Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Hitler, ‘but not National Socialist!’ They went at it hammer and tongs for twentyminutes before Dr Goebbels lapsed into a stricken silence. ‘His insufferable arrogance,’gloated Rosenberg, ‘is now too much for even the long-suffering Führer tobear.’ Goebbels hated being criticized by Hitler. ‘But he has the right to criticize,’ heloyally noted. ‘He is a genius.’67One never knew, after all, who might read the diary’s pages.IN October 1939 his stately home at Lanke, the Haus am Bogensee, is complete.572 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHWorries about financing it still beset him.68 He visits Magda, hospitalized once morewith heart problems, and tells her of these irksome difficulties.69 ‘We have such moneyworries,’ he writes. ‘Some of them are anything but agreeable.’70 Of course her wealthyfather Oskar Ritschel has no intention of bailing them out. They are a family again.Once his stepson Harald comes, now a young paratrooper whose eyes have seen thehorrors of war in Poland. On Goebbels’ birthday Hitler invites them to tea; his faceis lined with worry—the war is not panning out as he had planned.71Goebbels’ marital problems seem over; at least the endless rows have faded fromthe diary’s pages. He takes Magda out to Lanke for an afternoon, and they happilyarrange the furniture.72 Once in November they rake over old embers, ‘of which,’notes Goebbels, evidently scorched in the process, ‘some are anything but agreeable.’73 Magda enrols as a Red Cross nurse.74 He puts pressure on his budget chief DrOtt to ‘show more initiative’ in dealing with the stubborn ministry of finance; thisevidently works, because Ott shortly tells him that he has ‘sorted out some of theproblems in financing the new buildings.’75 Slowly his domestic worries recede.November 8, 1939 finds him in Munich listening once more to Hitler’s speech onthe putsch anniversary. From here one year before Goebbels had launched the Nightof Broken Glass. By six P.M. Himmler, Bouhler, Rosenberg, Frank, Ribbentrop andother dignitaries had joined him in the Bürgerbräu beerhall; this time they weresurrounded by field-grey army uniforms. Hitler delivered an hour-long attack onBritain, pronounced that he was ready for five years of war if necessary, then finishedabruptly—he had to hurry back to Berlin since his army commanders had asked tosee him urgently the next morning about ‘Yellow,’ the repeatedly postponed westerncampaign.Goebbels rode in Hitler’s special railroad car. At Nuremberg station he saw a telegramhanded to Hitler: a mighty explosion, it said, had ripped through the beerhalljust after they left, killing eight and injuring over sixty.76 Goebbels was agog at hisFührer’s seemingly miraculous escape. If he had not left early, they would all surelyhave been killed. He really must be under God’s protection, he privately concluded.‘He won’t die until his mission is complete.’77GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 573At the ministry he directed all editors to comment along these lines. ‘Urgent statebusiness had called him back to Berlin,’ the journalists were told. He forbade themto incriminate any specific groups inside Germany like monarchists, the clergy orJews.78 He did not want any repetition of the November 1938 pogrom. London andParis meanwhile blamed the Nazis themselves—‘As is their wont,’ he observed drilyin his diary, with the Reichstag fire allegations in mind.79There was a bizarre sequel. Hitler showed him a letter received a few days before:the writer, an astrologer living in the Black Forest, had cast Hitler’s horoscope andregretted to inform him that he was in mortal danger between the seventh and thetenth. ‘I’m curious to know what you make of this,’ said Hitler.‘Wow!’ replied the minister cautiously, knowing Hitler’s aversion to the occult:‘Wow!’Himmler pocketed the letter, promising to look into it.80THAT night there was a mini-pogrom, as rampaging Nazis beat up innocents in Berlin.‘I have them shipped off to concentration camp,’ recorded Goebbels grandly, but theoutrages continued.81 Goebbels ordered the guards on his ministry reinforced (a signthat he at least regarded the assassination attempt as genuine.)82 Assured by Hitlerthat there was no trace of the culprit, Goebbels groped blindly, flailing first at theBritish, then the Americans and Roosevelt. Learning only on the fifteenth thatHimmler’s men had caught ‘the first of the assassins’ on the Swiss border, he shiftedhis sights onto his old foe Otto Strasser; Strasser, it turned out, had fled from Switzerlandto England immediately after the bomb blast. ‘We are keeping it all secret,’he summarized, ‘so as not to tip off the men really behind it.’83 The hunt for accomplicesturned up nothing; but when the government press agency finally announcedthe assassin’s arrest on November 21, Goebbels released news of the capture of twotop British agents on the Dutch border at the same time, so that even the dimmestreader would understand the hint.84GOEBBELS sent for that astrologer, Karl-Ernst Krafft—a pale, slight fellow with spin-574 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHdly hands and deepset eyes. He wanted to learn more about his letter to Hitler,though carefully armouring himself with a veneer of scepticism (as recently as November2 he had directed the party to keep a watchful eye on seers, astrologers, andclairvoyants to damp down rumours.85 At his confidential eleven A.M. conference onNovember 11 he ordered all astrological publications checked for relevant prophecies.In fact all such publications had long been banned, but he mentioned casually inhis diary, ‘I’m having a watch kept on astrology. A load of rubbish is talked and printedabout it. And yet, strangely enough, it all speaks in our favour.’86‘Speaks’ is perhaps too strong a word. As Krafft explained, it depended how oneinterpreted the Delphic prophecies, couched in Old French, of Nostradamus (1503–66). He obligingly interpreted one passage thus for Goebbels: ‘Since the armisticewas a fraud, the great Führer of Hermannsland [le grand duc d’Arménie] will conveyBrabant, Flanders, Gent, Bruges, and Boulogne to Grossdeutschland, and he willseize Vienna and the Rhineland by surprise.’ Goebbels promptly took him onto theministry’s pay roll.87 With Krafft’s help, and with more than a little imagination, theywould hijack Nostradamus’ ancient prophecies to benefit the Reich.He ordered a new ‘translation’ of the prophecies suitable for use in propaganda toFrance, and printed millions of bogus Nostradamus leaflets, with special editions ofthe selected passages prophesying the downfalls of, respectively,