Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHhave pretty well worn me down.’104 The rows increase.105 On one trip he and a scantilyclad Lida have adjacent deckchairs on the foredeck overlooked by Magda fromaloft. Ello Quandt sees the tears behind Magda’s dark glasses and Magda blurts outthe unnatural arrangement which her husband is proposing.106 That Saturday, the thirteenth,they all cruise to Lake Tegel in a violent summer rainstorm. After a visit toPeacock island, Goebbels invites them back to watch a film. Most of them elect tosee Anny Ondra’s latest, but Goebbels, grinning, proposes ‘The Gambler’ instead.107It is another little dig at Magda. When the lights come on, Lida turns round and seeMagda and Hanke holding hands in the back row.108As the rain beats down, Magda begins to fight back. That night she assigns Ello toshare Lida’s bedroom in the citadel, pleading a full house as an excuse.109 The Czechactress snaps at Goebbels, ‘I shan’t be coming again. I don’t like being spied on!’ ThatSunday, August 14, after consulting with the poisonous Ello, Magda tells her husbandto get out—she’s going to sue for divorce.On Monday, a tropical heatwave returns. ‘I’m glad to get away!’ he snaps in hisdiary. Perspiring through his thin white suit, Goebbels drives back to Berlin. Nowthe heat is on in every sense. As Hitler returns to Berlin that evening, Hanke securesan immediate audience for Magda.110 She complains that a young Czech actress hasinvaded her marriage. People at her studios, she says, have heard Lida boasting, ‘It isI who shall decide when they divorce!’111 Hitler knows who Baarova is. He has justseen ‘The Gambler’ (the only film this week on which he has passed no comment112).But he will not hear of divorce in the Reich’s ‘happiest family.’ He sends for Goebbels.The minister’s stock is beginning a decline from which it will take six years to recover.‘I then have a very long and grave conversation with him,’ records Goebbels,without being more specific. ‘It shakes me to the core. I am deeply moved by it. TheFührer is like a father to me. I am so grateful to him. I take grim decisions. But theyare final.’113 Goebbels is hoist by his own petard; trapped by the ‘family image’ that hehas himself created.He telephones Lida Baarova immediately afterwards at her rented Grunewald villa.She will never forget his words. ‘My wife is a devil,’ he exclaims. ‘She’s just been overGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 461to the Führer and told him everything. She has persuaded him that you’re the evilone. I’ve had to give my word of honour that I won’t ever see you again.’ ‘I love you,’he croaks between sobs. ‘I cannot live without you.’ He phones her best friend HildeKörber to go over and console Lida. Afterwards he drives off aimlessly into the summerevening, half enjoying the suffering he has to endure. Not since Anka Stalhermhas he experienced such a delicious torment to his soul.‘I am living as though in a trance,’ he writes the next day, analysing his own emotions.‘Life is so cruel and harsh… But ones duty must come first.’ After the ‘verylong and very doleful’ farewell phone call (to Lida), he soliloquizes: ‘I remain firm,though my heart bids fair to burst. Now let my new life begin. Harsh and cruel, butsubservient only to my duty. My youth is now over.’1141 See e.g. Král, 63, No.9; Prof. Carl Burckhardt’s opinion, quoted in Geneva telegram toFO, Jan 27 (PRO file FO.371/21660); and JG unpubl. diary, May 21, 1938.2 On this decree see OSS R&A report No.113, Feb 22, 1943 (USAMHI, Donovan papers,box 35c). On the new theatre academy see BA file R.55/264.3 Diary, Jun 5, 1937.4 Ibid., Jun 5–7, 12, 1937.5 JG to Ziegler, Jun 30, cit. Peter-Klaus Schuster, Die ‘Kunststadt’ München 1937.Nationalsozialismus und‘entartete Kusnt’ (Munich, 1987), 37ff; Reuth, 367; diary, Jun 30, 1937.6 Ibid., Jul 24, 25, Aug 1, 1937.7 Ibid., Sep 1, 1937.8 Ibid., Oct 28, 1937.9 Ibid., Sep 22, Nov 5, 1937; unpubl. diary, Mar 15, May 17, 1938. The law: diary, Jan 13,14; unpubl. diary, Feb 12, 14, Mar 15, May 17, 18; diary, Jun 5, 1938.10 Unpubl. diary, May 18, 16; diary, Jul 29, 1938.11 Ibid., Mar 14, 21, 24, 1938.12 Ello Quandt says this was in the last weeks of this pregnancy. Hans-Otto Meissner, 175f.13 Unpubl. diary, Apr 13, 14; and see Apr 3, 1938.14 Ibid., May 3, 1938.15 Ibid.16 Ibid., May 5, 1938.17 Ibid., May 6. The nobility, Hitler remarked later, were good only for marrying off towealthy Jewesses (ibid., Jun 16, 1938).18 Ibid., May 7, 1938.19 Ibid., May 4, 1938.462 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH20 Ibid., May 5, 1938. Aboard the Conte Cavour, Hitler told Mussolini that Germany wouldstep out along the ancient teutonic road to the east. See Ciano’s letter to Ribbentrop, Aug13, 1939 (Loesch files, NA film T120, roll 610).21 Unpubl. diary, May 7, 1938.22 Ibid., May 7-8, 1938.23 Ibid., May 11, 1938.24 Ibid., May 12, 1938.25 Ibid., May 5, 1938; the late Captain H Friedrichs to the author, Apr 4, 1989; Behrend,op. cit., No.19, May 10, 1952.26 Unpubl. diary, May 12, 1938.27 Diary, May 13; incorrectly dated May 12, 1938 in Fröhlich edition.28 Unpubl. diary, May 15, 1938.29 Ibid., May 17, 18, 19, 23, 27, 31; diary, Jun 2, 3, 15, 16, 17, 19, 1938.30 From a well-informed article by a Forschungsamt official in Neue Presse, Coburg, Aug 3,1946; and see NA file RG.226, file XE.4986).31 Interview of Thomas Harlan, Jan 13, 1994; Lida Baarova remembers two Gestapo carsshadowing her sometimes.32 Julius Schaub, MS (IfZ Irving collection, ED.100/202).33 Ibid., Jun 17, 1938.34 Ibid., Jun 21, 1938.35 Author’s interview with Lida Baarova, Salzburg, Jul 4, 1993.36 Meissner, 141.37 Diary, Jun 30, 1938.38 Ibid., Jul 3, 1938.39 Ibid., Jul 5, 7, 1938.40 Ibid., Jul 8, 1938.41 Hanke told his later wife, the then Baroness Freda née von Fircks, that while he waswilling, Magda was not. (Interview of the late Freda Rössler, Mar 5, 1990).42 Cabinet, Jan 26; diary, Jan 27, 1937.43 Unpubl. diary, May 12, 1938.44 Diary, Jun 16, 1938.45 Ibid., Aug