Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

(Haltung). They inturned drew their information from cells in individual factories and party branches.Dr Immanuel Schäffer, who had to collate this data at the ministry, found a broadmeasure of agreement between them. Broadly speaking, while behaviour remainedremarkably stable, public morale fluctuated wildly.90FIVE more weeks passed before Goebbels saw Hitler again. Barbarossa had regainedits lost momentum. At five P.M. on September 20, 1941 German radio announcedthe captured of Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. Two million Russian prisoners were nowin German hands. As Goebbels and Hadamowsky flew into the Wolf’s Lair for lunchon the twenty-third the news was of even greater victories as four Soviet armies,encircled by army groups Centre and South, faced destruction.91 Hitler told themthat the worst would be over by mid-October. He would follow through with thrustsGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 663toward Kharkov, Stalingrad, and the river Don, to rob Stalin of his coal and armsproduction centres. Petersburg would be starved out, then ploughed literally intothe ground.92 Goebbels learned that Hitler was putting Heydrich in charge of anincreasingly fractious Prague. ‘Such situations,’ the minister dictated approvingly,‘call for a strong man.’While at Hitler’s HQ he was able to coordinate with Reinhard Heydrich his measuresagainst the Jews.93 The new yellow star badge had been gazetted into law two orthree weeks earlier, but there had been unforeseen consequences: there was loudpublic criticism, and some Germans were going out of their way to offer Jews seatsin crowded public transport. Goebbels was furious, and ordered that they be remindedof Kaufman’s slogan that Germany ‘must perish forever from this earth.’94 Torub it he issued through the party’s Reich Propaganda Directorate (RPL) a leafletheaded, ‘Whenever you see this badge, remember what the Jew has inflicted uponour Nation.’95In Hans Fritzsche’s view it was this unexpected sentimentalism of the Berliner thatfinally decided Goebbels on the rapid and ruthless deportation of the Jews.96 Dictatinghis diary note on September 23 Goebbels noted that this would still have to awaitthe end of Barbarossa. ‘They are all to be transported ultimately to (regions?) adjacentto the bolshevik (rump territory?)’ he dictated.* Hitler had confirmed to himthat peu à peu all Jews were to be expelled from Berlin, Vienna, and Prague.97 Thisconformed with what he had told Himmler. The aim was to evacuate them all by theend of 1941: first to occupied Poland, then, in the spring of 1942, further east intooccupied Russia. The first sixty thousand, were to be expelled from Berlin, Vienna,and Prague. This conformed with what Hitler had told Himmler: the aim was toevacuate them all by the end of 1941; first to occupied Poland, then, in the spring of1942, further east into occupied Russia. The first sixty thousand, Himmler had there-* The photocopy is only partially decipherable. On orders from the minister of the interiorin Bonn the German federal archives on July 1, 1993 refused to alljow me to inspect theoriginal image. See Author’s Acknowledgements.664 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHupon notified Heydrich, would be dumped in the Lodz ghetto.98 To the distinctlydisenchanted Nazi governor of Lodz, Friedrich Uebelhör, Himmler wrote that suchwas ‘the Führer’s will.’99 ‘All the Jews are to be removed,’ Hitler repeated duringlunch on October 6. ‘And not just to the Government-General [former Poland] butright on to the east. It is only our pressing need for war transportation that stops usdoing so right now.’100AT five-thirty A.M. on October 2, 1941, Hitler’s armies began Typhoon, the attemptto capture Moscow. Nearly two thousand tanks moved off in blinding clouds of dust.Again he had kept Goebbels in the dark. At Goebbels’ request however he made aflying visit to Berlin to speak at the Sports Palace on the third: his train arrived at1:10 P.M., and he spoke at five. Goebbels had packed the front rows with combatinjuredlike in the good old days.101 Speaking ex tempore, Hitler delivered a witty,boisterous oration and the Berlin audience, which was not the usual stuffed-shirtparty audience, roared approval. He boasted that Russia was ‘already broken’ and‘would never arise again.’ Gales of laughter gusted around the vast hall as he mockedMr Churchill’s self-proclaimed victories; deafening applause followed as he proclaimedhis own. As Goebbels accompanied him back to his special train at seven-thirty, Hitlerprophesied that (‘provided that the weather stays fine’) they would have destroyedthe Soviet armed forces within the next fourteen days.For a few days, as a news blackout prevailed, it seemed that he was right. As thefirst snows drifted idly down on October 7 General Jodl called it the most crucialday of the campaign.102 On the eighth he went further: ‘We have finally and withoutexaggeration won this war.’103 Later that day Hitler sent for Otto Dietrich and hisyoung deputy Heinz Lorenz and dictated to them a written briefing for the press; healso directed General Rudolf Schmundt to give to Dietrich an order of the day announcingthat Marshal Timoshenko’s armies were trapped. Dietrich drafted a pressstatement. General Jodl approved the text.104 ‘The Russian armies have been annihilated,’it said in part. And, ‘All that remains in Russia is policing work.’ Arriving inGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 665Berlin the next day, October 9, Dietrich told a press conference that Russia was‘done for.’The first that Goebbels knew was when he read the afternoon headlines: THE GREATHOUR HAS STRUCK: THE CAMPAIGN IN THE EAST DECIDED! He limped furiously up and downhis home’s carpeted corridor. He phoned Major Martin, his High Command liaisonofficer. ‘Are there any fresh bulletins since this morning?’ he snarled.105 As fanfaresannounced the special communiqué, on the eastern front it was now pouring withrain. Agonies of uncertainty beset Goebbels. On the tenth he telephoned Jodl. Thegeneral feigned ignorance and dismay and warned that the war would continue allwinter.106 Goebbels sent agents out into the beer halls to sample public opinion. Thepeople had all heard Dietrich say the campaign was ‘decided’ but understood it aswon.Goebbels switched to damage-control. He put it about that Hitler himself hadordered the communiqué solely as a ploy to jolt the Japanese into some kind ofaction.107 Taking a dramatically independent line, Goebbels tried to defuse the HighCommand’s gaffe. In the Völkischer Beobachter he argued