Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

curse him.’ Some Nazis felt that he had harmed their movement by hispersonal behaviour and the crudity of his propaganda. One Hitler Youth leader remarkedthat ‘nobody’ approved of his anti-Jewish measures.26 He had regimentedand punished, censored and sanitized the media to the consistency of a bland brownpudding, then criticized their lack of individuality. The newsreels were uniformlydull, featuring their beloved Führer so often that even he complained.27 Lively, thinkingnewspapers were suppressed, while Streicher’s loathsome organ Der Stürmer appearedunmolested.28 Even popular writers like Hans Grimm were called beforehim to be screamed at, for not ending letters with ‘Heil Hitler’ and for not attendingthe Weimar literary convention: ‘If you don’t toe the line I’ll break you,’ shoutedGoebbels, ‘whatever the wailing from abroad. Just as I broke Furtwängler. I throwwriters like you into concentration camp for four months—and the time after thatthey never get out again.’29 He censored the latest dance steps, and found nothingabsurd in erecting enamel plates in dance halls reading ‘Jazz dancing forbidden.’30Just once he professed to see the funny side of foreign caricatures of himself.31 Moreoften he reacted viciously. He took the usual steps to neutralize the acid of politicalsatire. Oblivious of how ludicrous he seemed, he entered pompously in his diary:GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 513‘Cranked up the prohibition machinery against the Kabarett der Komiker.’32 He expelledfive of its comedians from the chamber of culture, while announcing a jokecontest to prove that the Reich had not lost its sense of humour.33 In March he paid asurprise visit on the cabaret, found it packed and totally non-political. ‘So it works.You only need to a firm hand to get your own way.’34Power had corroded his sense of proportion. He had become more corrupt thanthe most gluttonous Jewish magnates of his popular invective. At taxpayer expensehe was yet again remodelling his official residence. It was scheduled for completionby July 15, 1939. Its household staff of eighteen would be paid for from his ministry’ssecret fund.35 He had installed a private apartment in his ministry. He had the soleuse for life of the villa on the Bogensee lake at Lanke. He owned outright two luxuryproperties on the exclusive Schwanenwerder lakeshore. At the nadir of his nervousbreakdown in January 1939 he still found the strength to order work to begin on apalatial mansion on the far side of the Bogensee, fencing off a total of 3,200 hectares(eight thousand acres) of woodland in one of Berlin’s favourite beauty spots.36 Togetherwith Hanke, whose sins he had evidently forgiven, Goebbels paced off thenew site and observed incongruously in his diary, ‘At least I’ll have one place to callhome.’37 His private architect Hugo Bartels promised to have this new refuge readyfor his birthday in October 1939. By May, 129 men were labouring on this new Hausam Bogensee. Even after the war broke out construction would continue at the samepace. A letter from Bartels hints at some of the amenities that Goebbels was installing—including a wine cellar and unheard of luxuries like an air conditioned beercellar and a refrigerated pastry cooling table.38 ‘It’s going to be beautiful,’ he wroteafter working on the blueprints, ‘but unfortunately a bit expensive. It’s laid out on agenerous scale, and meant to last a lifetime.’39 The Haus am Bogensee would ultimatelyhave a small guest house, a private cinema and five bedrooms including separaterooms for Goebbels and Magda. The architects had provided air conditioning, adisappearing bar, and a large picture window which sank with a faint whir into thefloor at the touch of a brass button.40 The inventory of furnishings would fill twentyeightpages of single-spaced typescript.514 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHThe average Berliner probably knew none of this. To ingratiate himself with themhe put on his old trenchcoat on November 28, 1938, and made heavily publicizedvisits to slum-dwellings while reporters took down every word for publication inAngriff two days later. ‘Heil Hitler Mrs B—,’ he exclaimed. ‘Might I look at yourapartment for a moment? … Why does it look so frightful here?’ ‘This man is to havea new apartment, Wächter! Take this down…’ He allocated two million marks toslum clearance from the fine levied on the Jews.41In a raucous speech to Berlin propaganda workers on November 22 he claimedproof that the Jews had planned the Gustloff and Vom Rath murders long in advance;and as for the alleged plundering during the pogrom, the reality had been different:Markgraf, the famous jewellers, had not been plundered at all, he said, but had concealedits stock in a nearby hotel ‘for safety.’ (The next day he told the same to Hitler,who laughed out loud.42) When a British member of parliament suggested resettlingGermany’s Jews in Britain, Goebbels maliciously applauded: ‘I expect it will be agreat satisfaction for the British people to assist the much respected Jews from theirtremendous financial resources.’ That was the problem, he noted: everybody wantedto help the Jews out—but nobody wanted them.43Goebbels repeated this cruel jibe at a secret ministerial conference a few weekslater: ‘I am personally convinced,’ the stenographic record quotes him as saying, ‘thatthe Jews are an international infection and that they will fight civilized nations untilthey themselves control them. They will undermine their culture and everythingelse that holds the state together, and they will gnaw at its economy as long as it’s inthe hands of nationalists.’Obviously [he continued] the danger is less in normal times than in abnormal;and the most abnormal time in the life of a people is war. Consequently I ampersonally convinced that one must not allow the Jews to continue to exist as asource of infection. One can obviously search for a more humane solution to thisproblem, and in time of war one can have recourse to a more inhumane solution;GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 515but one thing is for sure, there can be no discussion in Germany of the need to getrid of the Jews as a source of infection.…It is immaterial how the Jewish problem is actually solved, perhaps by denotingsome global territory later on for the creation of a Jewish state. But it is remarkablethat the