Goebbels44: A Fate which Beggars all DescriptionIN New York an old enemy, Albert C. Grzesinski, former police chief in Berlin,proclaimed his intention of overthrowing the Nazis and taking power himself.With enemies like Grzesinski, reflected Goebbels, one barely needed allies.1 He wasnot afraid of the Americans. There were limits to what even they could do. ‘It isn’teasy to raise and equip an army,’ he commented, ‘as we know only too well.’2 Heordered anti-American propaganda prepared however, mocking their lack of cultureand their grotesque jazz music.3 He had discussed a Japanese fanfare for announcingthe coming Far East victories; a corresponding Italian fanfare was also to be selected‘in case there are any Italian victories.’4 Foreseeing race problems, he forbade anyhint of the phrase Yellow Peril in their domestic propaganda.5He found it difficult now to fault British propaganda. Dietrich had not helped withhis premature announcement of victory in October. ‘It’s a pity,’ Goebbels wrote,“that we have had so many different agencies cutting the ground away beneath ourfeet with their silliness.’6 He told his staff that Churchill had done the right thing inpromising his people only blood, sweat, and tears. He had learned to allow morale toslump after set-backs; it was easier to restore afterwards.7 He proposed to copyChurchill’s methods. He actually asked Backe if planned food ration cuts could bebrought forward.8 ‘The German people,’ he said, ‘should get in tune with the warsituation and not sustain false hopes.’9 Once he defined it as his classical mission inthis war to become ‘the architect of the German soul.’10GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 689He would willingly have proclaimed Total War, the mobilisation of all availablemanpower from the home economy for the war effort, there and then. WhenSchirmeister returned from the eastern front in January 1942 he heard Goebbelsexpatiate several times during meals on the need for the government to implementtotal war.11 The media were still showing peacetime-flavoured pictures of lavish socialfunctions even now.12 Putting deeds before words, he replaced three hundredmen of his own ministry with women.13Hitler’s riflemen had paid winter’s cruel price. By late January 1942 they had suffered1,856 amputations.14 Goebbels addressed them all in his first Das Reich articleof the new year. ‘It behoves us to remain tough and composed,’ he wrote.15 Hitler, astickler for style, disliked that word ‘composed’, and decided on the strength of itthat Goebbels should not deliver the party’s anniversary speech on January 30. ‘Iknow how to preserve the golden mean between reason and rhetoric,’ he explainedover supper in the minister’s absence. ‘I’d not have expressed myself like that. In asituation like this, the soldier is not composed but resolute. When you’ve been throughit yourself you get a feel for these things.’16Characteristically when Goebbels came for lunch the next day Hitler bit his tongueand said nothing of this. They talked of Britain’s eclipse in the Far East. In threeweeks he expected the Japanese to overrun Singapore. ‘Perhaps,’ he mused to DrGoebbels, ‘there is a chance here to bring Britain, if not to her senses, at least toconsider her position.’ He had succeeded in stabilising their own eastern front. Forthree weeks he had worked round the clock, reviving the spirits of his demoralisedgenerals in endless conferences and telephone arguments—he described these commandersunflatteringly as like inflatable dummies with slow punctures. He reservedhis most biting remarks for Field Marshal von Brauchitsch, which Goebbels eagerlyseconded. ‘He infected his staff with a chronically tractable disposition,’ complainedHitler, as though this were not precisely the quality for which Hitler had chosen himto succeed Fritsch in 1938.Goebbels told Hitler that according to Colonel Martin many officers in the HighCommand had openly predicted that the Soviet armies would be on East Prussia’s690 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHfrontiers that spring. Hitler angrily told him to get their names.17 Back in BerlinGoebbels directed the unfortunate colonel that it was now his duty to draw up thisblack list. ‘There is only one sin,’ he said, quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘and that iscowardice.’18 It was perhaps significant that he was now automatically extending hisremit far beyond the portals of his own ministry. A day or two later Schirmeister’swife Emmi, invited by Magda to dinner, innocently told of an officer cousin who hadplied her in East Prussia with dark rumours that the Russians were coming. Goebbelstold her to name that officer too, saying, ‘I guarantee he will be shot within twentyfourhours.’19BEFORE leaving the Wolf’s Lair on January 19 Dr Goebbels had also touched briefly onthe Jewish Problem. ‘On this,’ he noted, unable to hang any meat on the now threadbarephrases, ‘the Führer holds without qualification to the existing and proper hardlineview.’20Behind closed doors the Final Solution, in all its heathen criminality, was alreadyundergoing a deadly shift of emphasis. As he arrived back in Berlin on January 20Heydrich was holding his first inter-ministerial conference on the topic.21 The ambitious,amoral S.S. Obergruppenführer had issued the original invitations back inNovember, including one to Goebbels’ Staatssekretär Gutterer, but he had neverreceived his and the propaganda ministry was one of several not represented at thisconference.22 This conference was largely window-dressing anyway. Chaos was spreadingin the eastern territories as more trainloads
