Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

began to hate the human race as he oftenwrote in his diary.5 While his brother Konrad had now acquired a housemaid and acar, Joseph loathed the trappings of the bourgeoisie.6His romantic escapades left him filed with self-hatred too. Else now rarely wroteto him, having found him juvenile and adolescent. He had started a parallel relation-66 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHship with another girl, Elisabeth Gensicke, but nothing came of it. ‘From year toyear,’ he reflected, ‘I shall be more and more lonely until I end up all alone withoutlove and without a family.’7 That was his dread.Comforting afterglows of his expired Catholic faith still flickered. That March hedutifully hurried home to celebrate his Saint’s Day in the family fold.8 His brotherHans was no longer welcome there as he had married outside the Catholic faith. Thisbrought home to Joseph once more the impossibility of marrying the ‘voluminous,chubby, healthy, cheerful’ half-Jewess Else, although he did sometimes envisage it: ‘Ishould like her as my wife—if only she were not half-blooded.’9Thus he toyed with Elisabeth’s affections. ‘The poor child has gone to pieces overme,’ he wrote in bemusement. ‘She trembles with anguish and joy when she seesme.’10 He knew that tremor well. On the twentieth a farewell letter came fromElisabeth—she could not stand it any longer. He replied with bleeding heart. ‘Andnow,’ he noted, ‘this beautiful yet oh so ephemeral flowering dream is over. A greatloneliness besets me.’11DR GOEBBELS’ party membership file is missing, but according to Karl Kaufmann heformally joined soon after Hitler had reconstituted the party in Munich on February27, 1925.12 In March Hitler activated a Gau (region) covering the North Rhineland.He appointed the middle-aged Baltic German journalist Axel Ripke as gauleiter. AtKaufmann’s instance, Ripke appointed Goebbels his manager (Geschäftsführer); amongRipke’s other officials were such personalities as the later notorious Erich Koch, oneof Leo Schlageter’s comrades, and the later Sturmabteilung (S.A.) commander ViktorLutze. The Elberfeld police soon took note that ‘Goebbels appears as speaker at everyfunction’ and directed the evenings organised by the Elberfeld Ortsgruppe (district)of the N.S.D.A.P. (Nazi party) whose Führer was identified as ‘K Kaufmann’.13Ripke’s gau ran into immediate difficulties. On March 17 the French occupationauthorities in Düsseldorf banned the organisation and a week later arrested officialsof its Elberfeld local.14 ‘We request,’ wrote Goebbels to the Reich Minister for theOccupied Territories on April 3, ‘that you take appropriate steps to secure the im-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 67mediate release of our men from custody.’15 ‘The same old grief,’ he observed in hisdiary. ‘But an Idea cannot be put down.’ And, ten days later: ‘Prosecution and arrestsby the French..Ê .Ê . They’ve knocked us flat. This is the proof that our Idea is the rightone.’ He had founded a local group at Krefeld, and often spoke to them: one eveningthree Belgian detectives appeared, blocked the doors, and asked him if ‘a Dr Goebbels’was in the hall. Goebbels replied calmly, ‘He’s busy right now, I’m speaking on hisbehalf.’ The officials left empty handed.16His radical views attracted the mistrust of other local officials. Arthur Etterich,who had founded the Hattingen local three years before, likened him to Maximiliende Robespierre; Ripke agreed, and cited Honoré Count de Mirabeau’s words aboutRobespierre: ‘The man is dangerous—he believes what he says.’17 Neither Goebbelsnor Kaufmann felt that their gauleiter, Ripke, was a match for the French. He wastoo old, conservative, and diplomatic.18 ‘Ripke is no activist,’ concluded Goebbels, asthe friction grew. Ripke loathed Goebbels’ leftwing slant, while the latterÊ detestedthe gauleiter’s bourgeois attitudes. Suppressing the actual epithet, he wrote: ‘Youcan’t stage a revolution with —’s like these.’19 But Ripke had Hitler’s ear, and oftentravelled to Berlin to deal with Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s deputy in all of northernGermany. Disillusioned by this situation, Goebbels toyed with the idea of quitting. Afriend showed him over the Heinrichshütte blast furnaces at Hattingen—and hemarvelled at this gigantic sulphurous inferno of capitalist corruption.20 These men,he felt, were crying out to be freed. After a speech to Krupp steel workers at nearbyEssen on April 25, he decided to struggle on within the party’s still threadbare ranks,paupered and starving though he was.He conceived the idea of a fanatical Freedom League (Freiheitsbund) of thirty memberspledged to donate a fixed amount each month—a sort of ‘intellectual stormtroop’as he put it.21 Ripke was dismissive, but the first whipround at Hattingen yielded 268marks. For hours Goebbels plotted with Kaufmann ways of getting rid of their tediousgauleiter.22 He had a long talk with Ripke on May 18 which ended, if Goebbels isto be believed, with Ripke on his knees pleading forgiveness. The gauleiter accusedhim of promoting a new class-struggle. ‘Too true!’ commented Goebbels: ‘With68 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHcapitalism, you’ve got to call a spade a spade.’23 After another five-hour session withRipke he defined, ‘Socialism means the liberation of the proletariat, not just breakingthe Versailles peace treaty. God, preserve my passion!’24 He was beginning tohate Ripke, and this feeling was mutual. The one wanted bourgeois reform, the othersocialist revolution.25In Munich, Hitler had revived the Party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and AlfredRosenberg, its editor, invited Goebbels to submit occasional pieces from May.26 Hewrote by day and made speeches by night. He did not flinch from the ugly scenes thatoften resulted. After he spoke at a flag dedication ceremony at Remscheid on June 5there was a battle with communists in the railroad tunnel and the police arrested 150of his opponents. ‘I was in the thick of it,’ he chortled. ‘The two factions went berserkand waded into eachother. What a way to One Nation!’27AS the summer of 1925 approached he fancied himself back at Freiburg with Anka.‘Of those blissful times with all their glamour and romance,’ he sighed, recalling apiano playing Edvard Grieg, the Castle park, his lips on her cheek, her silken blondehair and blue green eyes.28 While Else was away on vacation he made use of her bestfriend Alma.29 In mid-August he received a promising postcard from Alma which hedescribed as the first sign after ‘that night.’ ‘This teasing, enchanting Alma,’ he added.‘I rather like this creature.’ Such romantic interludes were