Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

itself. He was frantic about thismark of his slipping prestige, but he sensed too the clammy fear of war that wasspreading across all Germany.24 Using Helga’s sixth birthday as a pretext he put througha call to Magda. She was as hardhearted as ever.25The next day Hitler told them that the gap in their western defences was now allbut closed. ‘Britain will hold back,’ he predicted, ‘because she does not have thearmed might. Paris will do what London does. The whole affair must unroll at topspeed. For high stakes you’ve got to run big risks.’26 Goebbels could not get thatGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 469word risks out of his mind. Hitler’s talk with Henlein turned to finding a suitableprovocation to invade. That afternoon, September 2, Hitler delivered another littlepeptalk to them all—Goebbels, Henlein, Ribbentrop, Bodenschatz, Bormann, Speerand Hoffmann—on ‘keeping ones nerve.’ Goebbels passed the message on to Hankeand Dietrich, who were beginning to waver.27For all Goebbels’ atrocity propaganda, there was none of the public enthusiasm forwar that had marked August 1914. Berndt made this clear to him.28 Funk was pessimistictoo.29 France noisily called up her reservists and Goebbels had to remind himselfthat they were already fighting a war—of nerves.30 When Czech police bludgeonedmore local German officials, he turned the entire German press loose again tohelp Henlein in his assigned task of bringing the crisis to boiling point.31 The Timessuddenly sided with Hitler, recommending that the Sudeten territories be formHecommands, we obey… I trust in him as I do in God.’ But even as he wrote theselines, the nagging private fears returned:Ê ‘Just one question bugs me, day and night:what’s it to be, war or peace!’Smiling enigmatically, Henderson assured him that France was honour-bound toaid Czechoslovakia, and then Britain could not stand aside. Goebbels was torn betweenloyalty to Hitler, and his common-sense. ‘War and peace are in the balance…I can’t get the thought out of my mind. But the Führer will see us through. In face ofdanger he proceeds with the steady tread of a sleepwalker. That’s how it’s alwaysbeen.’32At the Nuremberg rally, he branded Prague a ‘hotbed of the bolshevik conspiracyagainst Europe.’33 But it was in Hitler’s closing speech that the world first heard of hisdetermination to go to war. The Sudeten Germans, he declared, were not alone. Asthey marched out together, Hitler whispered to Goebbels, ‘Let’s see what happensnow.’34‘Things are panning out just as we wanted,’ triumphed Goebbels as the world’spress betrayed the first signs of panic. The death toll began to rise—‘over fifty in onevillage,’ he recorded, carelessly confusing fact with his own propaganda. Addressinghis editors he called for tough nerves and perseverance.470 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHThen came the totally unexpected. The elderly British prime minister Neville Chamberlainoffered to visit Hitler the next day.35 Still hoping for a military showdownwhich would give him all of Czechoslovakia, Hitler had little opinion but to agree.For a moment Prague faltered, and relaxed her pressure. ‘Nevertheless,’ observedthe cynical propaganda minister, ‘we make a splash about “Czech terror.” Things havegot to be brought up to boiling point.’36 Chamberlain met Hitler at the Berghof onSeptember 15. At first Goebbels learned nothing except that he had asked for afurther meeting at Bad Godesberg. While awaiting word from Hitler Goebbels addresseda steadying pep-talk to five hundred gau officials in Berlin.37 Hitler invitedhim down to the Obersalzberg for a briefing. He flew down on the seventeenth,talking Hanke, Gutterer, Fritzsche (press section) and Hadamowsky (radio) withhim. Hitler lunched alone with him and then invited him aloft to the newly-builtEagle’s Nest, along with Himmler and the favoured British journalist Ward Price.38The Eagle’s Nest was a teahouse built by Bormann’s engineers on top of the Kehlstein,reached by an amazing lift inside the mountain. Here Hitler described Chamberlainto these listeners as an ‘ice-cool,’ calculating Englishman. He had not minced hislanguage. London might fear a world war, he had boasted, but he was prepared toaccept that risk.The English prime minister, he said, had undertaken to persuade his Cabinet andthe French to endorse a plebiscite in the disputed terrotories. This did not suit Hitler’spurpose at all; but he expected Prague to hold out, which would leave the wayopen for the total solution he preferred. It was a war of nerves. Goebbels predictedthat Prague would buckle under this pressure. Hitler disagreed. ‘In 1948,’ he said, ‘itwill be just three hundred years since the Peace of Münster [Westphalia]. We’ve gotto liquidate that peace treaty by then.’ Praising Goebbels’ propaganda effort so far,he added: ‘We’ve half won the war already.’39The Czech president Beneoar(s,ˇ), abandoned by Chamberlain, conducted frantictelephone conversations with his legation in London. ‘Despair is the only word,’recorded Goebbels smugly, reading the wiretaps Hitler showed him. ‘He [Beneoar(s,ˇ)]just murmurs, “Yes, yes”.’40 Capitalizing on London’s sudden helpfulness Hitler uppedGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 471the ante. He sketched a new map showing still greater territorial demands, ready forwhen he next met Chamberlain. With Goebbels limping at his side, he strutted upand down the Berghof terrace beneath a clear canopy of stars. ‘Now for the closingact,’ wrote Goebbels afterwards. ‘We’ve got to proceed with cunning.’ Later still:‘Main thing is to keep our nerve.’41He issued fresh instructions to Berndt to create the necessary frontier incidents.Hitler mobilized Czechoslovakia’s other neighbours: the cowardly42 Hungarians madeno move, but the Poles were more obliging. They had already hinted that they wouldentertain Hitler’s demand for the return of Danzig, and in gratitude Hitler dictatedto their ambassador what Poland might now demand with his blessing from Czechoslovakia.43 According to what he told Goebbels, as they set off together withRibbentrop by train for Godesberg, the Polish ambassador had ‘promised’ force againstCzechoslovakia.44 Goebbels still predicted that the Czechs would ultimately cave in.Hitler however told him that he was poised to strike on September 28—just oneweek’s time.45Goebbels attended both days of the Hitler–Chamberlain conferences at Godesberg.The first on September 22 began at four P.M. and lasted for three hours. Hitler’s newsketch-map shocked the Englishman. But Hitler reminded him that the frontierswould look somewhat worse if he eventually had to use force. (The main thing,realized Goebbels,