Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

when Magda utters a boozy invitation to him toshare her bar-stool. After a flurry of indiscretions about her marital problems, sheinvites the navy captain and his pals back to her home.3 Five years later, when Goebbelssnarls in his famous Total War speech about ‘the nightclub crowd who crawl from onebar to the next,’ there Magda—seated in the front row—has no doubt whateverwho is meant by that.4Joseph Goebbels thought he had friends, as Lida Baarova would sadly remark yearslater: but he had none. Behind his back Karl Hanke starts the sniggering rumour thatin the street confrontation early in 1937 Lida’s lover Gustav Fröhlich had actually478 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHsocked Goebbels: improbable though it is—given that the minister throws men intoconcentration camp just for their opinions—the story sweeps Germany and delightsforeign capitals.5 A cabaret artiste guffaws, ‘We’d all like to be fröhlich sometime!’—the word means contented. Schacht calls the minister’s affairs a public scandal.6Himmler complains to Hitler that he has never liked the Goebbels genus, but has sofar kept his views to himself: ‘Now he’s the most hated man in Germany,’ he said.There was a time, continues Himmler, when Goebbels used to sound off against theJews who sexually coerced their female employees; now the minister is doing thesame himself. ‘It’s obvious,’ adds the Reichsführer, ‘that they are not doing it for love,but because he’s propaganda minister.’7Shocked by all this, Hitler orders a watch kept on Goebbels’ former girlfriendLida Baarova. Gestapo limousines cruise up and down outside her rented villa inGrunewald. But Goebbels makes no overt effort to contact her.During the four dramatic weeks preceding Munich, what he calls his private misèrehas receded into the background. For four more weeks he does not see Magda at all.On the verge of a nervous breakdown he resorts to subterfuge to see Lida. He directsHilde Körber to take Lida to the theatre, and feasts his eyes upon her from afew rows away. He phones Hilde repeatedly to ask how Lida is. He sees the Nurembergrally as a welcome distraction from ‘dumb thoughts,’ evidently meaning suicidebecause the next day, after talking a party official out of shooting himself over a sillyblunder, he remarks grimly in his diary: ‘We all make silly blunders.’8 He gets hismother to see Magda in Berlin—to whom alone, ultimately, he is beholden—but it’s‘the same old melody.’9 ‘I can expect no quarter,’ he writes the next day.10 Afterphoning his mother again he gives up. ‘In Berlin there’s the devil to pay. But I’mimmune to all that now.’11 Deprived now of both Magda’s and Lida’s company, herisks a ‘motor outing’ upon his return from Nuremberg to Berlin (‘just to get somefresh air,’ he pleads in his diary) and then another ten days later, followed by a ‘drivethrough the Grunewald, just to get fresh air’ the next day.12 Lida still lives there, ofcourse. During early October, these motor outings multiply.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 479While his own Staatssekretär Karl Hanke is now gathering evidence to aid Magda,Goebbels apparently suspects nothing. On October 3 he has a long talk with himabout his personal affairs. Hanke is very nice about it, a real chum,’ he informs hisdiary. ‘I’ve got one person at least I can talk things over with. I couldn’t have gone onlike this.’13 A few days later, after another little motor outing, Goebbels again bendsHanke’s ear about his plight. ‘He proves very attentive and understanding. He thenhas a very important conversation and this sets my mind very much at rest.’ EvidentlyHanke has telephoned Magda, and she ‘agrees’ to see him. ‘I am glad,’ repeatsGoebbels, ‘that I now have at least one person I can speak with. These last few weeksI have often felt so lonesome and deserted…’14Lida Baarova is now filming ‘The Sweetheart (Die Geliebte) with Willy Fritsch andGrete Weiser. She confides in Grete without realising that she too is in cahoots withthe double-dealing Hanke.15 When Hanke shows Magda his dossier it contains thenames of thirty-six women and copies that he has filched of Goebbels’ correspondencewith them.16Visiting Saarbrücken with Hitler, Goebbels phones Hanke to ask the outcome ofhis visit to Magda. ‘Seems it’s all over,’ he writes afterwards, perplexed. ‘Nothing Ican do will change that. I’ve tried my utmost. But if that’s how it is, so be it. I feelcrushed.’17 Hanke reports back in person on the tenth. ‘Things seem pretty hopeless,’decides the minister, caught up in the drama of his own situation. ‘A humantragedy is unfurling with neither blameless nor guilty parties. Fate itself has taken ahand and has spoken.’ Oddly, he tells his diary that Hanke has questioned ‘all’ theparties concerned—a hint at infidelities by Magda? He asks Hanke now to report allthese facts, as a neutral chum, to the Führer.18 He can no longer keep Hitler out of it.‘I shall neither complain nor whine,’ he writes, melodramatically. ‘I have no cause forhatred or indignation. I await the Führer’s decision and shall obediently comply…Things just can’t go on like this.’19Hanke in fact sees Hitler the next day at Godesberg, and regales him with salaciousdetails of his own minister’s wrongdoings—like how he has kept foreign ambassadorswaiting while he entertains his female visitors within. Waiting for word from480 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHGodesberg, the craziest of notions race through Goebbels’ brain. He cruises thestreets ‘just taking in fresh air.’ At last Hanke phones: Hitler is willing to see Goebbelssoon, he says, quietly relishing the moment when, he imagines,he will step into thedisgraced minister’s shoes. ‘At any rate he knows how things stand,’ writes Goebbels,confident that he has got in first with his version of affairs.20 After a sleepless night hegoes for another little drive, ‘to collect my thoughts.’21FOR Goebbels the suffocating ministerial routine has resumed—the struggle to leverout the Jews22, the Sudeten referendum, and the inauguration of the magnificent newtheatre that a grateful Hitler has donated to the Saar.23 Ignoring the sunshine outside,he mopes for hours in his darkened ministerial chambers, snapping pencils and writingendlessly in his diary.24 His brain gyrates pathologically around his personal miseries.His diary reflects his pain—page of page