Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

cowards’ at the time of Munich, Goebbels jeered, ‘Yes, we “only just”managed to avoid a war’—then he thrust his right hand forward as though fencingwith a sword. For a split second he held the pose; the effect was electric. Poland, heargued, had no more right to Danzig than had Germany to the Dutch port of Rotterdam.Twice he said that the deal Hitler had offered Poland was einmalig, ‘unique’—the kind of offer, he implied, that was not lightly refused.20 The Italian foreign ministercame to Berlin to sign a military pact with Germany. At the dinner for CountCiano Hitler told Goebbels that he had fought twenty years for this.21Preparing Germany for war, Goebbels speeded up work on the cable radio nework,to release conventional transmitter capacity; he wrote Hitler a letter urging him tocut the red tape on this project.22 His ministry was also building some of the biggesttransmitters in the world. The new half-megawatt Deutschland-Sender went on theair on May 19; later, it was to be stepped up to five megawatts. He was also buildingfour high-powered shortwave transmitters near Hamburg. He wanted the world tohear his voice.23He put the cunning and unscrupulous Berndt in charge of this expanding broadcastingnetwork. Berndt had by now, as he himself admitted to Himmler, the unsavouryreputation of being in charge of all the dirty tricks necessary in the Nazis’interests—‘subversion of the enemy, creating the starting-points for political operations,and so forth.’24 His propaganda fictions had paved the way for Munich. InBerndt’s place as inland press chief Goebbels appointed Hans Fritzsche, an impressiveintellectual with an educated drawl. Both men held high S.S. rank. Both wereparty veterans, with the kind of radicalism that Goebbels applauded—Berndt wouldshoot an American airman in cold blood; Fritzsche would turn over to the Gestapo’shangmen a simple Nuremberg fireman who sent him a crude paste-up montage as aone-man protest in 1941.25UNEXPECTEDLY the Lida Baarova case returns to haunt him that spring. Fleeing Germany,she has returned to her native Prague, only to find Hitler’s troops invading inMarch and herself trapped again within the Reich’s frontiers. She returns to Berlin.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 531Several times that winter 1938/39 Goebbels has asked Hilde Körber about Lida’swell-being; he meets Hilde in the woods, terrified of being followed—once he showsher a pistol he is carrying—and sends her over to Lida with messages (Lida neverreplies). Touched by his concern, Hildes writes little poems to him. Sitting in thedress-circle once, Lida sees him at a distance, but their eyes do not meet. Emil Janningsand others come to plead with Goebbels to allow Lida to film again. He replies, ‘It isout of my hands.’26Then Alfred Greven, the new general manager of Ufa, secretly signs her up again.Goebbels blurts out to him: ‘But Baarova is banned by the Führer!’ The film bossurges him to lift the ban since so much time has elapsed. ‘She can be hired as far as Iam concerned,’ says Goebbels, softening, ‘but I don’t think it will be possible. I musttalk it over with Hanke.’Hanke however cannot let bygones be bygones. He still has a covetous eye on theminister’s sorely wronged spouse. Storming into Greven’s office on May 19 he remindshim of the film star’s notorious affair with ‘higher circles.’‘Herr Staatssekretär,’ retorts Greven, ‘what about your own little affair?’27 It seemsthat everybody knows about Magda.Hanke swings a punch at Greven—‘because,’ as he writes at once to Himmler, ‘hecountered my allegations with a blatant untruth.’28 Hitler orders Hanke to report tohim.Aghast at this new episode, Goebbels writes in his unpublished diary, ‘By his unpardonableassault on Greven of Ufa, Hanke has touched off a hideous scandal. I amfurious. Was that the intent? One doesn’t know whom to trust. It’s left to me now totry and sort things out. Will I ever manage to get clear of all these Schweinereien?’29For days the Greven affair clouds his diary’s horizon. ‘It’s sickening. One rumourafter another.’30 Greven retaliates, writing to him as gauleiter and demanding a fullhearing by the party court. ‘He’s stirring things up against Hanke now.’31On May 17, Mother’s Day, the Berlin Illustrated publishes a cover portrait of Magdaand a family group photo—without Dr Goebbels. Although an operation on Helga’sthroat brings them momentarily closer together, the matrimonial stand-off contin-532 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHues.32 He plays with the children and regales them with bedtime stories of Germany’sdecline and resurgence; his little treasures ‘listen with gleaming eyes.’33 Occasionallyhe has a long talk with Magda about the future and believes he detects common-sense returning. ‘But,’ he writes after walking with their children in theGrunewald. ‘she still sees so many things in a false light.’34One day he takes the ministry staff on three boats across the Wannsee toSchwanenwerder to shout a big hallo to Magda and the children.35 A couple of dayslater he gives her a new car (followed by one of the first Volkswagens for the children.)36 Magda however has however begun a clean sweep. She sells off the nextdoorplot, Nos. 12 to 14 Insel Strasse (‘the so-called citadel’), which has brought herso much unhappiness, and in June she is on the point of selling her present plot too,to buy an even more beautiful site a few houses further down the road.37 The houseneeds total renovation. ‘It will probably take a few months to finish,’ she writes toher father Oskar Ritschel. ‘I’m looking forward to the job ahead as it will distract mefrom the more or less grim thoughts that my fate, indeterminate as it is, still provokesin me.’ She will take the children to Bad Gastein in Austria for the summer,where her father, no admirer of the minister’s, can visit them in privacy.38That summer the Berlin Illustrated also published comparative photos of his studytogether with the fantasy version crafted by a Hollywood studio for the film ‘Confessionsof a Nazi Spy.’ The American studio version showed ‘Goebbels’ seated behind aten-foot wide desk in front of an eleven-foot Hitler painting, with two huge swastikasembossed in the marble floor. In reality the portrait was six foot tall, and ofFrederick the Great; a large globe however dominated