Goebbels35: Pact with the DevilGOEBBELS returned briefly to Berlin for the afternoon of July 28, 1939 to openthe radio exhibition. The emphasis was on peace; the big attraction was television;the first sets would soon go on sale.1 The rebuilding of No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse was nearly complete; he hoped to move in on August 15, although hewanted the colour scheme changed before then. Karl Hanke stayed out of sight (hewent on leave, and eventually joined the army in a Panzer lieutenant’s uniform).Goebbels lived in a daze, his faith in human nature finally shattered, or so he claimed.2Back in Munich he found Magda awaiting him.3 Over the next few days they boththawed out. Magda was taken aside more than once by well-meaning critics; but shetold them their decision was now final.4Goebbels was still confident that the September Nuremberg rally would go aheadas planned, with all that that implied.5 But he had some nervous moments. At theend of July a major Berlin newspaper carried a headline across four columns, ARMYAND NAVY MOBILIZE. Only the small print revealed that it was a reprint of its historicedition of August 1914.6Not all his directives that summer related to war. He requested editors to takenote that Peru was not a U.S. state; to report murder trials only in local editions(later he ordered court reporting to avoid sensationalizing crimes, to avoid copycatoffences7); to mention only those sex cases where Jews had seduced Aryan womenby ‘particularly reprehensible’ behaviour, e.g. by concealing their race; always to give546 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHJewish defendants their mandatory first names of Israel or Sara; and to report withthe utmost delicacy Sir Oswald Mosley’s latest mass meeting in Earl’s Court (‘so thedemocratic press has no locus to depict him as being in Germany’s pay’). Editorswere instructed however not to overpraise the dancer Palucca, a half Jew; not torefer to the World Exhibition, but to the New York Exhibition; not to extol one beer,e.g., Pilsner, above another; not to review books by Marxist liberals; not to revealthat the Führer had commuted the death sentence on a certain murderer; not todisclose the visit of seventy American-born Germans (‘so as not to compromisetheir later operations’); not to refer to the ‘Third Reich’ but to National SocialistGermany or the Greater German Reich; not to reproduce the Führer’s article onarchitecture from the latest issue of Art in the Third Reich (a title which violated hisown edict); and not to publish candid pictures of the infinitely vain Hermann Göringor his wife.8Intensifying his propaganda attack on Britain, he ordered editors not to pull theirpunches: for example, they must harp on the August 1915 incident when the Britishwarship Baralong had sunk the Kaiser’s submarine U–27, then murdered its survivorsone by one.9Analysis of these secret directives shows that the propaganda attack on Poland wasstill developing in carefully planned stages. On August 1 the national press was orderedto display reserve in discussing the Polish army officers infiltrated into Danzigdisguised as customs officials.10 Only on the seventh did the Germany press agencyDNB issue a full statement.11 Commenting on the jitters spreading abroad, Goebbelscongratulated his editors.12 His propaganda weapon was now an integral part of Hitler’smilitary build-up. He told economics minister Walter Funk, who had been badgeringHitler to reduce the foreign currency allocated to Goebbels, to leave the sumunchanged.13HITLER had gone down to the Berghof after Bayreuth, and Goebbels attended none ofhis historic conferences during August. He spent the second week of August in Venicewith Magda and several colleagues, returning a visit made by his Italian counter-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 547part Dino Alfieri.14 There survives a letter from Magda’s secretary, her childhoodfriend Wilma Freybe, to Goebbels’ adjutant: the Frau Reichsminister had receivedan invitation to the coming Nuremberg party rally, her first in two years. Did theminister want her to accept?15 With Alfieri, he worked on an agreement on collaborationbetween their two countries’ media, as well as film and radio.16Clad in summer whites, he and Magda lazed around in gondolas, scudded acrossthe Adriatic in torpedo boats, visited art galleries, inspected a Venetian glass factory,sunned themselves on the beaches, and generally acted as man and wife again—‘How long it is since I last had that!’17 Overwhelmed by the Arabian Nights atmosphereof Venice, he took little note of the developing crisis, except for an insolentspeech on Danzig by the Polish president (‘so it will soon be time.’)18 He learned thatCiano was bound for the Berghof (‘but it’s not time yet.’)19On August 8 he ordered Polish terror incidents still relegated to Page Two, withPolish threats against Germany promoted
