Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

other grim preoccupations. Hitler was unenthusiastic. He fearedthat the appeal would damage the Reich’s impregnable image. Goebbels howeverwon him round. Back in Berlin he called a joint conference with the High Command,the Post Office, and the transport and other concerned ministries. The bureaucratsexpressed immediate doubts that the public would rise to the occasion.The soldiers were downright hostile. Their obstructionism only spurred Goebbels,the crippled civilian, to greater efforts.76The next day, Saturday December 20, he broadcast his famous appeal throughoutGermany. ‘Particularly during these festive days,’ he said, ‘countless Germans at homewill be conscious of the debt that we all owe to our soldiers and above all those at thefighting front.’ How could they best express this gratitude? ‘The responsibleWehrmacht authorities,’ he reassured his listeners, ‘have done everything to providethe front with adequate equipment for the winter.’ He saw no point in exposing theGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 683inefficiency of the war department. Nevertheless, he purred, the front needed wintergear. ‘Top-boots, padded or fur-lined if possible; warm woollen clothing; socks,stockings, waist-coats, cardigans, pullovers, and warm (particularly woollen) underwear,vests, under-pants, body belts, chest and lung protectors, all manner ofhead-gear, ear-muffs, mittens, kneepads’—and so the list went on.On December 27 the huge collecting Aktion began. When the German public eventuallyhanded in sixty-seven million items of winter gear, the plodding desk-generals—men, snorted Goebbels, who would not have made it above junior adviser inhis ministry—refused to shift them. Goebbels then ordered the party’s welfare agenciesto handed out this winter gear to the raw riflemen on the railroad stations astheir trains passed through Germany on route to the eastern front. Every documenttestifies to the uplift which this unique Aktion provided for home morale, as well asfor the eastern front. On New Year’s Eve he himself visited a collecting point onKurfürstendamm and saw this for himself. ‘The party is glad to have something todo,’ he said, ‘and the public is glad to make the sacrifice and to get involved with thewar.’77 When Goebbels phoned his Führer on New Year’s Day, he basked in the latter’spraise for this great feat.78 Together he and his Führer had saved the eastern armies.Goebbels remarked to other ministers that their generals had finally proved theirmediocrity, and the party had come out on top. In that respect, he was heard to say,it was actually a good thing that the war had not ended at Dunkirk.79Over the weeks that followed the eastern front stabilized. Hitler told him how hehad harangued the generals day and night. His elderly field commanders had losttheir head. Not for nothing, he told Goebbels, had he been an ordinary dogfaceinfantryman for four years. He knew a thing or two about front-line soldiers’ nervesthat their generals did not.‘He is more admirable than ever,’ dictated Goebbels to Otte for the diary.80684 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH1 Hanfstaengl, Report on JG for Roosevelt, Jul 16, 1943 (FDR Libr., PSF box 126, file‘Source S.’); and see memo by 2nd Lieut Albert F Neumann, Jul 15, 1942 on Hanfstaengl inNA file RG.219, IRR file XE 714 1141.2 Minute by Frank Roberts, FO, Nov 8, 1941 (PRO file FO.371/30928).3 Diary, Feb 1; MinConf., Feb 5; SD Meldung, Feb 7, 1941.4 Diary, Mar 10, 1941.5 Ibid., Feb 21, Apr 1, 2, 5; MinConf., Apr 1, 5, 1941.6 Diary, Feb 21, 22, 28, Mar 8, 1941.7 JG, ‘So will Roosevelt das USA-Volk kriegsreif machen,’ VB, May 29; diary, May 29,1941.8 Diary, Jul 24, 1941.9 Briefing by Dr Zapf, in unpubl. JG diary, Aug 13; and cf. briefing by Schmitz (Reichsbahnoffice New York), ibid., Aug 16, 1941.—A similar briefing by von Gienanth, JG’s pressattaché in Washington, is in ibid., Jun 3, 1942: he told JG the Germans were hated in theUSA, ‘particularly we Nazis’ (NA film T84, roll 267).10 JG to Weizsäcker, Nov 18, 1941 (ND: NG–4742).11 PM, New York, Oct 28, 1941. ‘Goebbelsgram contest nears end…’ (FDR Libr., PSF box44, Germany 1940–41).12 Heydrich to Luther, Nov 29 (Pol. Archiv AA, Abt. Inl. II geh., file Serial 1513; NA filmT120, roll 780, 372043f); cf. Himmler’s phone conversation with Heydrich, Oct 18, 1941:‘No overseas emigration of Jews.’ (NA film T84, roll 25). The next day Heydrich wrote toHimmler, ‘In daily transports of a thousand apiece, 20,000 Jews and 5,000 gypsies are beingsent to the Lodz ghetto between Oct 15 and Nov 8’ (NA film T175, roll 54, 8645).13 Hildegard Henschel, ‘Gemeindearbeit und Evakuierung von Berlin,’ Oct 16, 1941–Jun16, 1943, in Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden, vol.ix, 1972, 34ff. Of the 82,457 Jewsregistered in Berlin on May 17, 1939, only 5,100 remained on April 1, 1945; 10,351 hadbeen buried on the Jewish cemetery, the Gestapo had deported 50,535. See the tables in HG Sellenthin, Geschichte der Juden in Berlin, Berlin 1959, 83.14 (Genuine) Speer chronicle, 1941, 85; Schmidt, 186, 188.15 Ibid; Speer to Otto Wetzel, Reichstag deputy, Apr 21, 1942 (BA file R.3/1605).16 Heinrich Heim, note on Hitler’s (dinner) table talk, Oct 25, (Genoud papers). Ad hocliquidations of Russian Jews had begun on a colossal scale, but Himmler, who had witnessedshootings at Kiev only days earlier, evidently said nothing. On the liquidations, see the reportby Canaris or Lahousen, ‘Observations made on a trip to the operational area,’ Berlin,Oct 23, 1941 (IWM file AL.1933; ND: NOKW.3147).17 Thus Stahlecker, commander of Einsatzgruppe A, reported secretly, ‘In the three Balticstates … the Jews only gained the upper hand after the bolshevik takeover,’ thus ‘all influentialgovernment positions [in Riga] rapidly fell into the hands of the Jews.’ (ND: 2273–PS)18 According to Dieter Wisliceny, writing in Bratislava, Nov 18, 1946, Eichmann had chosenthe destinations on the premise that since Hitler’s ‘Commissar Order’ was in force thereit would facilitate liquidating the Jews (IfZ, F71/8).19 Stahlecker report.20 Richard Kube, governor-general of White Russia, report to Himmler Jul 31, 1942.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 68521 A report by SS Standartenführer Jäger on the activities of a unit of Einsatzkommando 3states that 2,934 Jewish ‘Umsiedler’ (evacuees) from Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt/Mainwere killed in Kaunas on Nov 25, 1941 (Document courtesy of Gerald Fleming, from Rigastate archives).22 Stahlecker report.