Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Lutze moaning about the S.S., mostly out of envy: ‘What Himmler has puttogether is quite something,’ recorded Goebbels appreciatively. Back at his hotel heworked steadily through his files on speeding up the expansion of cable radio and ontheatre subsidies for the Sudetenland. ‘The condition of the diplomat Rath shot bythe Jew in Paris,’ he noted, ‘is still very grave. The German press opens up with awill.’ Helldorff sent instructions to Berlin to disarm all the Jews. ‘They’ve got a fewthings coming their way,’ commented Goebbels. He resumed work on his Hitlermanuscript, finding it a delight. More reports came in of demonstrations against theJews, this time in Kassel and Dessau, with synagogues being set on fire and businessesdemolished. Later that afternoon Goebbels learned that Ernst vom Rath haddied of his gunshot wounds: ‘Enough is enough,’ he wrote. At five p.M. the officialpress agency released the news.22Events that evening, November 9, are crucial to the history of what followed. AsGoebbels and Hitler set out to attend the Nazi reception in the old city hall, theylearned that the police were intervening against anti-Jewish demonstrators in Munich.Hitler remarked that the police should not be too harsh under the circumstances.‘Colossal activity,’ the Goebbels diary entry describes, then claims: ‘I briefthe Führer on the affair. He decides: allow the demonstrations to continue. Pull backthe police. The Jews must be given a taste of the public anger for a change.’ Deciding,so he wrote, that this policy was right and proper, Goebbels issued his own instruc-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 493tions immediately to the police and party.23 The latter are confirmed by at least onegauleiter who recalled that an urgent telegram signed by ‘Hanke’ (as Staatssekretär)went to all forty-two of Goebbels’ local propaganda agencies24 transmitting instructionsdirectly, over the heads of local gauleiters, to the district (Kreis) propagandadirectors—who were party officials—to orchestrate outrages against Jewish propertiesin conjunction with the local S.A. units acting in plain clothes.25 It was alreadyvery similar to what Goebbels had organised in Berlin that summer. It is plain that hehad consulted neither the party’s gauleiters nor the S.A. chief of staff before issuingthese instructions.Hitler subsequently left the dinner at the old city hall around nine P.M. according toother sources.26 Gauleiter Rudolf Jordan now told Goebbels of widespread anti-Jewish violence in Magdeburg.27 According to Bormann’s adjutant Heim, Goebbelsseemed taken aback by this: things were getting out of hand: the carefully propagatedimage of German law and order was taking a battering.28 Deciding to make avirtue out of necessity, at about nine-thirty he limped up to the podium, signalledfor silence and announced the death of the German diplomat and the anti-Jewishincidents; he described the latter as evidence of a ‘spontaneous’ public outrage. Thelocal British consulate learned that he also said that Jews were now fair game, andthat ‘the S.A. could do anything to them short of looting and plundering.’29 He wouldnot be surprised, another witness heard him say, ‘if things got worse during thenight.’ The same witness saw Lutze however warn his old friend Goebbels that hisS.A. men would keep well out of any pogrom.30 Goebbels himself recorded thatafter issuing his instructions he had made a brief speech to the Party leaders, greetedby storms of applause: ‘Everybody makes a beeline for the telephones,’ his diaryentry reads. ‘Now the public will take action.’ Several people who heard Goebbels’firebrand speech were uncomfortable. Karl Hederich, one of his department heads,felt that it conflicted with the tenor of Hitler ’s speech.31A few gau officials get cold feet [wrote Goebbels in his hitherto unpublished diary]but I keep pulling everybody together.32 We must not allow this cowardly murder494 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHto go unpunished. Let things run their course. The Stosstrupp ‘Hitler’ [a shocktroopunit named after the Führer] sallies forth at once to deal with Munich. Andthings happen right away. A synagogue is smashed to smithereens. I try to save itfrom the flames, but fail.* Meanwhile I discuss financial issues with [the partytreasurer Franz Xaver] Schwarz, the Jewish problem with [Julius] Streicher, andforeign policy with Ribbentrop: he too is of the opinion that we can now pull inthe rest of Czechoslovakia by neutral methods. We just have to box cunning. [Czechforeign minister Frantioar(s,ˇ)ek] ChvalkovskO(y,´) wants it. As for the others,we don’t know.Over to [Munich] gau HQ with [Gauleiter Adolf] Wagner. I now issue a detailedcircular setting out what may be done [against the Jews] and what not. Wagnergets cold feet and trembles for his [i.e. Munich’s] Jewish shops.33 But I won’t bedeterred. Meanwhile the Stosstrupp goes about its business. And with no halfmeasures. I direct [Werner] Wächter [director of the RPA, propaganda agency in]Berlin to see that the synagogue in Fasanen Strasse is smashed. He just keepssaying, ‘Honoured to comply.’It was by now midnight. Goebbels attended the impressive S.S. swearing-in ceremonyat the Feldherrnhalle. Hitler spoke to these new officers, then went back tohis apartment. Goebbels, leaving for his hotel, saw the skies flickering red. Accordingto his diary—written up next morning—he hurried over to gau HQ, wherenobody could tell him what was happening, then directed fire brigades to douse thefires so far as necessary to protect neighbouring buildings. ‘The Stosstrupp has wroughtterrible damage,’ he wrote.With many conflicting orders on the wires, a brutal confusion reigned all overGermany. At 3:30 A.M. the S.A. commander of Marburg ordered his men to burndown the local synagogue (despite Lutze’s misgivings).34 Every synagogue in* This sentence is surely blatant window-dressing by Goebbels for posterity, givenwhat we know.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 495Darmstadt was destroyed despite orders to the contrary from Mannheim’s S.A.Gruppenführer Herbert Lust, still in Munich. The synagogues in Bayreuth, Bamberg,and Reutlingen were also torched.THERE seems little doubt as to Goebbels’ sole personal guilt and that he was not justmade the scapegoat for others even higher. In the subsequent internal inquiry, theparty’s Supreme Court headed by Walter Buch—admittedly no friend of his—determinedthat the propaganda minister had issued ‘oral instructions’ which had ‘probablybeen understood by every party official present to mean that the party was notto appear publicly as the originator of the demonstration, but that