Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

it was in fact totake over its organisation and execution.’35 After hearing these words, repeated atfirst hand by a party official in Munich and so similar to Goebbels’ orders to Helldorffin June, the commander of one S.A. Gruppe had telephoned orders to his HQ inKiel at 11:20 P.M. in the following terms: a Jew had fired the first shot; now the Jewsmust pay. There were ‘totally superfluous’ Jewish shops and synagogues inFriedrichsstadt, Kiel, and Lübeck waiting to be destroyed; the local police were tobe tipped off first. ‘There is to be no looting,’ the message continued (significantlyconfirming the British consulate’s version). ‘Nobody is to be roughed up. ForeignJews are not to be touched. Meet any resistance with firearms. The Aktion is to becarried out in plain clothes and must be finished by five A.M.’36 Once again the similaritieswith Goebbels’ own secret narrative of his orders for the anti-Jewish outragesin Berlin in June 1938 are worth remarking upon.The pogrom was soon out of control. Only three of the twenty-eight S.A. Gruppenreceived actual orders to stage demonstrations.37 Fired by five years of Nazi oratoryhowever the mob needed little encouragement. From all over the Reich the reportsbegan to come in: first fifty, then seventy-five synagogues on fire. By dawn on November10, 191 of the country’s 1,400 synagogues had been destroyed; about 7,500of the one hundred thousand Jewish shops had had their windows smashed. Thirtysixof the country’s three hundred thousand Jews had been murdered, and hundredsmore badly beaten.38 ‘The Führer,’ claimed Goebbels in the diary, ‘has directed that496 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHtwenty or thirty thousand Jews are to be arrested immediately. That’ll do it. Letthem now see that our patience is exhausted.’Wagner is still a bit half-hearted. But I don’t let up. Wächter reports back tome, the order has been carried out.39 We go with [Julius] Schaub [Hitler’s personaladjutant and crony] to the Artistes’ Club to await further bulletins. In Berlinfive synagogues are ablaze, then fifteen. Now the people’s fury is aroused. Thisnight it is impossible to do anything else against it. Not that I want to. Let it rip.Schaub is on top form. His old Stosstrupp past comes flooding back.As I drive back to the hotel there is the sound of breaking glass. Bravo! Bravo!Like gigantic old kilns the synagogues are blazing. There is no danger to Germanproperty.Nothing else in particular has to be done. I try to sleep for a few hours.As he wrote these heartless lines the next morning, the overnight reports came in.‘As was to be expected. The entire nation is in uproar. This is one dead man who iscosting the Jews dear. Our darling Jews will think twice in future before simplygunning down German diplomats.’ And that, he wrote, concluding this extraordinary,unrepentant diary entry, was the object of the exercise.40WHAT of Himmler and Hitler? Both were totally unaware of what Goebbels had doneuntil the synagogue next to Munich’s Four Seasons Hotel was set on fire around onea.m. Heydrich, Himmler’s national chief of police, was relaxing down in the hotelbar; he hurried up to Himmler’s room, then telexed instructions to all police authoritiesto restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish property, and halt any ongoingincidents.41 The hotel management telephoned Hitler’s apartment at Prinz-Regenten-Platz, and thus he too learned that something was going on.42 He sent forthe local police chief, Friedrich von Eberstein. Eberstein found him livid with rage.43According to Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below, Hitler phoned Goebbels.‘What’s going on?’ he snapped, and: ‘Find out!’GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 497According to Julius Schaub, the most intimate of his aides, Hitler ‘made a terriblescene with Goebbels’ and left no doubt as to the damage done abroad to Germany’sname. He sent Schaub and his colleagues out into the streets to stop the looting.Philipp Bouhler, head of the Führer’s private chancellery, told one of Goebbels’ seniorofficials that Hitler utterly condemned the pogrom and intended to dismissGoebbels.44 Fritz Wiedemann, another of Hitler’s adjutants, saw Goebbels spendingmuch of that night of November 9–10 ‘telephoning … to halt the most violent excesses.’45 At 2:56 A.M. Rudolf Hess’s staff also began cabling, telephoning, and radioinginstructions to gauleiters and police authorities around the nation to halt themadness.46 But twenty thousand Jews were already being loaded onto trucks andtransported to the concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Oranienburg.Hitler made no attempt to halt this inhumanity. He stood by, and thus deserved theodium that now befell all Germany.Goebbels had not anticipated either Hitler’s fury or, probably, such an uncontrollable,chaotic orgy of destruction. Not surprisingly he made no reference to thisunwelcome turn of events in his diary. But perhaps this, rather than Lida Baarova,was the reason why he would write this mea culpa to Hitler six years later: ‘I knowthat I’ve caused you many a private worry in the twenty years I’ve been with you—particularly in 1938 and 1939.’47 Ribbentrop relates that when he tackled Hitler aboutthe damage Goebbels had done, Hitler rejoined that this was true, but he could notlet the propaganda minister go—not when he was just about to need him again.48As more ugly bulletins rained down on him the next morning, November 10,1938, Goebbels went to see Hitler to discuss ‘what to do next’—there is surely aninvoluntary hint of apprehension in the phrase.49 Georg-Wilhelm Müller had meanwhilereported to him about the conflagrations in Berlin. Goebbels told his diaryonly, ‘A good thing too,’ but he immediately composed an ordinance calling a halt to‘operations’ (Aktionen), and at 10 A.M. he broadcast a live appeal for order over theDeutschlandsender. While it spoke of the ‘justifiable and comprehensible’ public indignationat the Ernst vom Rath murder, it strictly forbade all further action againstthe Jews; it was repeated at hourly intervals and printed in next day’s party newspa-498 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHpers.50 The Jewish question, the item stated, would be resolved only by due processof law. Later that morning he directed that press and radio were to play down thedamage—a few windows had been smashed and synagogues had spontaneouslycombusted, but otherwise, the news items were to suggest, ‘the public’s