Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

directed Taubertto discuss this idea with the Gestapo. In fact the Gestapo had first mooted the idea in1938.67 Late in 1939 the propaganda ministry had independently suggested that Jewsshould wear some kind of lapel pin to facilitate the new ordinance that they give uptheir seats in public transport; the idea had been put to Himmler but got no further.68 The Gestapo’s chief, S.S. Brigadeführer Heinrich Müller, told Taubert thatHeydrich had made similar proposals ever since 1940. Tiessler asked Bormann if adecision from Hitler was likely soon, and there the matter rested until the summerof 1941.69As Hitler’s armies invaded the Baltic states in June and July 1941, expelling therecent Russian conquerors, the natives of those three countries exacted terrible retributionon the Jews. Shortly before Goebbels saw Hitler that August he learnedfrom d’Alquèn of this bloody sequel, and pitilessly referred once again to Hitler’sfamous prophesy of January 1939.70 During that month Speer evicted five thousandmore Berlin Jews from their homes.71 Goebbels applauded, and rhetorically askedhis staff what their returning soldiers would think if they found the Jews still living ineight-room homes waited on hand and foot by Aryan domestic labour, and for ever660 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwhining in public transport?72 ‘I don’t want to see,’ he added piously, ‘the mob takingthe Jewish problem into its own hands again like 1938.’73 ‘You only have to imagine,’he dictated to Otte, ‘what the Jews would do with us if they were ever in power.’74SPEER’S air-raid shelter for Goebbels was scheduled for completion at the end ofAugust 1941, and high time too since autumn was approaching and Churchill’s bombersquadrons would soon return. Even the Russians had recently sent bombers overBerlin.75Stalin was playing Goebbels at his own game. One evening an enemy voice fromMoscow broke into the brief silence before the evening news bulletin and intonedblasphemies against the Führer.76 The same voice used subsequent pauses to passsarcastic comments on each preceding item. There seemed to be no adequate counter-measure. Goebbels, who had total control of the radio news, ordered the bulletinsread ever faster, and then had to start rumours to explain away this undignifiedverbal gallop.77 The enemy voices continued. In August 1943 Himmler would writeto Goebbels:Driving back at night from the Wolf’s Lair to my headquarters I like to listen tomusic on the Deutschland-Sender. The last few weeks I have noticed that close tothat wavelength there is, always after two A.M., an enemy radio station which ismuch more audible here in East Prussia, and broadcasts enemy news in German.78THE voice must have seemed like an ill omen from the east.GOEBBELS reported to Hitler’s HQ on August 18, 1941 for the first time in over fiveweeks. Hitler was recovering from an attack of marshland dysentery and, Goebbelswas malevolently pleased to hear, some kind of attack brought on by a stand-up rowwith Ribbentrop. In the four hours that they spent strolling through the heavily pa-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 661trolled woodlands within the compound Hitler admitted that Barbarossa had runinto difficulties. His experts had credited Stalin with five thousand tanks: he hadcloser to twenty thousand, and not ten thousand warplanes but twenty.79 Howeverhe put Stalin’s losses at three million dead, and he had already taken 1·4 millionSoviet prisoners.* Perhaps, continued Hitler, Stalin would ask for peace terms. Hewould grant them, provided that his forces were totally disarmed. He had no qualmsabout letting bolshevism as such survive. He hoped to conclude the campaign by theonset of winter.GOEBBELS touched upon the topic of euthanasia.81 In a recent sermon Count vonGalen, bishop of Münster, had threatened to have the ‘murderers’ prosecuted.Goebbels felt that Galen should be hanged for sedition.82 Hitler however argued thatin general they must avoid all potentially divisive subjects, like the denominationalconflict.83 A time for example when millions of German soldiers found simple pleasurein nicotine was not the time to start an ‘insulting and demeaning’ campaignagainst tobacco smoking.84 Despite this warning, Goebbels raised the Jewish Problemwith Hitler, and showed him Kaufman’s pamphlet ‘Germany must Perish!’ Hitlerwas convinced that his sinister prophesy of January 1939 was being fulfilled automatically.‘In the east,’ Goebbels reported to his diary, speaking in circumlocutions,‘the Jews are having to foot the bill; they have already paid it in part in Germany.’Even if they all fled to North America, there too the day of reckoning would come.For several minutes, dictating this diary passage to Otte, Goebbels spluttered onabout the Jews. Hitler gave him carte-blanche to introduce the badge for the Jewshowever, so there would be no further legal problem. Goebbels had Kaufman tothank for this breakthrough. The badge, he told his diary, would be a yellow cloth starwith the word Jude emblazoned across it.85* At Potsdam Marshal Stalin confided to Churchill in July 1945 that Soviet lossesduring the war had amounted to five million killed and missing.80662 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHTHE campaign in the east was not running as scheduled. In North Africa too theGermans were now on the defensive. Goebbels feared that the easy victories of theWehrmacht during the early weeks of Barbarossa had been devastating for domesticmorale in the long term.86 British propaganda analysts detected a shift in his outputto a more sombre mood.87 With Hitler’s permission he recalled his trusty Berndt,now an S.S. Oberführer, from North Africa, to take over his central PropagandaDepartment.88 Berndt secretly confided to Himmler, whom he saw as his real boss,that his job would be ‘to get the German public through the coming winter.’ ‘I amquite clear,’ he added, ‘that our propaganda this summer has blundered badly. We’vebeen in the illusions business, we’ve painted everything too rosy.’ Churchill’s method,he told Himmler, was to paint the situation to his public in the darkest hue as possible,but to stress that in the end British arms would be triumphant.89Goebbels kept his finger on Germany’s pulse at several vital points. His staff closelyanalysed all incoming mail, including anonymous letters; a brutally frank weeklymorale report was compiled by Amt III of Himmler’s security service; and his ownnetwork of forty-two gau-level Propaganda Offices (Reichspropagandaämter) reportedeach Monday on public morale (Stimmung) and behaviour