Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

of dictating to her in pink silk underwear or even in his bath.61 With a sureunderstanding of the public appetite, Goebbels warned his journalists to go easy onthese stories and to concentrate more on the prime minister’s ramshackle familycircumstances, his dilettante conduct of the war and his monstrous lies.62One conclusion was inescapable: Churchill might be a ‘conceited ape,’ but theyhad no choice but to tackle this ‘lying old swine’; he was ‘a bulldog who may yet giveus a run for our money.’63 ‘He’s going to be a tough nut for us to crack,’ he added afew days later. ‘Without him, the war would have been over long ago. But with him,there’s going to be some hard fighting ahead.’64 Studying Churchill’s book of pre-warspeeches, Step by Step, he decided that this implacable foe combined a rare amalgamof heroism and animal cunning. ‘If he had come to power in 1933,’ he frankly assessed,‘we wouldn’t be where we are today.’65 Many times he discussed Churchillwith his Führer. ‘He will end by reducing the empire to ruin,’ predicted Hitler, whowas not given to making empty prophecies.66 He said that all his pre-war Englishvisitors, including Neville Chamberlain, had described Churchill as a fool. ‘The Führernaturally regrets very much the knocks that the White man is taking in the Far East,’recorded the propaganda minister. ‘But these are no fault of ours.’67 In a move whichGoebbels followed with keen interest, Churchill reshuffled his Cabinet in February1942 and brought in his most cerebral critic Sir Stafford Cripps; Goebbels identifiedwith this left-wing ideologist.68 He wondered if Cripps would succeed in replacingChurchill. This ‘drawing room bolshevik’ had the insolence to announce that Berlin,GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 697Goebbels’ own city, would be the future capital of bolshevism. ‘There are, it seems,’said Goebbels, ‘always some idiots who keep tossing the ball to us.’69Those were dramatic days. As Hitler met him for lunch on February 13 three of themightiest Nazi warships were ploughing in broad daylight eastward through the narrow,wintry straits of Dover under Churchill’s very nose; it was one of the mostimpertinent naval operations ever staged. At the same time the Japanese were bearingdown on Singapore. Goebbels mocked that the same British who had been unwillingto allow Danzig to return to Germany now seemed happy to give up Singapore.70 He told his editors to feign regret—and to remind the British that it was theywho had wanted this war.71 As Singapore raised the white flag, Goebbels added thatthey should remind readers of the caustic rebukes that Mr Churchill had heapedupon his Belgian, Dutch, and French allies for surrendering in 1940.72His 1942 birthday address to Hitler displayed a worshipfulness of an almost religiousfervour. It revived the image of the ‘lonely Führer,’ to which he added a soupçonof the ‘suffering Führer’ and a Christ who suffered only for the Germans.73 Nowheredid the diary reflect this more clearly than after a visit to Hitler’s HQ in March. ‘TheFührer, thank God,’ he routinely began, ‘appears to be in good health.’ But then,after more in this gushing vein, he dictated: ‘Actually that is not the case. In ourintimate talk he told me that recently he has not been very well. From time to timehe has had to fight off severe attacks of giddiness.’ And finally that day, forty pageslater, ‘The Führer makes an unnerving impression on me this time. I have never seenhim so grim as now. I tell him that I, too, am not at all in the best of health. Wecontinued this discussion very intimately, man to man.’74 He said that Hitler hadurged him to visit again soon, but over five weeks would pass before the one maladeimaginaireset eyes on the other again.Using guarded language, Dr Goebbels had put in a word for his imprisoned colleagueKarl Bömer. Hitler agreed to Bömer’s release and posting to a punishmentbattalion. Haggard from his ten months in jail, Bömer was brought into the ministrybuilding a few days later; Goebbels gave him money and a food package, and senthim off on four weeks’ leave in Bavaria before his posting to the front.75 Bömer was698 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwounded in action at Kharkov a few weeks later and died in hospital at Kraków.Goebbels and Dietrich jointly signed a defiantly prominent obituary in the party’sgazette.76To his Italian counterpart Pavolini Goebbels expressed only qualified optimismabout the future. He would personally be content if they reached the Caucasus.77Hitler had told him that he was setting himself clear but limited objectives for thecoming offensives—Petersburg, Moscow, and the Caucasus. In October, he promised,he would call a halt for the winter and perhaps even for good. He did not stinthis praise for the Soviet leadership. ‘Stalin’s brutal hand saved the Russian front,’Goebbels heard Hitler say. ‘We shall have to adopt similar methods.’78THE next day, March 20, Gutterer brought to him an extraordinary story. He had justlunched at the Kaiserhof with Professor Otto Hahn, who had discovered nuclearfission in 1938; Hahn hinted at the work that he and Professor Werner Heisenbergwere doing on the atomic bomb. ‘If we had such a weapon,’ Hahn said, ‘everybodyelse would throw in the towel right away!’ Gutterer brought him straight round toGoebbels at No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse. Goebbels asked how long it wouldtake to build such a weapon. Hahn spoke of the autumn of 1945, but added that hewas hampered since Rust, the minister of education, had sacked his best physicistLisa Meitner (she was Jewish); Goebbels loathed Rust, and exploded in fury; heasked if Meitner could be retrieved—he would guarantee that she would be underHitler’s personal protection and get a fine estate if they got the bomb. (She wasalready in England however.)79 Quoting Otto Hahn, Goebbels told his diary that atiny device would yield such immense destructive power that ‘one is forced to viewwith dread the shape of this war, and indeed of all future wars, if it drags on muchlonger.’ It was vital, he noted, to keep the German lead in this field.80After a meeting with the atomic scientists in June Speer reported to Hitler, thoughin terms of little