Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

commissioned no less lavish works in the ministry building itself, on WilhelmsPlatz. Work is suspended briefly in November as the interior decorators are calledaway to work on the special luxurious trains of Hitler and Göring. Goebbels ordersthat there are to be no flushing toilets in the space next to his personal radio studio,to avoid inappropriate noises during his broadcasts to the Greater German Reich.67He has a new private dining room installed in the ministry, furnished in mahoganywith a round extending table, two soft easy chairs upholstered in white velvet, andtwelve armchairs covered in green Morocco leather. The estimated cost, includingbulbs for the chandelier, is 19,414 marks.At the same time nearly two hundred sub-contractors, employing currently 123workmen, have laboured to complete his mansion at Lanke, the ‘Haus am Bogensee’(which still stands to this day). He is converted the former guardhouse used by hisbodyguard Kaiser into a handsome oblong wood cabin fifty feet long and thirty feetwide, as a guesthouse for two families. The architect’s file contains his instructionsdated August 6, 1940 for incubators and bird-tables to be erected in the surroundingwoods. The new gate-house will cost thirty thousand marks; alterations to the cinema,drawing room, and Magda’s private bedroom one hundred thousand; a twenty-five foot by sixty-five foot swimming pool, twenty-four thousand; and a children’swing, 140,000. By the end of October 1940 the grand total cost of work in hand is2,663,052.58 marks. Mosquito suppression, road building, and radio equipment willbring the total to three million. Understandably his diary betrays a certain nervousnessas the bills mount.68‘If only I had a fraction of the sums the enemy credits me with,’ he expostulates.The diary cannot conceal his eighteenth century tapestries purchased from Franceand the Low Countries, nor the paintings by Van Dyke, nor the Goya obtained from‘French private property’; but all these are no doubt paid for by the ministry.69Ministers it seems are endemically blind to their own corruption. Through hisfriend Max Winkler, Dr Goebbels controls the film industry. Early in November heGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 617notes that Winkler has seen Göring and has taken care of the Lanke problem.70 Atabout the same time Winkler gives him a ‘belated’ birthday present of two magnificentblack Trakehn geldings, with a matching carriage. No doubt coincidentally Goebbels‘in conjunction with the film industry’ donates to Winkler a garden cottage worthfifty thousand marks upon his birthday.71 By November 30 cheques totalling 2·3 millionmarks have been paid toward the cost of Lanke. Thus he settled his debts overLanke and his tax liabilities at one stroke. ‘It was high time,’ he wrote. ‘If I were to dienow, I’d just about break even. A fine reward for twenty years’ service to the fatherland.My family would be in for quite a shock.’72RETURNING from France, Goebbels had dictated to his staff his belief that London wasbluffing.73 But each side was wallowing in self-deception. Ward Price announced thatthe British raids had now killed 1,700 Berliners; Goebbels told his overseas servicesto make plain that the real death-roll in Berlin was seventy-seven.74 Göring’s bombershad killed seven thousand Londoners during September alone. But as Goebbelsprivately realized, the British were tough: ‘They’re still holding out.’75 Touring publicshelters on the first night of November he found signs that nerves were getting morefrayed.76 Once again he could only hope that Hitler knew what he was up to.Hitler did know, but again he had not initiated Dr Goebbels. He had decided asearly as July 1940 to attack Russia. Even in December Goebbels still regarded Britainas ‘our last remaining enemy.’77 After their Black Forest conference on July 2,when Hitler had evidently voiced to him his annoyance that Stalin had annexed partsof Romania, Goebbels mused in his diary: ‘The Slavs are spreading out right acrossthe Balkans… Perhaps we shall have to go to war again later, against the Soviets.’78 Atthe end of that month he had warned the gauleiters to squelch any such rumours.79He and Hitler were both intrigued by the newsreel images of the Soviet-Finnishwinter war just ended: the Red Army seemed temptingly primitive.80 ‘Bolshevism isWorld Enemy No.1,’ Goebbels told Hitler. ‘We are bound to collide sooner or later.’81Hitler agreed, but still he lied to Goebbels, saying that he was transferring armydivisions to the east only on a better-safe-than-sorry basis.82 ‘He says quite spontane-618 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHously,’ recorded Goebbels after Hitler had revealed his contempt for Moscow, ‘thathe trusts blindly and implicitly in our future.’ The time was coming, Goebbels gathered,when old scores with Moscow were to be settled.83To forestall Stalin Hitler packed German troops into Romania and Finland in September.‘The Führer is determined,’ observed Goebbels, ‘not to relinquish any moreof Europe to Russia.’84 During October 1940 his diary revealed no hint of the intensivemilitary preparations already afoot. Learning, to his surprise, that Hitler hadinvited the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov to Berlin, Goebbels saw itonly in terms of a slap in the face to Britain.85 He did not approve of Molotov. Heinstructed Berlin’s S.A. not to provide guards of honour, and he did nothing to mobilizethe cheering crowds that Ribbentrop had requested.86 Hitler invited him tolunch with their Soviet guests on November 13. The Russian foreign minister seemedclever, even artful; his skin was of a waxy, yellow pallor. He listened politely toGoebbels through an interpreter for two hours, but scarcely even grunted in reply.After lunch Goebbels let fly to his private staff his scorn of Molotov, with his ‘schooljanitor’s face’; he paced angrily up and down behind his desk, mimicking his ownfruitless attempt at making conversation.‘The Soviets,’ he snapped, in a dismissive generalisation that was to prove fatefulfor Germany, ‘are like their suits. They are cheap, and off-the-peg.’871 Diary, Aug 1, 1940.2 MinConf., Aug 5, 1940.3 Diary, Aug 8, 1940.4 MinConf., Aug 8, 1940.5 Diary, Aug 18, 1940.6 Ibid., Aug 3, 8, 9; MinConf., Aug 8, 1940.7 MinConf., Aug 10, 1940.8 Ibid.., Aug 17, 1940.9 Diary, Aug 2–3, 1940.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 61910 MinConf., Aug 3; diary, Aug 4; Louis Lochner, letter, Aug 9, 1940 (FDR Libr., Tolandpapers, box 52).11 Diary, Aug 1, 21, 1940.12