Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

interrogation, Oct 29, 1947 and affidavit, Nov1947 (ibid., roll 71)—CSDIC(WEA) BAOR report FIR.28, Oct 29, 1945: ‘Otto Dietrich’(NA file RG.219, IRR, XE.003812).105 G Sander.—JG diary, Oct 10, 11; Semler ‘Oct 9’; VB, Oct 10, 1941.106 Diary, Oct 11, 1941.107 Stephan, loc. cit. (NA film M.1019, roll 71); Semler, ‘Oct 11, 1941.’108 VB, Oct 24; Das Reich, Nov 9. The latter was circulated by the Sonderdienst of RPL onNov 4; broadcast on Nov 8, 1941 by Deutschland-Sender (BBC monitoring report, in PROfile FO.371/30928).GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 67143: ExodusDISGUISED as ‘Dr Sedgwick’, ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl was now well housed in Washingtonand advising President Roosevelt on his former top Nazi pals. ‘Alwayssmile,’ was Goebbels’ maxim, he said: ‘Lie with a smile, deny with a smile,intrigue with a smile.’1 It was noticeable that Goebbels still barely mentioned theUnited States in his articles.2 Hitler was still unworried by Washington; he consideredJapan’s powerful Pacific fleet sufficient to hold the United States in check howeverbelligerent Roosevelt personally might be.3 When the lend-lease act was passedGoebbels scoffed that this was purely a means for the Americans to inherit Britain’sassets when the time came.4In February 1941 however Hitler eased the restrictions, although he would stillnot allow Dr Goebbels to take the gloves off yet in his propaganda, even whenRoosevelt ordered German merchant ships seized and their crews interned.5 Goebbelsslowly stepped up his short-wave propaganda transmissions across the Atlantic.6Writing under a pseudonym he published a leader-article in the VB depicting Rooseveltas the helpless puppet of Jewish advisers.7 He issued a rare photograph showing thepresident in full masonic regalia too.8 Visiting Berlin, however his Transocean expertin the United States warned him not to bank on the ethnic Germans there—theywere either rotten through and through, or simpletons. He advised Goebbels tomake the propaganda to America crude and unsophisticated.9 He prepared a fifteenminute film, ‘A Stroll through America,’ showing Roosevelt with his ‘Jewish hench-672 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHmen,’ the strikes and hunger marches, the Negro jazz and jitterbug, and the prevalenceof kidnapping—though not mentioning Charles Lindbergh, whose baby’s allegedkidnapper was a German. The film pirated And apartments—supposedly forbombed-out Berliners, but the cream of these vacant buildings went to their closestcronies.Hitler was neithr consulted nor informed. Ten days after the forced exodus began,he referred, soliloquizing over supper to Himmler and Heydrich, to the way theJews had started this war. ‘Let nobody tell me,’ Hitler added, ‘that despite that we can’tpark them in the marshier parts of Russia!’ ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘it’s not a badthing that public rumour attributes to us a plan to time wished another.’ ‘God keepyou—but immediately,’ pleaded yet a third.10AS he received the winning ‘Goebbelsgram’ from New York, the minister began composinghis own most venomous leader article ever for Das Reich, entitled ‘The Jewsare to Blame!’His mass expulsion of the Jews from Berlin was beginning. On October 14, 1941S.S. General Kurt Daluege signed the formal order as national chief of police and thedeportations began the next day.11 Five hundred or a thousand at a time, family byfamily, the Berlin Jews were rounded up, coralled in the ruined synagogue in LevetzowStrasse and then loaded aboard passenger trains at Grünwald station for freighting tothe east.12 The first train with 1,103 Jews was dispatched on October 18; three morefollowed on October 24 (1,024 Jews) and 27 (1,009 Jews), and November 1 (1,033).13All four were bound for the ghetto at Lodz. Between October 18 and November 2,confirmed Speer’s diary, some 4,500 Jews were ‘evacuated’, releasing to him andGauleiter Goebbels one thousand apartments—supposedly for bombed-out Berliners,but the cream of these vacant buildings went to their closest cronies.14Hitler was neither consulted nor informed. Ten days after the forced exodus began,he referred, soliloquizing over supper to Himmler and Heydrich, to the way theJews had started this war. ‘Let nobody tell me,’ Hitler added, ‘that despite that wecan’t park them in the marshier parts of Russia!’ ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘it’s not a badGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 673thing that public rumour attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews.’ He pointedout however that he had no intention of starting anything at present. ‘There’s nopoint in adding to one’s difficulties as a time like this!’15What did the ‘east’ hold for Berlin’s Jews? In the Baltic states they were loved leastof all.16 Nor were the other eastern territories healthier destinations.17 Berlin’s fifthtrainload, of 1,030 Jews, set out for Minsk on November 14. Of Minsk’s 238,000citizens in 1939 one hundred thousand had been Jews, many of them skilled workers.18 By December 1941 only eighteen thousand of the original Jews had not fled orbeen shot. These and the newcomers from Berlin survived if they were fit for work;the rest died or were put to death a few months later. Some 3,500 unemployableJews of the seven thousand sent there from Berlin, Bremen, Vienna, and Brno ‘on theFührer’s orders’ during November 1941 were liquidated in the last four days of July1942.19So much for Minsk. The trainload of Berlin’s Jews sent to Kaunas in Lithuania onNovember 17 probably fared no better.20 Goebbels had visited the country two weeksbefore. As in the other Baltic states, the Soviet secret police had deported fortythousand Lithuanians to Siberia in 1940.21 ‘The Jews,’ Goebbels learned during hisvisit, ‘were mainly active as G.P.U. [secret police] agents and informants, and thedeaths of countless Lithuanian nationalists and intellectuals are attributable to them.’When the tide turned in June 1941 and the Russians were driven out, the Lithuanianstook revenge on the sixty thousand remaining Jews, liquidating 3,800 in Kaunasalone.22 Hundreds of the rest, Goebbels learned, were being shot.23 Touring the ghettoin Vilnius he shuddered at the sight of Jews huddled together, ‘frightful shapes youcan’t even look at let alone touch.’ ‘The Jews are like the lice of civilized mankind,’he dictated the next day. ‘They’ve got to be exterminated somehow… Spare themnow and you’ll fall victim to them later on.’ Hobbling awkwardly around this cheerless,snow-covered second city of Lithuania he reached one firm conclusion: ‘Here Iwould not want to be buried.’24On November 27, 1941 Speer reported to Goebbels