Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

extended through Washington, Stockholm and—via Rudolf Hess’ aristocratic contacts—to Scotland.As frustrated as Goebbels at Hitler’s forbearance, Mr Churchill intensified his raidson Berlin. Finally his methods worked. Inaugurating the second war winter relieffund Hitler and Goebbels spoke on September 4 in the Sport Palace; and here Hitlerthreatened that if the attacks continued, then his Luftwaffe would respond. ‘I shallrub out their cities!’ he rasped into the microphone. To Goebbels’ astonishment, thespeech had no apparent impact on Whitehall. In retrospect this was not surprising:like Goebbels at Lanke, Churchill had a country funk-hole at Dytchley in Oxfordshirewhere he repaired whenever his Intelligence services alerted him that Londonwas to be the Luftwaffe’s target. Churchill wanted London bombed to bring in theAmericans, to take the weight off his fighter and radar defences, and to spite thepeace movement seriously threatening his own war leadership. He cheered silentlyeach time his capital was bombed, as indeed did Goebbels each time Berlin wasvisited by the Royal Air Force.29GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 611Meanwhile Reichsmarschall Göring had set off to the Channel coast to commandhis pompous air armadas against London. He had prepared a three-day saturationbombing of London. September 5 brought ideal bombing weather but Hitler, clutchingat hopes of peace, still prevaricated. That night the British bombed Berlin again,killing fifteen people. Lunching with Hitler on the sixth Goebbels found his patienceexhausted. ‘The Führer,’ he recorded, ‘is fed up. He clears London for bombing. It isto begin tonight.’ Goebbels certainly did not discourage him, and that night what hewould call the Blitz began. Mapping out his own tactics in advance he confided to hisdiary, ‘We’re expecting the British to launch a major air strike against Berlin tonight[the seventh]. When it comes we’ll kick up one hell of a hullabaloo—and then we’llflatten London with day and night raids.’ These would go on around the clock forthree days. He only hoped that the weather held out.Sure enough the British bombers returned. Thus Churchill and Hitler rose to eachother’s bait. Göring again sent his bombers over London that afternoon. ‘Let’s seenow how long the nerves of the English can take it,’ wrote Goebbels. He directedWilliam Joyce and the black ‘English’ transmitters to spread panic; and he told the‘straight’ media that they were to stick to the official version that the Luftwaffe wasonly attacking military targets.30 On the eighth, Reuter’s agency announced that sevenhundred Londoners had died the day before.31 As Hitler visited the Goebbels familyat Schwanenwerder on Sunday the eighth, Göring’s squadrons were however battlingworsening weather conditions. ‘Churchill,’ Hitler and Goebbels agreed, ‘is abuffoon and the gravedigger of the empire.’32 The British prime minister displayedhimself to London’s battered East Enders and told the world’s press that they hadfêted him. ‘We believe you!’ mocked Goebbels; after Churchill’s bombers threwanother modest punch at Berlin that night the Nazi propaganda minister orderedtheir overseas services to exaggerate it wildly to generate fresh alibis for what was tocome.33 The New York Times headlines read 1,500 NAZI PLANES BOMB LONDON on Sunday,and MIGHTY NAZI AIR FLEET AGAIN BOMBS LONDON—DOCKS AND PLANTS HIT, FIRES RAGE onthe following day. London, it seemed to Goebbels, was one huge inferno. How longcould they take it?612 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHOver lunch on the tenth a buoyant Hitler again ventilated the one question thatmattered: would Britain give in? Goebbels thought they would, but Hitler could notyet decide. ‘The military share my viewpoint,’ recorded Goebbels: ‘A city of eightmillion cannot stand that for long… We have wiped the smirk off their Lordships’faces. We shall thrash them until they whimper for mercy.’34That night scattered bombs fell around the Reichstag. Visibly annoyed that Churchill’sraids were proving so puny, Goebbels ordered his pyrotechnic experts to stagemore convincing fires on top of the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s famous landmark,and then summoned the press photographers—‘to supply,’ as he unblushingly toldhis diary, ‘an alibi for our own coming massive raid on the London government quarter.’35 When a German bomb shortly after damaged one wing of Buckingham Palacein London, Goebbels directed his agencies to claim that there were ‘secret militarytargets’ nearby.36 The neutral press duly equated this raid with the British raid on theReichstag. ‘Thus we are not barbarians,’ Goebbels congratulated himself. ‘It’s justtwo superpowers knocking the living daylights out of each other.’37Hitler too was taken in. Furious about the raid on the Brandenburg Gate and hisReichstag he told Goebbels that he was now going to blast Mr Churchill’s ancientparliament to smithereens. Together they listened to the prime minister broadcastthat evening. It was an insipid speech in Goebbels’ opinion, riddled with vulgar abuseat his beloved Führer. ‘Poor fool,’ he commented: ‘In his impotent fury he flails at agenius of whose greatness he has not the slightest inkling.’38 Churchill however wasevery inch a match for him. Although he too knew from codebreaking that no Germaninvasion was planned, he predicted a date for the event: it was an old but effectivepropaganda trick, raged Goebbels—Churchill could then claim a victory whenno invasion came.39 His admiration for Britain’s indomitable prime minister grew.‘You can’t help respecting him,’ he wrote, ‘in his bulldog way.’40Despite all Göring’s attempts the British defences seemed intact. On September15 the Luftwaffe dropped two hundred tons of bombs on London, and lost fortythreeplanes in the battle. Churchill coolly inflated that figure to 155. ‘Churchill hasgot to cheat,’ Goebbels reasoned, ‘because the devastation in London is so appall-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 613ing.’41 The Luftwaffe’s losses faced him with a problem however. He had virtuouslyruled only ten days earlier that even if the Luftwaffe was worsted on some days, itslosses were to be faithfully reported.42 But now it was becoming something of aliability. All German radio stations had to shut down at ten P.M.43 The same HermannGöring who had bragged that no enemy bomber would darken German skies nowallowed the world’s press to report that he had personally flown over the blazingstreets of London in a Stuka dive bomber. Goebbels forbade the German press toprint the story (‘for cogent reasons’).44 Instead, he told their black transmitters toremark on the luxury air raid shelters, complete