Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

our enemies would do to us if theygot us in their power again.’ ‘So keep hammering it in—hold Britain up to contempt,depict her as baffled, mendacious, jumpy, and impotent.’56After touring the western fortifications Goebbels afterwards sought to reassurethe gauleiters and generals secretly assembled in a big Aachen hotel. ‘Gentlemen,’ hetold them, ‘there will be no war with England. Here is a letter from London whichagain confirms my opinion.’57 The letter seemed to prove that the British were indeedbluffing. ‘Believe me, gentlemen,’ said Goebbels, folding away the letter, ‘We’re536 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHgoing to see things develop just like last time. A war of nerves without parallel, Iagree, but they’ll end up giving in.’58 Nobody was eager to die for Danzig.Hitler was now shipping troops to East Prussia, bordering Danzig, under camouflageof the approaching anniversary of the Battle of Tannenberg. Goebbels asked newspapersto mention the coming anniversary, though ‘without special emphasis.’59Goebbels was confident that Hitler would pull it off with just propaganda again.Continuing his delicious feud, he often told Hitler that he had no confidence inRibbentrop at all and squabbled with the foreign minister over the management ofthe visits of Count Ciano and the Yugoslav royal couple.60 Once, in Vienna, Hitler haddescribed Ribbentrop to Goebbels as bordering on insanity; when Goebbels told hisdiary that the man’s prima-donna vanity got on his nerves he was telling the readernothing that he had not long gathered already. Hitler even talked of getting rid ofRibbentrop.61 To Goebbels’ rage the London Daily Express published an accurate reporton their feud.62 He revived it a few days later, sending Hanke to the Obersalzbergto wring from Hitler a declaration that radio, press and even press attachés were hissole domain; Hitler humoured his wish. Goebbels told his diary so often thatRibbentrop was demented that there is cause to question his own stability.63 WhenRibbentrop took petty revenge on the press attachés, Goebbels got his own back byregaling Hitler at the Berghof with invented witticisms about this ‘champagne dealer’and this ‘would-be Bismarck’ until tears of enjoyment ran down the Führer’s face.64But the foreign ministry kept up its pressure on the press and even a personal meetingbetween Ribbentrop and Goebbels, at which they sat facing each other withwhite knuckles and clenched teeth assuring each other of their desire for cordialrelations, brought the matter no further. ‘If he’s as flexible as this in our foreignpolicy dealings,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘God help us.’65Hitler was conducting his own foreign policy that summer. Watching the reportsfrom Moscow, Hitler could see that the British negotiators were in difficulties, but,he told Goebbels, he could not deduce if Stalin was merely playing hard to get,holding out for a better price or really intended to hold off altogether as Europewent to war, in order to scoop the pool at the end.66 On June 10 Hitler confessed toGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 537Goebbels in Vienna that he was at a loss about what Moscow really wanted.67 That hedid not breath a word to Goebbels about his secret overtures to Stalin is evidentfrom the costly anti-Soviet movies to which several of Goebbels’ film studios werestill heavily committed.68Meanwhile Poland, bolstered by Britain’s guarantee, remained intransigent—orinsolent as Hitler and Goebbels saw it.69 ‘Poland,’ said Hitler, ‘is pursuing a verystupid political foreign policy. She won’t be able to keep it up for long.’ He mentionedthat in August his own West Wall would be ready.70After supping with Hitler on July 4, he recorded that the Führer agreed with himthey should nurture hatred against Britain—the German people must recognize heras their chief obstacle. ‘The Führer wishes he had ten more years. His target is to setaside the Peace of Westphalia [which concluded the Thirty Years War in 1648]. Andhe’ll get his way. He doesn’t take the Poles seriously at all. France and her craze forhegemony have got to be broken. She wants neither a united nor a powerful Germany.’71 Over lunch on the fifth, Hitler remarked that in Moscow the British were onthe defensive. He would let them stew in their own juice. If the Poles now came tohim, he would tell them that the instant they tried anything against Danzig, he wouldget tough.72DURING July some British citizens took an initiative which caught Goebbels unawares.Commander Stephen King-Hall, a retired naval officer, started mailing to thousandsof German addresses cleverly conceived letters attacking the top Nazis. Goebbelswent to extraordinary lengths to answer these ‘schoolboy essays.’ When the first suchletter came, he airily told Hitler that he would publish it in his own press—later astandard propaganda tactic—with a suitably juicy reply.73 His reply argued for examplethat their author, having served in the Royal Navy, had helped starve hundreds ofthousands of German women and children during the blockade. It also recited everycrime committed by the British empire-builders from the slave-trading history ofLiverpool to the bombardment of Zanzibar. He also plotted an undefined ‘masterpiece’—probably a fake letter sent by ‘prominent Englishmen’. ‘We’ve got to work538 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHartfully,’ he decided. ‘But seemingly objectively.’ He immediately composed a stinging‘Reply to Britain,’ but then Hitler announced that he wanted to see it,74 and whenGoebbels set out on July 8 on a prolonged journey to Austria Hitler asked to see himat the Berghof. He was still working on Goebbels’ reply to King-Hall. Goebbels readto him the proposed ‘English’ reply he was drafting, but Hitler held that back too.‘Then we discuss top policy,’ noted Goebbels, adding vaguely: ‘We must wear downthe Poles by further warlike preparations. At the decisive moment their nerves willcrack. Britain will be worn down by ceaseless propaganda. And that’s how we’ll goon for the time being. There can scarcely be any doubt about the outcome.’75A second King-Hall letter turned up, and the Führer was still tinkering with theGoebbels reply to the first.76 He did not finally release the reply until the fourteenth.77Goebbels ordered it printed in every German newspaper, but it was totally ignoredby the British and French.78 He was disappointed, because he was sure he had hithome.79 On the twentieth however he noted that the incorrigible King-Hall