Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

waswriting yet again.ALMOST a landed gentlemen now, a man of property like Göring, Goebbels is perceptiblyless eager to risk war than the haggard, penniless agitator he had been in the lateTwenties. He has a wife and family, although he not seen much of Magda since thespring. She has taken her brood to holiday in the mountains at Bad Gastein on June28, leaving him disconsolate, guilty, and lonely; alone, he drives out to Lanke toinspect progress on the lakeside mansion.80 He learns that Hanke has stubbornlyincreased his emotional pressure on Magda throughout the year, even showing her alittle lakeside house he has bought, No.13 Gustav-Freytag Strasse, in the Grunewald.Reaching a sudden decision after seeing Hitler at the Berghof on July 8, Goebbelsleaves at five P.M. and is with Magda and the children at seven. He is determined toforce a total reconciliation with her.‘The children, the children!’ he writes after reaching Gastein. ‘They rejoice anddance, because Papa’s arrived.’ He jots proud little cameos of them in his diary—Helga points out the local landmarks, Hilde is a little mouse, Hellmut a clown, andGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 539Holde a darling little infant. The spectacular Alpine scenery and climate are made forromance. He goes for long walks with Magda, and sits far into the night with herunder the starlit skies, drinking in the peaceful sounds of nature, and the steadyrushing of the waterfall.81 He sleeps ten hours and learns that Hitler is still tinkeringwith his reply to King-Hall, but all that is far away. He takes the family over to Zellam See and swaps nostalgic stories with Magda about the years before they came topower. They pore over architectural blueprints, play games with the children, gorambling in the mountains, and trundle back home in a pony cart.82 When he leavesGastein the children cling to him with tear-stained faces and he suspects that Magdatoo is not unmoved.83He phones her on the sixteenth, and she joins him in Munich for the lavish, ornate,spectacular, and rain-soaked pageant of German Art.84 Evidently she has toldhim something about her persistent suitor, because on the twentieth he has a ‘seriousrow’ with Hanke.85 He visits his troubled wife again in Gastein and that evening sheunbends to him. ‘It’s just as I thought,’ snarls Goebbels in his diary. ‘Hanke has turnedout to be a first class rotter. So my mistrust of him has been totally justified.’ Magda,he decides, is on the horns of a terrible dilemma, and they talk all night about ways ofescape. He stays in bed all the next day while she sits at his bedside talking softly withhim. All the pieces are falling into place, and this alone brings him peace of mind.86He blames his Staatssekretär for everything, himself for nothing. ‘Hanke is the mostperfidious traitor I ever saw,’ he writes grimly. ‘But he’s going to get his comeuppance.’87 Magda agrees to accompany him to Bayreuth—scene of the previousyear’s opera scandal—on the twenty-fifth.On July 25 Hanke sends G.W. Müller to see Goebbels, evidently bearing a mixtureof threats and entreaties; Goebbels is unimpressed and sends Müller back to Berlinwith a flea for Hanke’s ear.88On the way to Bayreuth Magda, still torn between the two men, faints severaltimes; she is suffering from the nervous strain. At Bayreuth, Goebbels is phoned byMüller— ‘Has performed his job relatively well. A few more impudent threats andsentimentalities.’ Magda is in tears, and Goebbels has difficulty calming her down.540 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHHitler has other problems on his hands. He is buoyant about their foreign policy.He says that the democracies will shrink, step by step, from the brink of war.89 Overdinner, he expands on this theme—on Britain’s hopeless position, the generous offerhe has made to Poland, and his conviction that Warsaw will crumble if push comes toshove.90The next day, July 26, Magda is again wild-eyed and tearful. ‘Every hour,’ recordsGoebbels, ‘alarming new bulletins come from Müller, from Speer, from Mama andthe devil knows whom else. It’s wrong even to pay any attention to them, they justget on your nerves.’91 He has a long talk with Magda, he wants to help her but knowsno way. That afternoon they sit once again through ‘Tristan and Isolde,’ and Magdafaints from the strain. ‘If only I could help her,’ writes Goebbels. ‘When shall we everfind a way out of all this misery?’After supper he goes alone up to his room, unable to join in the general chatter.But when he emerges to fetch Magda, he finds her lying senseless on the staircaseoutside; he drags her into the room and revives her only with difficulty. Clearly thereis something about Bayreuth that brings out the melodrama in some people. Shemurmurs only to him that she has confessed everything to the Führer; now they muststand together. Hitler tells Ribbentrop later that she is not fool enough to exchange‘Frau Reichsminister’ for ‘Frau Staatssekretär’. But the truth is that in a grim, almostmasochistic way, she is beholden to Joseph and will remain his until the end. Foldingher in his arms, he says: ‘Magda, Hanke is not the man for you.’ She promises totelephone her suitor to announce that she and her husband are reconciled.92 Goebbelswitnesses the dialogue, an ‘endless, tortured telephone conversation.’93 How neatlythe summer of 1939 has mirrored the painful summer of 1938.The next day Magda’s friends—among them the ubiquitous and bitchy Ello—cuther; a salutary lesson in Goebbels’ heartless view. As they drive out of Bayreuth—willingly foregoing the leaden, mystic gloom of ‘Parsifal’—a burden falls from hisshoulders. He and Magda have decided to live together again. He has won the lastround.94GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 5411 Sir G Ogilvie-Forbes to FO, Mar 28, 1939 (PRO file FO.371/23006).2 Diary, Mar 28, 29, Apr 1; Sir G Knox to Ld Halifax, Mar 27, 31, 1939 (PRO file FO.371/23006).3 Sir Sydney Waterlow to FO, Mar 31 (PRO file FO.371/23006); he stated that JG wasaccompanied by RMVP officials (G W) Müller, von Wiesenhof (Franz von Weyssenhoff), andKnock (Willi Knoche). And see E M B Ingram to Waterlow, Apr 6, 1939 (ibid., /23007).4 Diary, Apr 1,