Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

interpretationof them. In April 1936 he would exclude even quarter-Jews and anybody married toa half-Jew from the chamber of culture. Eugenie Nikolajeva had one Jewish parent;as a favour, Goebbels secured for her Hitler’s permission to perform. Marianne Hoppehad a Jewish fiancé. She promised to dump him. His struggle to aryanize the chamberwould continue for four more years.90To Goebbels’ ill concealed irritation, Hitler leaned toward moderation in applyingthe new laws. On September 17 he heard the Führer telling the gauleiters that ‘aboveall’ there must be no excesses against the Jews.91 A week later he heard Hitler reiteratethis point to the gauleiters in Munich’s city hall: ‘No [persecution?] of “non-Aryans”,’ Goebbels scribbled afterwards—the word is illegible but the sense is clear—he described Hitler’s speech as one long repudiation of Rosenberg and Streicher(both of whom loudly applauded).92 He tried to talk Hitler round one Sunday at theend of September. ‘Jewish problem still not resolved even now,’ he recorded afterwards.‘We debated it for a long time but the Führer still can’t make his mind up.’93GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 377Sometimes moderate attitudes did surface in Goebbels too. Curiously, he had arguedagainst overdoing the restrictions on marriages where congenital deformitieswere involved.94 When over-zealous Nazis erased Jewish names from war memorialshis diary displayed real irritation.95 But such insights were rare.The murder of Wilhelm Gustloff, the party’s representative in Switzerland, by aJewish medical student in February 1936 at Davos brought to Goebbels’ attention ashadowy, well-funded World League against Racism and Antisemitism (LICA) dedicatedto attacking Hitler’s Germany. After scanning Emil Ludwig’s gloating book onthe case Goebbels remarked in his diary: ‘It would convert anybody who wasn’t onealready into an antisemite.’ More sinisterly he added, ‘This Jewish plague must beeradicated [ausradiert]. Totally. Nothing must be left.’96 In LICA he had momentarilyfound a worthy enemy. He staged a great funeral ceremony in Schwerin, Gustloff’shome town, and when Switzerland put the assassin David Frankfurter on trial hepulled whatever strings he could from Berlin; LICA contributed its vice-president DrLéon Castro as the assassin’s lawyer and portrayed the self confessed murderer as amartyr.97 Frankfurter stated that he had hoped that Hitler would die of the throatcancer falsely reported in the press, and when this happy event failed to occur he hadintended to bump off Göring or Goebbels; denied that opportunity, he had shotGustloff instead. The court handed down an eighteen year sentence. ‘Now we haveto unmask the camarilla behind him,’ wrote Goebbels.98Uncomfortably conscious that LICA might have put out a contract on his life too, hewarmed toward Julius Streicher again. He decided in one indulgent diary entry thatthe gauleiter always would be an enfant terrible.99 ‘I have been told that the Jews aregetting uppity again,’ he intoned on his tenth anniversary as Berlin’s gauleiter. ‘In thepast I over-estimated their intelligence. They are neither intelligent nor clever. Ifthey were intelligent they would either disappear or play possum.’ The excessivelygentle voice in which he pronounced these lines, which were later omitted from theofficial text, struck his British listeners as being ‘the very refinement of cruelty.’100How much more exhilarating it was to mastermind this ancient feud with the Jewsthan to pursue his humdrum ministerial routine—the receptions for gaggles of gig-378 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHgling maidens in regional costumes, the speeches to international penal experts101,the lectures to Wehrmacht officers.102HITLER concealed nothing from Goebbels. Discussing the political situation withGoebbels, Göring, and Ribbentrop on May 14, two days after Marshal Pilsudski diedtaking with him the hopes of an fruitful alliance with Poland, Hitler had predictedthat the years 1936 and 1937 would hold particular dangers for Germany. ‘Rearm,rearm!’ wrote Goebbels afterwards.103 Mussolini, running into snags in Abyssinia,was warming towards the Nazis again.104 Even when unable to speak after a throatoperation, Hitler still sent for Goebbels and told him of his worries, writing themdown on paper for him.105Vacationing in August 1935 with Goebbels at TegernseeHitler repeated that his foreign policy was based on an alliance with Britain and anentente cordiale with Poland. ‘Meanwhile, expansion in the east,’ recorded Goebbelsafterwards. ‘The Baltic states belong to us.’ Peering into the future Hitler envisagedBritain fighting Italy over her invasion of Abyssinia and, a few years later, Japan fightingRussia. ‘Then our great historic hour will come,’ wrote Goebbels deeply affected.‘We must be ready then. A grandiose prospect.’106 He foresaw complications forHitler over his support for Mussolini since this would be treading on Britain’s toes;he briefed his editors accordingly, and Hitler also addressed his ministers and generalson the danger that Britain might include Germany in any sanctions against Italy.107‘All of this,’ Goebbels realized, ‘is coming three years too soon for us.’Their rearmament programme was far from complete, but even so Hitler decidedearly in 1936 to stage a new coup. In violation of the Locarno Pact, Paris was negotiatinga treaty with Moscow which Hitler deemed to justify him in moving troopsback into Germany’s Rhineland provinces, demilitarized since the Versailles treaty.For a while however he bided his time. ‘We are trying to overcome our difficulties,’declared Goebbels, speaking in Berlin on January 17, 1936, ‘with the cunning of theserpent.’ He added in a pointed reference that was omitted by most of the Germanpress, ‘If a treaty has become intolerable there are higher laws than those which arewritten in ink.’108 Three days later Hitler notified him in strict confidence that he wasGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 379contemplating reoccupying the Rhineland suddenly, as soon as Italy’s war in Abyssiniaended.109Goebbels could scarcely keep the secret. In the Rhineland he spoke threateninglyof both the League of Nations and the Jews, and advised Americans to tackle theirown ‘gangster problems’ before meddling in Germany’s affairs. If Germany had hadjust two more army corps in Belgium in the war, he declared, in an extraordinaryand again unreported passage, Germany would have won. ‘That was a serious blunder,’he added. ‘It won’t happen the next time.’110A month passed. On February 27, lunching with Goebbels and Göring, Hitler feltit was still premature to go into the Rhineland. But on the very next day the Frenchconfirmed their treaty with Moscow. As he would in each of the