Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

more alone.One day Goebbels records moodily that the moment Magda returns home he leavesfor Schwanenwerder— ‘I have no place I can call home when she’s there.’19 Oppressedby the chains of marriage, he lies out late on the darkening meadow gazing atthe stars.20 He indulges in a large motor launch, and spends many an afternoon lollingabout the lake, chatting on its mobile phone to his friends; he buys another boatfor Magda and the children.21 Hanfstaengl describes one ghastly incident at a Goebbelsparty: as the last guests leave, the crippled minister trips and falls; Magda helps himto his feet. Purple with rage, he seizes her by the throat and forces her sideways toher knees. ‘There,’ he screams, ‘now you see who is the stronger, who is the master.’22After one tiff she resorts to tears. ‘Sometimes she gets into a state,’ he writes helplessly,‘like all women. Then you’ve just got to bare your teeth at her.’23His own circle expands. She becomes accustomed to all the other lovelies flutteringaround her powerful husband.24 There is a stream of delectable wannabee-actresses.‘I’ll try,’ notes Goebbels succinctly after Eva Vanya visits, seeking a role.25Anny Ondra, the blonde, cheerful and naïve wife of boxer Max Schmeling, comes toSchwanenwerder; Goebbels finds Edda Ciano, who also comes, ‘frightfully painted,like just about every other Italian woman.’26 At the Italian embassy’s reception forEdda a woman burbles loudly about Erich Maria Remarque’s ‘wonderful’ new book.‘That communist,’ the minister shrills, casting the first stone. ‘He writes about warwithout ever having been in the trenches.’ Bella Fromm notices that Goebbels venturesonly the curtest nod in Leni Riefenstahl’s direction.27It is the children who hold the Goebbels marriage together in the mid-Thirties.Helga, the apple of Hitler’s eye too now, sits on her papa’s lap singing lustily as theyreturn from the seaside near Peenemünde that July.28 ‘Grandma is old,’ she definessolemnly that summer. ‘But Papa is—new!’29 The three children are his sunshine. AsGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 389they splash around in a new rubber dinghy, his heart aches with parental love.30 Hepersuades the Cabinet to approve the death-penalty for child kidnappers. Hitler willsay that if little Helga were twenty years older, and he twenty years younger, shewould have made the ideal wife for him. An enchanting, precocious, graceful girl shewill captive everybody with remarks that are as genuine as Hitler’s are contrived.‘My little heart is thumping,’ she squawks in one moment of girlish panic, and herdoting father remembers the words in his diary.’31AMONG the cavalcades of English ladies passing through Berlin that summer of 1936 isDiana Mitford. Staying with her sister Unity at Schwanenwerder for the OlympicGames, she conveys to Goebbels a plea for secret funds from Sir Oswald Mosley, anupstanding and forceful former minister who has resigned from the British Labourparty to set up his own radical movement along fascist lines. (When Mosley hadvisited Hitler on April 25, 1935, Goebbels noted in his unpublished diary: ‘He makesa good impression. A bit brash, which he tries to conceal behind a forced pushiness.Otherwise acceptable however. Of course he’s on his best behaviour. The Führer hasset to work on him. Wonder if he’ll ever come to power?’32) By 1936 Mosley isalready receiving substantial secret aid from Mussolini, and now he is boldly askingHitler for an infusion of one hundred thousand pounds (around half a million dollars).33 Taking Diana and her sister Unity to see Hitler on June 19, 1936 Dr Goebbelsprocures (his diary claims) £10,000 for Mosley—less than the asking amount, butstill a very substantial contribution given Germany’s currency shortages.34 He is dubiousas to what good it might do, and nominates Franz Wrede, of the Party’s pressoffice, to smuggle the cash over to London.35 ‘Mosley must work harder,’ summarizesGoebbels after Wrede reports back to him, ‘and be less mercenary.’36 Diana willrecall years later that brilliant orator though he was, Goebbels was amazingly jealousand small-minded. When she returns in August, asking for more, he fobs her off(with Hitler’s approval). ‘They must learn to help themselves,’ he comments, recollectinghis own penniless start in Berlin.37390 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHAs her private sorrows increase, Magda drinks more heavily, and sometimes hereye wanders. It is Rosenberg, of all people, who tips off Goebbels about a certainLüdecke in her life.38 At first she cries a lot and denies it when he asks her, leavinghim agonizing over whether she’s lying. On the first night in August, the day theBerlin Olympiad opens, she admits that she has strayed. ‘A great blow to my trust,’he writes, downcast. ‘It’ll take me a while to get over it.’39 He spends sleepless nightsbrooding, and evidently mentions it to Hitler. ‘He praises Magda a lot,’ he writesafter that. ‘Finds her bewitching, “the best wife I could ever find”.’ ‘When I speakalone with him,’ records the young minister the next day, ‘he talks to me like a father.’40Not for the last time, Magda leaves for the White Hart sanatorium in Dresden,playground of the wealthy, leaving her children at Schwanenwerder for the summer.Goebbels barely misses her. He has his hands full with planning the Nuremberg rally;Hitler has flatly rejected his half-hearted suggestion that they skip the rally this yearbecause of the Olympics.41THE Olympic games of 1936 were a sporting and propaganda triumph for Germany.Tourists flooded in.42 Confounding foreign expectations Hitler ruled that all competitorsbe treated with equal respect regardless of race or religion. Goebbels orderedthe party to keep a low profile.43 As Leni Riefenstahl’s crews filmed the events,awash with a 1.2 million mark loan from the ministry, Goebbels found her increasinglytiresome. ‘I have had to knock some sense into La Riefenstahl,’ he wrote. ‘Herbehaviour is unspeakable! A hysterical woman! Anyway, no man.’44 Their spat wouldcontinue until Hitler lost patience, banged their heads together, ordered Goebbelsto accompany him to Riefenstahl’s villa in Dahlem and had a joint photograph printedin the entire press the next day.45At the end of the games Goebbels staged the most sumptuous all-night party of hislife. Benno von Arent’s stage designers and craftsmen had laboured for weeks toconvert Peacock Island, an unspoilt wilderness near Potsdam, into a fairy grotto;thousands of butterfly