Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

He feigns dismay at being ‘all alone’ in the big house at No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse, but all that empty it is not. ‘Chatted Ursula up a teeny bit,’ he records,‘then off to bed exhausted.’53From her sanatorium Magda writes him a long letter about her visit to Hitler whenshe left the children at the Göring villa.54 Goebbels tells his staff that Hitler has ledher aside, followed by an inquisitive Bormann, asked, ‘Has the Doctor to come to hissenses?’ and then silently squeezed her hand.55 Goebbels motors out to Lanke for aweek to read, to ride through the forest in his splendid new carriage with the ‘nice,naïve’ and ‘unproblematical’ Ursula, and to listen to classical music.56 At the end ofthat week another letter comes from Magda, who has had another mild heart attack.‘Now,’ he triumphs, ‘she is nice and affectionate to me.’57She pleads for him to visit, and he does spend one evening in Dresden (with Ursula)listening to her wifely prattle—‘It is all very nice and harmonious,’ he records, an-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 629other of those give-away phrases like the ‘Ursula looks gorgeous’ that he writes aftera stroll around the gardens at No.20.58 When Ursula is away for two weeks visitingthe children Goebbels entertains the occasional actress like Margit Syms, a Hungarianbeauty; ‘helped her career a bit,’ he notes afterwards.59Magda returns to Berlin on March 22. She has arranged for their children to bebilleted at Bischofswiesen in Salzburg’s countryside.60 At the end of the month bothshe and Ursula have competition with the arrival or Marina Shalyapin, a good lookingRussian emigrée with fascinating tales of the 1917 bolshevik revolution to tell.The little doctor spends three weeks flirting with her, especially when Magda goesdown to Dessau to say goodbye to Harald who is off to the Balkan wars.61 All threewomen come to Lanke for Easter—‘A turbulent Easter,’ records Goebbels.62 On thelast day of April Magda leaves, taking Ursula with her, to transfer the six children toa large summer house on a lake near Bad Aussee, on the Upper Danube. ‘They are tostay there,’ explained Goebbels, ‘until the war is over.’63HE forbade all prophesies about when that might be. ‘As for Messrs Sperrle andStumpff,’ he said, expressing his fury at two of the Luftwaffe’s most indolent commanders,‘they are in for a surprise. The war game isn’t child’s play after all.’64The present lull in the war, he had privately explained on January 9 to the foreignjournalists, opening their new press club on Leipziger Platz, was just a ‘creative pause.’65In fact the 1941 hunting season for Hitler’s bombers and submarines had not yetbegun.66 By February 6 he knew of Hitler’s plans to evict the British expeditionaryforce currently embarking in Greece.67 ‘It is high time,’ he wrote in Das Reich, ‘forLondon to begin listening to harsh facts.’68 He again began to hint at a coming invasionof England.69 ‘Hitherto,’ he teased foreign journalists on March 7, ‘we have neverset dates… Now for the first time in his political career the Führer has mentionedone, namely: “The decision will come this year.”’70 In the privacy of his diary howeverhe admitted it was fraud. ‘For England’s benefit we’re putting on a bit of an act on thesubject of invasion,’ he explained, ‘to get them all worked up and permanently in astate of fright.’71630 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHWHEN Hitler returned to Berlin on March 15, 1941 something still kept the two menapart. ‘I am far too rushed to see him,’ was Dr Goebbels’ lame excuse to his diary.72He saw him at a distance the next day, speaking at the Memorial Day ceremony.Goebbels was impressed by the confidence he voiced in victory, but it perplexed himthat Hitler was still careful not to state that the would would end in 1941. ‘That ispsychologically better,’ he wrote, seemingly applauding Hitler’s prudent language.‘You never can tell how things may work out, and specifying firm dates is never agood idea.’73He was of course still unaware of Barbarossa; he still believed, after an exchange5of views with General Eugen von Schobert, that the general’s Eleventh Army, stationedon the eastern frontier, was covering Germany’s rear.74Hitler finally invited him round to the chancellery on the seventeenth. ‘We areslowly strangling Britain,’ he told Goebbels, describing their now resumed submarineand air attacks. ‘One day she’ll lie croaking on the ground.’75 Not above a bit ofcrude influence-buying, Goebbels on his next visit to Hitler offered him twenty millionmarks for his social and cultural funds, from the winter relief and film industrypurses which he controlled.76At some stage now Hitler did finally brief him on Barbarossa. Perhaps it was onMarch 20, because the next morning Goebbels ordered all Russian journalists keptunder close surveillance.77 Moreover, hearing of the friendly reception accorded byMoscow to Japan’s foreign minister Yosuke Matsuoka on his way to Berlin the ministercommented, ‘I don’t trust the bolsheviks.’78 After attending Hitler’s banquet forthe Japanese minister on March 28 Goebbels hand-wrote this explicit diary entry:[AFTER Yugoslavia] the biggest operation will then follow: against R. It is beingmeticulously concealed, only a very few are in the know. It will be initiated withmassive west-bound troop movements. We divert attention every which way,except to the east. A feint invasion operation is to be prepared against England,GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 631then like lightning everything goes back [east] and up and at ’em. The Ukraine isone vast granary.Psychologically, he admitted, there were obvious drawbacks—for example thefate of Napoleon’s Grand Army. Propaganda would get around that by playing theanti-bolshevik melody. What a challenge! ‘We’re going to pull off our masterpiece,’he bragged in the diary. ‘Great victories lie in store. It all calls for steady nerves anda clear head… It’s great to be in on it,’ he added, a hint that it still irked him thatHitler had kept him out of the inner circle for so long.79ON the day that Berlin welcomed Matsuoka, the Yugoslav government which had justjoined the Axis was overthrown in a coup funded by the British secret service.80 ToGoebbels, seeing him at the banquet in Matsuoka’s honour, Hitler had seemed undera lot of strain.