Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

forest…He looks magnificent and is in good humour. He at once sets out the situa-566 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHtion. The Poles are in a state of complete military collapse… Their situation ishopeless. Our tanks are pushing on without stopping.The western powers are powerless. The Führer intends to smash Poland first.Then he’ll try for peace in the west. He may well succeed in that. Above all thePolish debacle is a deterrent to any attacker.Goebbels broached the touchy business—the extraordinary decree grantingRibbentrop control of foreign propaganda. Hitler asked him to deal with the foreignminister direct. Goebbels tried and not surprisingly failed; he found the next daythat Hitler had dictated a brief decree once again defining the two squabbling ministers’areas of responsibility.33 Although Goebbels was broadly satisfied to find his ownministry left intact, the decree remained a thorn in the flesh for the next four years.34The prospect of a long war unsettled Goebbels, and he registered with alarm eachstatement by Chamberlain warning that Britain was resolved to fight to the finish ofNazis.35 He made a brief foray into foreign policy when Dino Alfieri phoned fromRome on the ninth with word that Mussolini proposed that the Italian press ventilatea possible solution whereby the Polish government resigned in favour of ministerswilling to make peace; to fight a war in the west, the Duce felt, would be nonsense.‘I treat the matter dilatorily,’ recorded Goebbels, ‘then phone the Führer. He is veryinterested in the offer, but suspects that Mussolini is aiming at a general Europeanpeace conference. He therefore asks me to skirt around the subject for the timebeing; I am to thank Alfieri for any support, but say that I cannot reach the Führer.’36He explained to Alfieri the next day that the war in Poland would be over in threeweeks and that Germany was being very careful not to say anything which the westernpowers might interpret as a sign of weakness. ‘Italy,’ he however hinted, ‘is in adifferent position as she is not at war.’ Italy might like therefore to ventilate certainpolitical proposals to the Poles: when Alfieri asked what Moscow was doing, Goebbelsstated that he had no official word, but ‘something was evidently afoot in Russia.’37(Stalin’s troops invaded eastern Poland three days later ‘to protect her minorities’and ‘because a Polish state no longer existed’.38) Ribbentrop shortly asked him toGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 567desist from further telephone conversations with Alfieri. ‘The Führer does not wantto tie himself down.’39Hitler phoned him the next evening and asked to see him.Morning flight to Upper Silesia… Discussed the situation with him. Britain isto be kept under sharp attack. Try to detach the British government from itspeople and Britain from France. France is to be spared.They agreed that the fall of Warsaw would be a psychological blow to the enemy.Moscow would probably then intervene. Italy seemed passive, even downright hostile.‘Mussolini seems to be annoyed,’ Hitler told Goebbels. ‘Even so we want topreserve our friendship. So I am to keep the channel to Alfieri open.’ Goebbels showedhim his coming speech: Hitler asked him to sharpen the attack on Britain’s warmongeringrole. ‘The Führer’s looking good… Once we’ve dealt with the east he wantsto sort out the west. He has no use for a long war. If there’s got to be war, then shortand sharp. We mustn’t let London get away with forcing a protracted hunger crisisupon us once again.’In Warsaw the Poles put up a heroic resistance. The city’s Polish commandant calledthe city’s population to arms, and told them to ‘resort to every means of combat.’On the sixteenth Goebbels warned Rome that the Wehrmacht would therefore issuean ultimatum and bombard Warsaw. ‘There will be an avalanche of protests and defamationsfrom London and Paris,’ he predicted. ‘We ask for the support of the Italianpress and propaganda.’40Warsaw held out for eight more days under a ruinous air and artillery bombardment.Concerned about Germany’s image, Goebbels resorted to legalisms and anappeal to baser human instincts. He directed the platoons of Nazi war reporters andnewsreel cameramen:1. Never refer to Warsaw as a city in reports, but always as a fortress.2. Use much more film footage than hitherto of Jewish types from Warsaw andthe entire occupied area including both character studies and the Jews at forced568 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHlabour. This material should service to reinforce our anti-semitic education driveboth at home and abroad.41On September 23 Dr Dietrich, visiting Berlin for two days from Hitler’s HQ, toldGoebbels that Hitler still intended to take Warsaw, although the generals feared thebloodshed this would entail. Hitler would then try for peace if London would allowit. He did not want war in the west yet. But three days later Dietrich told him Hitlerwas in two minds now: peace with honour seemed further away than ever, and Britain’sattitude was stiffening. ‘We shall have to fight on—and with all our might.’42As the phoney war began Hitler, back in Berlin, became more approachable again.Goebbels attended lunch almost every day. On the twenty-seventh he found Hitleroptimistic. He hoped the enemy would see reason. (‘It depends on London,’ he saidat lunch on October 10, ‘whether the war goes on.’43 Gradually however his hopes ofpeace faded, and he authorised Goebbels to turn up heat on Chamberlain. Churchillseemed the more rewarding target—easy to identify with the English plutocracy.‘He lives in the Sixteenth Century,’ Hitler would agree. ‘Totally out of touch withthe real needs of his people.’44 Since Churchill’s speeches were at this time necessarilyeconomical with the truth, ridiculing him was too great a temptation for Goebbelsto resist.45As the propagandist for an as yet undefeated belligerent Goebbels saw no need tolie. His untruths were still unintentional: relying on Luftwaffe claims, he declared assunk not only the battleship Royal Oak (sunk that October) but also the aircraftcarrier Ark Royal and the cruiser Repulse.46Egged on by Hitler—who knew very well that one of his own U-boats had sunkthe liner—Goebbels reverted to the Athenia mystery in the third week of October.47‘Perhaps,’ he noted, ‘we’ll even succeed in sinking him [Churchill]. That would beworth more than sinking two battleships.’48 He