Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

he has see Prince William adopt in ‘Prussian Love Story’ and declares: ‘In theconflict between love and duty I have made the choice that men have made throughouthistory when faced with their duty to the people.’43Shortly Helldorff returns, badly shaken, with word that Lida, whom he has summonedto police HQ, is demanding to speak with Dr Goebbels and is threatening tokill herself; a doctor has had to sedate her in Hilde Körber’s villa with morphine.Göring phones, invites him out to Carinhall, and promises to back him all down theline on condition that Goebbels drop his claim to be the second personality in thecountry.44 ‘On the critical issue,’ records Goebbels himself tantalizing, without beingmore specific, ‘he immediately knows a way out.’45 At 9:30 P.M. he phones Hildefrom Carinhall, while Göring listens in, and asks her to put Lida on the line. ‘I’m outat my good friend’s house,’ he says. She will know who that is. ‘He’s standing next tome. Liduschka, keep a stiff upper lip, whatever they may do to you. Don’t be angry.Stay the way you are.’ Distraught and her mind numbed with morphium, the actressis unable to reply. They never speak again.46Her torment is just beginning. She is confined to Hilde Körber’s villa with herphone tapped and two secret police on the door.47 She is allowed out on Friday October28 when her latest film is premièred at the Gloria Palace on Kurfürstendamm.Goebbels notes, ‘The première of “The Gambler” went off reasonably well.’48 Thereare loud sniggers from the audience at one scene when her father, reproached forsquandering their money, snarls: ‘Money? Go get more money from your Doctor!’As Lida goes on stage at the end there are shouts: ‘Minister’s whore!’ She calls out tothe unseen hecklers, ‘How much have you been paid!’ Karl Hanke’s hired hooliganshave done their work well. There are similar scenes at the weekend performances,and on Monday the film is withdrawn.49 Her life will become a nightmare from which484 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHthere is no reveille. Julius Schaub, Hitler’s personal adjutant, warns her not to leaveGermany—‘Something might happen to you if you try.’50Goebbels tries to pick up the pieces of his life. He tackles the personnel problemsof the advertising council and the film industry, he stiffly discusses with Hanke thewartime use of Germany’s radio networks, and he admonishes Helldorff and Funk tokeep still tongues in their heads. (‘We’ve got a stool-pigeon in this office,’ he writes,‘somebody blabbing to outsiders. I’m going to smoke him out.’51)On October 25, the three months’ probationary period begins. That eveningGoebbels collects Magda and the children at Tempelhof. He berates her until sixA.M.; she listens with set and expressionless features. ‘Ghastly things come to light,’he wails in his notes, without saying what. He retires to bed, his fevered brain batteneddown with Phanodorms, and awakes to finish off this (previously unpublished)volume of the Diary without having written the name of Lida Baarova in it once.52As for Hitler, the whole episode leaves him with a bitter sense of betrayal. Rosenberg,Schacht, Hanke, and Himmler tell him of the damage that Goebbels has done by hisphilandering. One French newspaper publishes a still photo from ‘The Gambler’showing Lida Baarova fending off a dinner-jacketed villain on whose shoulders theyhave imposed the Führer’s head.Goebbels is falling from grace, head over heels, and he knows it. Sick with worry,he begins work on a palliative, an adoring twenty-five chapter panegyric entitled‘Hitler the Man’.53 For the next eight weeks the diary shows him dictating this bookand revising it; he even has it proof-printed, and negotiates the sale of rights withEher Verlag in Germany and the Hearst Corporation in the United States. Hitlerhowever, none too happy about being linked in the public eye with Goebbels, asks torun his eye over it, and in mid-January 1939 he stops its publication ‘for the timebeing.’54 The book is never seen again.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 4851 Unpubl. diary, Oct 1, 1938.2 Stan Czech, op.cit.3 The late Capt. Herbert Friedrichs to the author, Apr 4, 1989.4 Der Amüsierpöbel, der sich nachts von Bar zu Bar wälzt. Auguste Behrend, op.cit.5 Mussolini remarks to Count Ciano that JG was in the wrong to allow his face to beslapped. Ciano diary, Feb 13, 1939.6 Hassell diary, Jan 22, 1939; his source was Ufa’s Dr Oswald Lehnich.7 Rosenberg diary, Feb 6, 1939, 80f; quoting Himmler.8 Unpubl. diary, Sep 5, 6, 1938.9 Ibid., Sep 7, 1938.10 Ibid., Sep 10, 1938.11 Ibid., Sep 12, 1938.12 Ibid., Sep 14, 25, 26, 1938.13 Ibid., Oct 4, 1938. Of course, JG may have have known all along, and inserted thispassage to make his ultimate betrayal by Hanke sound even more horrid.14 Ibid., Oct 9, 1938.15 Confirmed by Baarova, interviews; and the anonymous report NOI/108, CSDIC interrogationof her manager, ‘Mar 15, 1944,’ in MI.14 dossier on JG (PRO file WO.208/4462)16 Other sources speak of twenty-eight names; Life, Mar 20, 1939, states that three divorceattorneys turned her down, fearing the risk.17 Unpubl. diary, Oct 10, 1938.18 Ibid., Oct 11, 1938.19 Ibid., Oct 12, 1938.20 Ibid., Oct 13, 1938.21 Ibid., Oct 14, 1938.22 Ibid. Oct 12, 1938: ‘Helldorff reports the state of the anti Jewish operation in Berlin.This is continuing to plan. And the Jews are now gradually pulling out.’23 Ibid., Oct 7, 1938.24 Ibid., Oct 15, 1938.25 Ibid., Oct 15, 1938.26 Ibid. Oct 16, 1938. Eva Braun won back Hitler by this dubious means in May 1935. Shefaked a suicidal diary entry, left it lying open, and took some aspirins. See David Irving, TheWar Path.27 Diary, Oct 18, 1938. According to Max Winkler’s slightly different version of the episode,JG sent Rach to Magda with farewell letters addressed to her and his mother. Magdafollowed Rach back to Lanke, threw herself across what she took to be JG’s lifeless form,and besought him to come back to life; JG obliged. (Interrogation, May 1, 1948, HooverLibr. Korf papers.)28 Unpubl. diary, Oct 19, 1938.29 Ibid., Oct 20, 1938.30 Emmy, quoted by Olga Rigele, Göring’s sister (Hassell diary, Jan 26, 1939); Olga spokecontemptuously of JG’s seduction of young actresses dependent on his