda comes too—only to return to Cladow abruptly.48 Goebbels writes in his diary the words ‘fondfarewell’ but there has in fact been a ghastly scene about which Hela at once advisesdiarist Bella Fromm: ‘She [Hela] has little brains and even less gumption,’ recordsFromm, ‘but all the more charms for Mr Goebbels which she readily displays to him.She went up to Heiligendamm with him, his wife and children and female secretaries—of which two or three are always among his ladyfriends. From what one hears,’recorded this Jewish gossip writer, her newspaper outlet now capped, ‘Frau Goebbelsdid not know about it beforehand and departed suddenly after a violent row—notthat either Hela or Goebbels were the least upset.’49Goebbels diary is not surprisingly oblique about these goings on.He returns toCladow on July 30. The mood is hostile. ‘Magda is crying,’ he tells his diary. ‘I can’thelp it.’ Magda, now very heavily pregnant, puts him through the wringer. Goebbelsenters into a discussion of ‘this disagreeable topic’ and at once regrets it. ‘She’s nevergoing to change,’ he notes mysteriously. A few days later, he tackles her again and shepromises to watch her tongue in future, particularly in the presence of Ello who‘squawks’ far too much in his view. The matrimonial tussle continues all summer, hisdiary seesawing between references to Magda and three-year old Helga as ‘both so370 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHsweet’, and entries like: ‘Talked things over with Magda. We don’t really see eye toeye any more. But things will probably get better after the birth.’50Her confinement lasts for two weeks, while her jealous sister in law feeds herdetails of Joseph’s alternative pursuits, i.e. Hela Strehl. He takes Ello sharply to task.‘I rebuked her to her face about her loose tongue and she felt very small,’ he writes,and adds the significant conclusion: ‘Now it’s all over between us. Never mind!’51Even at the maternity clinic there is another colossal row with Magda about Hela—he blames Ello—but they kiss and make up. A few days later when he takes home theunquestionably beautiful Baroness Sigrid von Laffert back home to the now refurbishedvilla, he finds Magda there—unwilling to stay at the clinic, although her labourbegins the next day.52On October 2, 1935, she gives birth to a boy. She calls him Hellmut after hertragic love, Günther Quandt’s firstborn son. ‘A real Goebbels face!’ triumphs DrGoebbels; as though there might be some doubt.53 In fact his paternity as the yearspass is undeniable—the flattened temples, the receding forehead, and even the hintof an overbite. Hellmut Goebbels grows to a solemn, slow-witted mutt of nine, 136centimetres (four feet six inches) tall, with no greater recorded ambition than tobecome a Berlin subway driver, a source of constant worry to his father, who can seehow his sisters—eventually there are five of them—are spoiling him.54True, Hellmut’s arrival does restore matrimonial peace, but only for three weeks.After a protracted session with actress Jenny Jugo on October 22, 1935, the diaryrecords Goebbels as working late; he is accordingly subjected to an ‘endless parlaver’by Magda, ‘who puts to me,’ he wearily writes, ‘her views on