Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

they exchange these brief pleasantries, Fröhlich himself drives up. He leapsout, white with rage, and grabs Lida’s arm, perhaps even slapping her. ‘Well, HerrMinister,’ he snaps, assuming that she has just stepped out of the limousine. ‘Now weknow where we stand!’Goebbels acts astonished. ‘What was that about?’ he asks Lida.The actress stammers apologies for her lover. When Fröhlich lets himself into hisvilla, he finds Lida’s handbag already there and realizes his mistake.70 (It must be said:at this time there had been no intimacies between her and the minister.) Fröhlichphones an abject apology to Goebbels. The minister records only one further meetingwith him, in May 1937—ostensibly they chat about casting and taxation problems,and they trade society gossip. ’Frö[h]lich,’ he mocks in his diary, ‘is of consummatestupidity.’71 A few weeks later he makes a note to look for a good man to playopposite Lida.72Soliciting Lida more persistently, Goebbels often phones her at home. She has noobjections. Once, he hears her doorbell ring and the phone being snatched from her;then Fröhlich screaming into the mouthpiece, ‘Who is that!’ The minister can hearthe betrayed lover raging, ‘It’s Goebbels, isn’t it! I knew it! How long has this beengoing on! We’re through! Our love is dead—we are standing at its graveside.’ Up toGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 417this point, in fact, no intimacies have passed between her and the minister.73 Sherents a fine villa, No.14 Taubert Strasse, in the Grunewald; but Goebbels is neveralone there with her.Initially he keeps his interest in her a close secret. Hoping to see her privately, heonce directs her to prepare dinner for ten at her Grunewald home, and to join himseemingly unexpectedly that evening in a box at the Scala where she is to invite himand his entourage back home for dinner. Play-acting, Goebbels looks completelysurprised. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, ‘shall we accept?’ All do so with alacrity, except forHanke who comes along in bad grace. Goebbels never visits her Grunewald villaalone.74Lida Baarova moves out of Fröhlich’s life and Goebbels gives her the key to thebarrier on the back road to the Lanke villa. Emotionally she is his slave—and he ishers. They spend days together at Lanke, with him playing the piano, and her dozingon a sofa or reading. Their relationship is almost platonic. For a year sex hardly comesinto it—and then only for weeks rather than months. She does not even notice thathe wears a leg-brace. They sleep in different rooms—Kaiser tiptoes in each morningat five a.m. to wake her, as they both have early starts back to Berlin.75 If Goebbelscannot get away from the ministry, he commands her to be at the other end of anopen phone line: from time to time he picks up the earpiece just to hear her breathing.Sometimes she drives into Voss Strasse and walks past, for him to adore her fromhis window across the street.76 Once, out at Lanke, he commands her to show himhow she will recognize him if things go wrong and they meet only in Heaven; shewalks a few yards, turns round and, a consummate actress, plays the little cameo roleto perfection.77Throughout 1937 the affair warms up, while he consequently neglects Magda. Thedoctors have warned him after Holde’s birth that she must not get pregnant for twomore years. ‘I’ll see to that,’ promises Goebbels, and whiles away the afternoon witha film actress with professional problems (‘I believe I can help her.’)78 Two or threedays later he helps another actress to the best of his ability, noting afterwards: ‘She’sa good sort.’79 Having meanwhile met the young sculptress Barbara von Kalckreuth418 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHin a train, he sits for her in his snow-decked villa at Lanke and she gets twenty morediary entries over the next three years.80 He sits for famous sculptor Arno Brekertoo; Breker rates only three mentions over the same period, one of them a terse:‘Never again.’81On visits to Magda at the clinic her jealous tirades drive their relationship almostto destruction.82 His diary celebrates her homecoming on March 23 most touchingly.‘She is my One and All. When she’s not there, house and home lie empty anddesolate.’83 With Magda home again, he fills Schwanenwerder with friends from thefilm industry like the Veit Harlans, the Willy Birgels, the Höpfner sisters, and LidaBaarova. ‘Magda is against the most beautiful of all,’ he writes, helplessly caughtbetween the two women: ‘Women are a plague on us all,’ he reflects in April.84 InJuly he discusses his wife’s indifferent health with Ilse Hess, who writes to Magda:‘Your husband told me that he’s worried about you, and that you ought to have apause to recuperate before getting down to the next five offspring you’ve promisedthe Führer and the Third Reich.’85Indifferent to the needs of his own Berliners, but at their expense, he sequestratesstill more of the forest terrain surrounding his villa at Lanke. Labour service gangsclear paths and erect boardwalks through ‘my forest’, as he brazenly terms it, andbegin laying down a private beach with a little jetty.86 Officials import swans andwild duck to the lake.87 On Hanke’s advice he commissions Hitler’s young architectAlbert Speer to redesign his official residence in Hermann-Göring Strasse.88 As hewatches the newly imported reindeer stealing across his lawn at Lanke, he is becomingmore detached than ever from the ordinary Berliners to whom he owes so much,yet Hitler still does nothing against this blatant corruption.Goebbels proudly shows him the new Baarova film ‘Patriots’ and hastens out toLanke afterwards to tell her that it has delighted him. Twice that May Hitler comesover to Schwanenwerder to cruise aboard the Goebbels yacht, surrounded by thelatest handsome women in the minister’s life. And once, as they again cruise aloneamongst the blossoms of Potsdam, Hitler unburdens himself to Goebbels about hissecret, innermost ambition—to undo for ever the humiliation done to Germany byGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 419the Peace of Westphalia which had concluded the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 greatly toher disadvantage.89ENCOURAGED by these confidences, Goebbels publicly stated his views on foreign affairs.Speaking in Berlin on February 12, 1937 of the new Czech alliance