Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

of victory—‘For that weshall work and we shall fight, until our last enemy lies shattered on the ground’—Hitlerchanged it to read ‘until the onslaught of our last enemy has been repulsed.’ Goebbels’boast, ‘Never shall we capitulate—never’, was scratched out altogether.28THE new year opened on a low key. Goebbels found himself further than ever from626 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHhis old intimate relationship with Hitler. Italy lost both Bardia and Tobruk. His diarymakes no mention of Rommel’s expedition to Libya until the end of January 1941 orof Rommel himself until three weeks after that; so Hitler had not told him of thatdiversion either.29A new trade pact was signed with Moscow; unaware of the sinister strategic purposewith which Hitler had vested it, Goebbels saw it only as another slap in the facefor Churchill.30 His admiration for the British prime minister remained undiminished,particularly after another belligerent speech by him to Parliament in December1940. He wrote a flaming attack on Churchill for Das Reich but ordered the restof the press to lay off him for fear of creating a dangerous legend around the man.31‘Our press is publishing things which absolutely speak for the old swine, for instancescurrilous things about his lifestyle which are not at all ludicrous or even contemptible.He has some attractive features,’ admitted Goebbels privately, ‘which we don’twant to underscore in the press. You’ve either got to hate your enemy or expose himto ridicule.’32When Hitler returned to Berlin on January 28, 1941 he did not at once send forGoebbels. Goebbels told his diary that he had prior engagements.33 The erosion of hisinfluence is plain from a bleak entry ten days later, after Otto Dietrich had once againput his nose out of joint. ‘I may now have to appeal to the Führer,’ he wrote, ‘awkwardthough that may prove for me right now.’34 And then there was the war department(O.K.H.): they had borrowed Goebbels’ best film technicians to make theirmovie ‘Victory in the West’; now they refused to let him have them back—anotherindicator of his momentary impotence.35 For the first time in years he stayed awayfrom the party’s foundation ceremony in Munich on February 24; he listened toHitler’s speech on the radio, a peculiar sensation, he admitted, without being moreexplicit about their estrangement.36ASSUREDLY it is Magda who is causing his problems with Hitler. Goebbels treats hermore scandalously than ever. Her father, his life slowly ebbing in Duisburg, sends toMagda and her mother Auguste Behrend a Christmas telegram which studiously omitsGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 627all mention of Dr Joseph Goebbels. When she visits the city hospital, her dying fatherhas to send her three hundred marks to defray her travel expenses.37 On April 3,1941, Magda returns to Duisburg to share her father’s last hours on earth. Her sorrowleaves Goebbels stone cold. ‘I barely know him,’ he callously observes in hisdiary, not caring who may read it later, ‘and I shall not be losing anything when hegoes.’38What else has caused the friction? A terse line in his diary for December 20, 1940refers to a ‘short palaver’ with Magda—his euphemism for a blazing row—betweentwo air raid alerts.39 The likely cause is as much the reappearance of Karl Hanke, nowa bemedalled war hero of thirty-eight, as the arrival at Schwanenwerder early inNovember of the vivacious young Ursula Quandt, who has just divorced Magda’sboring and half-blind stepson Herbert Quandt. Ursula, nearly a generation youngerthan Magda, ‘now looks quite delicious,’ as Goebbels candidly observes.40 His diarymentions her no fewer than thirty-nine times in the next six months. Over Christmas1940 Magda finds that he has invited Ursula out to Lanke too, with his youngadjutant Herbert Heiduschke, a paratrooper, for the sake of appearances.41 At theNew Year he pulls the same stunt. The threesome are inseparable for the rest ofJanuary, even travelling together to Vienna.42Even in the handwritten diaries the clues about his relationships with women areso urbane as to be almost invisible. He records the curious fact that their nanny has‘quite unexpectedly’ given birth to a child. ‘Nobody,’ he informs his diary, ‘had theslightest idea. I arrange for the scared creature to be taken care of. She has sufferedfear and pain enough.’43 ‘I discussed with Mrs —her future work,’ he writes a fewweeks later. ‘She’s expecting a child now.’44 For a married woman this would notnormally excite comment. Seven weeks later, just before Barbarossa, he records thisepisode: ‘A baby in a flower-covered perambulator is put into the ministry’s entrancehall for me. With an anonymous letter asking me to show an interest in the baby. Ishall concern myself with it. I shall first try to find the mother.’45** The diary does not mention any of these episodes again. Visiting Buenos Aires inOctober 1991 I was informed that an illegitimate son of Goebbels was living there.628 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHIf Magda has indeed sought comfort with Hanke, it does not last long.46 Goebbelsprevails on Hitler to banish him from Berlin. Hitler splits Silesia’s administration intwo: Hanke becomes gauleiter and Oberpräsident of his native Lower Silesia.47 Arrivingfor supper with Hitler on the day after this arrangement is announced, Goebbelsfinds Hanke there as well. ‘I cut him dead,’ he records—four words that say it all.48Even now strange events cast a shadow over his family, which the diary cannotentirely conceal. Magda leaves for a five-week cure in Dresden.49 All six childrenleave at the same time. Life in Berlin’s air-raid shelters and the indifferent diet areblighting their growth, writes Goebbels, and Göring has offered them sanctuary inhis villa on the Obersalzberg.50 Midst much weeping Goebbels sees his entire family,with baby Heide in her little basket, leave at ten A.M. on February 12, 1941. True,nearly one thousand trainloads of other children have been evacuated from Berlin,but as Churchill’s raids have momentarily declined other parents are clamouring fortheir return; besides, Lanke, so expensively built, is hardly at greater risk than theObersalzberg, and the comely young divorcée Ursula Quandt has no qualms aboutstaying out there at Goebbels’ forest estate.51He is no stranger to what he calls the sexual problems of men and women forcedto live apart.52