with armchairs and dancefloors,installed for London’s plutocrats beneath the Grosvenor House hotel.45 When Hitlerretailed to him reports that the London police had had to use firearms to quell disturbances,Goebbels was however sceptical.46‘Not yet,’ was his terse assessment when his department heads asked whether theBritish capital was entering its death throes.47In mid September 1940 Hitler still hoped that this blitz would do the trick. ‘Ifeight million inhabitants go crazy,’ he said, ‘that can bring about a catastrophe. If weget good weather and can neutralize the enemy air force, then even a small-scaleinvasion can work wonders.’48 Over lunch on the twenty-third however Goebbelsheard him admit that they were nowhere near achieving air superiority.49 The Britishkilled eleven more Berliners that night. Goebbels mechanically called the raid ‘massive’in his diary. ‘We hype it up colossally.’ Hitler compared the contest with a boxingmatch. After slogging on for round after round, one pugilist might suddenlyslump to the canvas.50 To Goebbels however the London blitz began to reek of uglierexamples in history, and Major Rudolf Wodarg, his Luftwaffe liaison officer, put thesame fear into words: ‘London,’ he said, ‘is turning into a Verdun of the air.’51GOEBBELS was not really prepared for this situation. He spent October 1940 in thedoldrums, becalmed in a silent, unreasoning hatred of Ribbentrop, of Dietrich, ofthe plutocrats in London, and of the Jews. He was waiting—waiting for the air warto end, waiting for the renovation of No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse to be com-614 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHpleted, waiting for Magda, yet again, to give birth. ‘Mothers in labour are like soldierson the battlefield,’ he decided.52 Often a single British nuisance raider triggereda stampede by four and a half million Berliners into their makeshift shelters.53 OnOctober 2 a detonation not far from Lanke marked the end of one British bomber.Goebbels saw the flattened pile of twisted metal the next day and the charred remainsof the three aviators, and shuddered.54 The air staff now asked Goebbels not toannounce when the British missed their targets. Goebbels was baffled. ‘We are givingthem the freedom of our air waves,’ he commented, referring to the ten P.M.radio shut-down, ‘and now we are voluntarily to abstain from rebutting their propagandalies.’55He travelled to France, at Göring’s invitation. He took tea in the Edouard Rothschildpalace—the château, replete with pheasants, was now a Luftwaffe command post—and relished the irony of the situation. Fatter than ever and aglitter with medals,Göring showed him round Paris. They swapped pet-hate stories about Ribbentrop;Goebbels noticed how many German uniforms there were as they strolled along theboulevards and enjoyed the sensation their presence was creating. At the Casino deParis the crippled gauleiter goggled at the open display of such statuesque nudity.‘We could never put on a show like that in Berlin,’ he decided. Visiting Field MarshalHugo Sperrle, the bulky, monocled Third Air Fleet commander at Deauville, Goebbelsdecided that like Göring he too was a real comrade, a devil of a fellow, and his menwere just fabelhaft.56It is worth emphasizing those contemporary words, because in July 1944 he wouldrecall only the sumptuousness of this peacetime international watering hole—howSperrle had crammed his face with caviar canapés and roared, ‘In fourteen days alllife in London will have been extinguished… I am telling you. They’ll suffocate intheir own crap.’ He plied the propaganda minister with agents’ reports, one of whichspoke of the fine ladies being forced to pee in Hyde Park as London’s water mainsran dry. Goebbels voiced scepticism (or so he claimed in 1944) that that would besufficient inconvenience to bring down a great world empire.57GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 615WHILE Dr Joseph Goebbels is staring at naked showgirls in October 1940 in Paris, hiswife, pregnant in Berlin with their sixth child, has had to return to the clinic withheart problems.58 It is mid November before she is discharged. Her father writes toher: facing renewed surgery, he is obliged to draw up a will; he is leaving her theestate at Remagen—he does not mention Joseph at all.59Magda’s life is anything but easy, and for all his attempts at camouflage Goebbels’diary cannot conceal it. A candle still glows dimly in her heart for Karl Hanke. Herson Harald is now a troublesome adolescent; perhaps the paratroops will make aman out of him.60 Goebbels privately reflects that it could do wonders for his imageif Harald should die in action . Of his daughters, his favourite is still Helga.61 Formore mature female company, he invites the Countess Faber-Castell out to Lankewith her husband as soon as Magda has gone; the countess is a captivating twentythreeyears old whom he has known for many years. She entertains him with chansonsand music—‘She is bewitching,’ writes Goebbels wistfully.62Once Magda struggles briefly out of bed to rejoin him. ‘When you see eye to eyewith her,’ writes Goebbels, ‘she is a regular guy and a real comrade.’63 It is the kind ofpraise his diary has lavished only on Göring or Sperrle before. On his forty-thirdbirthday she presents him with a fifth daughter, Heide. His family is now complete.On Magda’s birthday in November 1940 Hitler himself turns up for her little dinnerparty And they proudly show him over their now finished ministerial mansion atNo.20 Hermann Göring Strasse. No fewer than 117 construction workers have beenlabouring on it during these historic weeks.64 Thick carpets and velvet or silken wallhangings supplied by the exquisite United Workshops of Munich deaden every sound.In the largest salon are seats for 140; the same number can sit at tables in the BlueGallery, with eighty-two more at the top table. Tapestries hang everywhere. Thehuge desk in his study has cost 8,417 marks, around two thousand dollars.65 Theglobe of the world is modelled on one he has seen in the radio building but—givenhis waiflike, five-foot-four stature—it is a more lowslung model. In the garden aremarble sculptures by Professor Fritz Klimsch and a bronze nude by Arno Breker. All616 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHthe telephones are white; on his instructions all have had their ‘engaged’ indicatorlampsremoved. He does not want it to be known when he is telephoning.66He has
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