Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

wrote a big article accusing the Englishmanof having had the Athenia scuttled himself, and broadcast this libel worldwide,calling him a criminal who should now be called to the bar of world opinion.(‘I’m working flat out to overthrow this man,’ he admitted privately.49 ChurchillGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 569retorted that Goebbels’ charge was simply laughable. ‘He won’t be laughing soon,’snapped Goebbels in the privacy of his diary.50THE PROPAGANDA ministry had rapidly adjusted for war. At eleven each morningGoebbels held a ‘ministerial’ conference with his department heads and their advisors,about thirty to fifty officials all told, in his private office.51 At a quarter to noonHitler’s press officer Otto Dietrich or his hardnosed deputy Alfred-Ingemar Berndtwould hold a further conference elsewhere in the same building to coordinateGoebbels’ decisions with requests submitted by other ministries. After 1940 thislater conference would end with the dictation to a stenographer of formal Tagesparolen,themes for the day which were read out to the general press conference immediatelyfollowing at twelve-fifteen P.M., attended by one or two hundred German journalists(but only rarely by Goebbels).About one third of his men had been drafted into uniform. Karl Hanke, whom hehad not seen since the summer, found himself spirited away to the Polish front in aPanzer lieutenant’s uniform. In September 1939 the ministry employed 9,762 professionalorators, and these would address precisely 156,143 political meetings overthe first eleven months of war.52 He would have nearly three hundred mobile cinemasby the end of 1940. His printing presses spun off 560,000 poster-sized portraitsof Hitler, and millions of leaflets, placards, banners, and wall-newspapers; eightmillion copies of the Slogan of the Week wall-newspaper would be printed by theend of 1940, along with war posters like WITH OUR FLAGS IS VICTORY, and, less famously,THE ETERNAL JEW and STAR OF DAVID.Two years earlier, Goebbels had banned one anti-Jewish film as being too shrill.53 Itwas only now, after the war began, that he started work on his own major antisemiticfilms. The first, ‘The Eternal Jew’, was produced by Franz Hippler and the Party’smovie company DFG. Using photo- and film-montage techniques that mixed documentaryshots filmed in the squalor of the Warsaw ghetto and sequences from thefeature movies of former big name ‘Jewish’ movie personalities like Max Reinhardt,Ernst Lubitsch, and Charlie Chaplin this hour-long production had an undeniable570 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHemotional appeal. From October 1939 the Goebbels Diary reveals him personallysupervising the filming, and checking the harrowing footage shot in the Polish synagoguesand ghettos. ‘Ones blood runs cold,’ he noted. ‘One recoils involuntarilyfrom the spectacle of so much filth,’ reads one entry. And another: ‘We are workinghard on all this … to make a propaganda masterpiece of it all.’54By mid November a rough cut of ‘The Eternal Jew’ was ready, and Dr Goebbelsturned his attention to the Terra studios’ remake of the 1935 British film ‘Jew Süss’,which film star Veit Harlan was to direct. His cameramen had filmed the Jewishritual slaughter of cattle, and Goebbels was undecided whether to use this revoltingfootage in ‘Jew Süss’ or ‘The Eternal Jew.’55 ‘This will be the antisemitic film,’ predictedGoebbels after reading Harlan’s treatment: a Jew, Süss Oppenheimer, becomesthe Duke of Württemberg’s crooked financial adviser and tax collector: involveshim in swindles on a Maxwellian scale: is condemned to death.56 Replete withscenes of rape and torture this film, released in 1940, would become one of the mostinsidious propaganda films of all time.57His personal vendetta against the world’s Jews, which had eased perceptibly, hadbeen rekindled by one of their less felicitous moves as their leader Dr Chaim Weizmannformally declared war on their behalf against Nazi Germany in September 1939.58Jewish cartoonists abroad poked fun at Goebbels’ lame foot, and when he turnedforty-two Jewish radio commentators in England snarled over the airwaves at him.‘They already lost this dumb fight against me once,’ he philosophized, ‘in Berlin.’59 Afew days later the Daily Sketch printed a cartoon showing him with Hitler and Göring,all hanging from gibbets surrounded by skulls, he consoled himself by repaying themin ways that were petty rather than profound, ordering the Nazi newspapers to publisha cartoon showing Chamberlain in slippers and persuading Hitler to reduce thefood allowances for Jews and to withhold chocolate from them altogether.60A visit to the Jewish ghetto in Lodz left an indelible imprint on his mind. ‘Thoseare not human beings any longer,’ he wrote after leaving his car to inspect it closer.‘Those are animals. So our task isn’t a humanitarian, but a surgical one… Otherwiseone day Europe will succumb to the Jewish pestilence.’61 Back in Berlin he reportedGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 571his impressions to Hitler. ‘He thoroughly endorses my description of the Jewish problem,’he claimed in his diary. ‘The Jews are a waste-product. They are more of aclinical than a social issue.’62He found Hitler planning far ahead, already crashing into France with his Panzerdivisions in his mind’s eye. A genius, decided Goebbels again, and he made a mentalnote that—like the Jews—the French had made a serious blunder by their declarationof war.63 After visiting the eastern territories again he told Hitler about theunwholesome spectacles he had witness there. ‘We must outlaw the Jewish danger,’he recorded afterwards. ‘But it will surface again in a few generations. There’s just noantidote.’64His diary veered ever further from the truth. It noted for example that Hitlerexpressed admiration of his latest speech attacking Churchill over the Athenia. Göringhowever told Rosenberg that Hitler had in fact remarked sarcastically that ‘not eventhe entire Reichstag’ had risen to such heights of rhetoric.65 There are also discrepanciesabout the latest newsreel. ‘The Führer,’ Goebbels claimed in the diary, ‘finds itvery good.’ But other sources reveal that Hitler found it tedious, with its mindnumbingsequences on a dance group in the opera, Queen Wilhelmina visiting theDutch air raid defences, and the Hungarian labour service.66 ‘The newsreels are puttogether without inspiration or depth of interest,’ he fulminated over lunch toGoebbels and a beaming Rosenberg in December. ‘We have in Germany an entirenation under arms, yet the newsreels take no notice.’ Goebbels protested that KarlRitter was making excellent patriotic movies like ‘Pour le Mérite’. ‘Yes patriotic,’said