Goebbels26: Femme FataleLIVE wild, live fine!’ writes Goebbels in September 1936, opening a new diary.1He has just embarked upon the most destructive emotional entanglement ofhis life. Having seen Lida Baarova in her new film in June, and at the Peacock Islandfête in August, it may be no coincidence that Goebbels’ new villa on Schwanenwerderis only a stone’s throw from Gustav Fröhlich’s twelve-roomed mansion, set amidsttennis courts and boathouses by the lake. With Magda a fugitive from marriage in herDresden sanitarium and again broodily pregnant—is Lüdecke perhaps the father?2—the young minister soon tires of his latest private secretary Lucie Kammer. He oftenglances at his neighbours. When Lida returns one afternoon from the August Olympiadshe finds him casually strolling down Insel Strasse with Helga and Hilde. He asksif he may have a look over the Fröhlich mansion. Her lover Gustl innocently obliges,while the little girls and Lida play with Fröhlich’s lavish train set.3On August 18, three days after Peacock Island, he invites the young couple out inhis launch.4 Years later she will give her own shy account of this picnic cruise. Thepretty actress sisters Höpfner, whom Goebbels is also cultivating, have joined them.It is a broiling hot day, they swim, cruise, and sip tea until her Gustl apologizes thathe has an all-night shoot at the studios and can one of the police escort-launches takethem ashore?‘I always go everywhere with him,’ explains Lida. The words strike a chord inGoebbels—Magda shares none of his interests. He insists jovially that Lida stay. Gustl,visibly annoyed, leaves without her. As the full moon rises, reflected in the still wa-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 395ters of the Wannsee, Goebbels limps over and stands behind Lida at the railing. ‘Howdo you like it here in Germany?’ he asks. His melodious, rich voice seems to caressher, she will later say. The bond is forged at this moment.His rival, Gustav Fröhlich, meanwhile makes a classic mistake: after visiting hisestranged spouse, a Jewess who has emigrated to London, he accidentally calls Lidaby the wife’s name at a tender moment. She flounces back to her own humble lodgingsoff Kurfürstendamm.For a while that August Goebbels lets things drift. He takes Magda to Venice. But itis the actress Lilian Harvey with whom he punts along the canals while pregnantMagda stays in the hotel.5 The hunt is on—he cannot get Lida out of his mind. She isa head and shoulders taller than he is, but she has an arresting Slavonic beauty. Herfresh young face has both childish innocence and womanly guile. Early in Septemberhe ascertains that she is resting with her mother at Franzensbad, a spa near Nuremberg.Suddenly he is looking forward to this year’s Nuremberg rally after all. Hisdiary records ‘diverse phone calls’ on the fifth about the premiere of ‘Traitors’, herlatest film with Fröhlich—he is arranging to switch it to Nuremberg; phoning Magdafrom Nuremberg he pleads with her to stay away at Dresden or Schwanenwerder.Then phoning Lida he invites her over to Nuremberg, reassuring her that fellowactorsIrene von Meyendorff and Willy Birgel will be coming too—‘You can’t missout on this!’ he says.His rally speech on September 8 is one of his finest. Towering above the thousandson a lofty pulpit, he forcefully describes the murderous rampage of the bolsheviks inSpain, and the ‘pathological and criminal madness’ of their Jewish masters in Moscow.6Lida arrives the next day, Saturday September 9. At the Grand Hotel banquet afterthe premiere he fusses over her, he flirts, and then commands her to accompany himover to Hitler’s hotel. Here a female singer softly croons Nico Dostal’s hit, ‘I am somuch in love…’, and Lida is flustered to hear Dr Goebbels murmur in her ear,‘…me too!’7 He has done this so often before, it is second nature to him now. As theparty breaks up she plants a harmless kiss on his cheek; he removes the smudge with396 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHa pocket handkerchief, solemnly preserves it in his top pocket, and pleads with herto stay over and lunch with him the next day, Sunday. Here he inquires casually if sheis still unmarried, and catching an aggrieved undertone in her reply about her lover’sreluctance to re-marry, he diffidently asks: ‘Would you turn me down if I asked tosee you again?’That Sunday afternoon he asks her to stay on, to hear his second great speech.‘Please look at me closely as I speak,’ he says, and pulls out that handkerchief. ‘I shalldab at my lips with this, as a sign that I am thinking of you.’What twenty-two year old female (Lida’s birthday has fallen just three days before)is not bowled over by such artful devices? Bedazzled, Lida again puts off returning toher mother at Franzensbad. Goebbels makes no mention whatever of her in his diaryof these days. ‘A miracle has happened,’ is all he writes.8 After the speech, in a circumlocutionthat will become familiar to its readers, he carefully records ‘a littledrive to recuperate’; the next afternoon, Monday, ‘some sleep’; and then,
