Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

red the flippant retort that their troops would have no time for ‘winter sports.’48 InOctober Goebbels suggested a public appeal for woollen garments—just in case.The High Command again scornfully turned him down.49 ‘In the winter,’ Jodl nowsaid, ‘we shall be warmly billeted in Leningrad and Moscow. Leave the worrying tous.’ ‘If we had put this in hand at the proper time,’ Goebbels would write to HitlerGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 677three years later, justifying his views, ‘it would have taken care of one of the worstproblems we faced in the winter of 1941–42.’50The army’s quartermaster-general, the formidable General Eduard Wagner, hadneglected the problem until mid October 1941.51 Over lunch with Hitler he complacentlyclaimed that one-third to one-half of the winter equipment had alreadyreached the eastern front.52 He staged at his field HQ a totally bogus exhibition ofthis winter equipment, including wooden cabins, trench-heaters, ear muffs, and furlinedcoats and boots, and boldly invited Dr Goebbels to see it for himself. Stillsuspicious, Dr Goebbels asked him how much was already available. ‘Enough to equipevery soldier two and three times over,’ lied Wagner.’53‘That’s overwhelming,’ Goebbels dictated the next day as Hitler and Jodl themselvesvisited the exhibition. ‘They’ve thought of everything.’54 Both he and Hitlerwere thoroughly taken in.55 Hitler instructed him to send the exhibition on tourround Berlin, Munich, and Vienna. ‘We had already set up the exhibition on Unterden Linden in conjunction with the Christmas Fair,’ he would recall later, ‘whensuddenly the catastrophe overtook us.’56 Several times after that he reminded Hitlerand Göring of how General Wagner had duped them, but three years passed beforeWagner, one of the July 1944 traitors, met his Maker.AFTER his visit to Lithuania, Goebbels witnessed how ruthlessly Hitler dealt with therecalcitrant. At the party anniversary in Munich, Hitler prefaced his secret speech tothe gauleiters by having Gauleiter Joseph Wagner of Bochum physically evicted fromtheir midst: his wife had written an imprudent religious letter to a relative. Thebrown-uniformed audience was stunned by Hitler’s little display of savagery. ViktorLutze took in the clucking and clatter that broke out, as though a fox had just raideda chicken coop.57 Others like Goebbels felt a frisson of approval at the Orwellianscene.Twice that month, November 1941, he was able to chronicle important meetingswith Hitler, recharging his emotional batteries each time.58 He was growing concernedabout North Africa and Russia, but Hitler knew how to bolster his morale.678 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHHe told him that if he, as a half-blind corporal in a field hospital in 1918, believed invictory then why should he doubt it now as commander of the mightiest army onearth? Having said that he advised Goebbels not to stage the winter equipment displayright now, since none of it had actually reached the front.59 Before they partedHitler reminisced about his childhood: his parents had squabbled about how to bringhim up, and at school he had been, he admitted, a problem child. Ultimately howeverhe had straightened out. (‘And how!’ dictated an admiring Dr Goebbels.)60In confidence, Hitler promised to address the Reichstag soon.When they met in Berlin again, on November 29, Hitler’s armies had begun toretreat for the first time. Bitterly criticising von Brauchitsch, his army commanderin-chief, he remarked that he had always opposed occupying the larger Soviet cities;he had no interest in capturing even Moscow—not just to stage a victory paradethere. But when his offensive resumed in 1942, he promised, he would advance onthe Caucasus for the oil, and he would conquer the Crimea, as a colony to be calledthe East Gothic gau. ‘What need,’ he asked, ‘do we have for colonies on other continents?’61The Russian winter’s savagery temporarily put paid to all these dreams. A Germanreconnaissance battalion reached the outskirts of Moscow in a raging blizzard, butgot no further. On December 5 and 6 Stalin’s armies opened their counter-offensive.German tank tracks froze to the ground; their guns jammed; their explosivesfizzled and squibbed. Barbarossa had come to a standstill.GOEBBELS did not share Hitler’s hopes for a timely Japanese intervention. He expectedTokyo to sit this war out.62 Ribbentrop secretly encouraged the Japanese tobelieve that if they declared war on the United States, Hitler would follow suit.When a Reuter’s communiqué on the night of Sunday December 7 announced thatthe Japanese had struck at the American Pacific fleet in Hawaii, Hitler telephonedGoebbels and said that he would leave for Berlin by train the following evening. Atfirst Washington admitted only to having lost two battleship and a carrier at PearlGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 679Harbor, with four more battleships and a four cruisers damaged. ‘That,’ wroteGoebbels with satisfaction, ‘is a loss of blood … that they’ll never make good.’He was thrilled by Japan’s infamy. Japan, he accepted, had had no real alternative.Acceptance of Washington’s ‘provocative and insolent’ demands would have meanther abdication as a great power. ‘The Japanese went ahead quite calmly and deliberately,’he wrote, ‘and did not take any other power into their confidence.’There could be no doubt whatsoever as to Hitler’s next move. ‘We shall have nochoice,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘but … to declare war on the United States.’ Now, he gloated,Roosevelt had got his war. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘what he’s got is very different fromwhat he anticipated. He certainly imagined that he could deal with Germany first.’War with the United States had long seemed likely, particularly since the speech byHitler in Munich a month before.63 With Japan taking the first step, what Goebbelsdescribed in his hitherto unpublished diary as a ‘gasp of relief’ escaped the Germanpublic: the psychological terror, the uncertainty, was over.A mood of invincibility swept over the Nazi leaders. Hitler remarked that theynow had an ally, undefeated in three thousand years.64 Goebbels listened to Churchill’sbroadcast and concluded from his delivery that he was drunk. Hearing Roosevelt’saddress to the Congress he remarked that he had taken care not to provoke NaziGermany. ‘But it is too late for that,’ he happily dictated. ‘We are now in the fortunateposition of being able to pay them back.’65He hurried round to see Hitler immediately after he arrived in Berlin at elevenA.M. on the ninth.He is