Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Goebbels’ life is already nine-tenths over. Hilde has just had her first dayat school; life’s little milestones are flashing past in a blur. His pride and joy arehis four daughters. ‘What a delight it is to see the clever, pretty little lasses slowlygetting bigger,’ he writes, unconsciously excluding his slow-witted infant son fromhis sentiments.1 Once he finds that Magda has dressed Helmut in a frilly silk blouse.‘That’s not right for a boy,’ he snaps at her, sending him off to change. ‘We’re not theRibbentrops or Görings. People expect different of us!’2 He has had little time forhis family during the Norwegian campaign. His health is indifferent, and he consultsDr Morell about an itchy rash which he puts down to poor diet.3Magda tells him that her father is ill. Goebbels merely sniffs. He lacks any feelingtoward old Oskar Ritschel. She goes alone to the hospital in Duisburg.4 Graduallyher father wastes away, losing forty pounds. But he has evidently imbibed the evildraughts brewed by his son-in-law. ‘So these weeks,’ Ritschel writes afterwards tohis daughter, ‘we’re turning against the arch-enemy England, so that peace returns atlast. Of course it isn’t really a war against Britain and France at all, but a war betweenthe Judaic and Germanic races; that is the quintessence of this gigantic struggle.’5MANY desks at Goebbels’ ministry were empty; half of his staff were away at thewars.6 Goebbels encouraged this war service, both for the battlefield experience thatmen like Gunter d’Alquèn would bring back to the ministry and for the ideologicalGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 591stiffening that they brought to the front lines.7 Goebbels sent out regular hectographedletters to all his men in uniform disbursing the latest ministry gossip, chocolates, andcigarettes to each man.8 The propaganda company suffered heavy losses in Norway.Hanke fought through France as Erwin Rommel’s adjutant; Berndt succeeded him inAfrica.9 Werner Naumann, an officer in Hitler’s S.S. Leibstandarte, would returnwith a wound badge and other decorations from the Balkan campaign.10 HerbertHeiduschke, another Goebbels adjutant, would meet a paratrooper’s death in Crete,shot through the head.11 G.W. Müller would be wounded in the Nazi advance onMurmansk in North Russia.12 Moritz von Schirmeister, Goebbels’ press officer since1938, would not return from the eastern front to his desk until January 1942.13The Norwegian campaign provide one coup for Goebbels, the capture of Britishdocuments proving that Churchill had himself, for all his talk about invasions ofneutral countries, intended to invade Norway. ‘That is a gift from the gods,’ wrote ajubilant Goebbels. ‘We missed disaster by hours. Churchill was waiting for reportsof the English invasion—and the accursed Germans had got there first.’14 Scoffing,Hitler told him that Mr Churchill had given each man only fifty rounds of ammunition.‘Staff headquarters in a hospital,’ commented Goebbels. ‘Pure Churchill!’15 IncriminatingBritish documents were rushed into print. He ordered the press to followup with leader articles, and had the captured British officers interviewed on thenewfangled tape recorder lest Mr Churchill deny the story.16 The British expeditionaryforce had behaved despicably, Hitler told Goebbels, looting and pillaging everywhere.In contrast to the Polish campaign, however, the Norwegians had not committedone atrocity—‘They are after all a Germanic breed’—and he ordered therelease of all Norwegian prisoners by way of recognition.17Unlike Goebbels, Hitler had no special animus against the British. While Goebbelsbroadly defined their war aims as ‘victory over the western plutocracies’18, he oftenheard Hitler speak, within the four walls of his Chancellery, of his fondness for theBritish and their empire. ‘The Führer’s intention is,’ recorded Goebbels, ‘to administerone knockout punch. Even so, he would be ready to make peace today, on conditionthat Britain stay out of Europe and give us back our colonies… He does not592 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwant at all to crush Britain or to destroy her empire.’19 ‘There is no need,’ wroteGoebbels a few days later, again quoting Hitler, ‘for Britain to lose her overseas possessions.’20 Hitler described the Englishmen in charge as criminals. ‘They could havehad peace on the most amicable of terms,’ he privately assured Goebbels. ‘Insteadthey are fighting a war and shattering their empire to the core.’21 ‘We are neither ablenor willing to take over their empire,’ he added, reverting to this bitter theme. ‘Thereare some people whom you can talk sense into only after you’ve knocked out theirfront teeth.’22With Yellow imminent, there was one odd interlude: Goebbels decided that sincethey had an interest in weakening Chamberlain’s government their overseas broadcastsshould back Mr Churchill against him. Hitler evidently thought this wrong,because on May 9 Goebbels ordered this tactic abandoned.23That night, May 9, 1940, Hitler boarded his train, bound for the western front.Goebbels showed up conspicuously at Göring’s side at the première of Mussolini’splay ‘Cavour’ in Berlin, then returned to his deserted ministry building. At 5:35 A.M.Yellow began, with Hitler’s tanks and airborne troops invading the Low Countries.At eight Goebbels himself broadcast appeals to them not to resist. ‘Our entire publicmust be convinced that Holland and Belgium did violate their neutrality,’ he told hisstaff.24 Learning that Churchill had now replaced Chamberlain, Goebbels pennedthis jubilant comment in his diary: ‘Decks cleared!’25 Churchill launched the air warimmediately, with raids on the Ruhr. Elsewhere twenty-four people, mostly children,were killed by bombs in Freiburg; in fact a stray Luftwaffe plane was to blame,but the harrowing stories from Freiburg were grist to Goebbels’ mill.26He ordered the media to ignore Churchill’s new cabinet except for the minister ofinformation Duff Cooper. On Hitler’s instructions the popular Queen Wilhelminaof the Netherlands was also spared.27 As the powerful transmitter at Luxemburg fellinto German hands Goebbels offered a substantial reward for the return of its missingvalves; it later became one of his mightiest weapons in the radio propagandawar.28 Initially he laid down the principle of total restraint in their reporting: therewas to be no sensationalizing of the Wehrmacht’s victories.29 Hitler had briefed himGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 593on his real secret strategy, later known as the Manstein Plan, because as it unfoldedon May 16 Goebbels noted that their mission now was to dupe the enemy into expectinga rehash of the old Schlieffen Plan.30 He spread rumours about