Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

by ordinaryGermans. ‘That is why,’ urged Goebbels, ‘the Jewish danger has to be liquidatedwhatever the cost.’ He described how the westernized Jews, once back in their easternghetto-habitat, became typical ghetto-Jews again, brutal and vindictive. Hitleragreed that it would be a mistake to evacuate Jews to Siberia: ‘Living the hard lifethere would without doubt turn them into a virulent breed again. That’s why hewould prefer them to be settled in Central Africa: there they’ll be living in a climatewhich definitely won’t make them tough and resilient.’ ‘At any rate,’ concludedGoebbels, ‘it’s the Führer’s aim to rid western Europe of the Jews entirely.’18Too many Jews were already hearing rumours from the B.B.C. and other sourcesabout the fate awaiting the Jews. Goebbels learned in January 1942 that their radiomonitoringagencies, and particularly the foreign ministry’s Seehaus service (a ‘mammothatrocity-propaganda concern’ run from a former restaurant on the Wannsee)were distributing defeatist digests throughout official Berlin; 180 copies were goingRibbentrop’s ministry alone.19 Hitler gave him immediate powers to prune the lists708 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHof recipients. Soon afterwards he was granted high-level access to the top-secretsignals-intelligence and intercept digests prepared by Göring’s Forschungsamt.20Goebbels expressed an interest only in those ‘brown pages’ bearing upon foreignpolicy; although the Reichsmarschall usually limited distribution of these interceptson a strictly need-to-know basis, he humoured this curiosity and Goebbels’ liaisonofficer Dr Severitt brought, in his locked dispatch box, sheaves of reports such as onMolotov’s secret deals with the British government in May.sTALIN was losing; he needed the Allies. The pendulum was swinging back in Hitler’sfavour. The Germans were fighting a gigantic tank battle of Kharkov. The Kerch peninsulawas back in their hands. They sank a million tons of Allied shipping duringMay 1942, and in the following month, Hitler told Goebbels on May 22, they wouldcommission one and a half times as many new submarines as were currently at sea.Rommel took Tobruk. When Hitler came to Berlin on May 28 to speak at the SportPalace, he told Goebbels that he now intended to cut off the Caucasus, thus crushingthe Soviet Adam’s apple.21Over Germany, an unnatural calm prevailed at night. Where were Churchill’s bombers?Goebbels suggested to his department heads that the British were bluffing toforestall Stalin’s demands for a second front.22 Hitler attributed the lull to Britain’sdismay at his reprisal raids; he intended to hit back every time and twice as hard. ‘Noneed for us to say we’re doing it,’ he advised Goebbels. ‘We’ll just go ahead and doit.’ He did however suggest they put all their art treasures in safe keeping. Then theirtalk drifted on to gloomy reflections about their own mortality. At a certain age,reflected Hitler, ones learning outgrew ones energy. The propaganda ministry shouldtake this into account: they must provide enough money for Germany’s true geniusesto live tox a comfortable old age.23The lull ended late on Saturday May 30, 1942. The British bombers returned inunprecedented force, attacking Cologne. Goebbels was at first blissfully unawareand Hitler’s adjutant failed to track him down—or any other minister; Hitler reachedGutterer through the ministry switchboard and told him to start relief operations.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 709Suspecting that Goebbels was illicitly engaged, Gutterer phoned Hermann-GöringStrasse and left a discreet message for him to call him urgently ‘whenever he gotback.’ After directing Hermann Schäfer, their electrical wizard, to take the ReichMotor Convoy (Reichsautozug) from Munich to Cologne with its powerful mobilegenerators, kitchens, bakeries, and mobile hospital, Gutterer summoned a ten A.M.conference with the other ministries in Goebbels’ appropriately named PompeiiRoom.24A disaster had hit Cologne. The gauleiter was calling it the heaviest raid ever. Churchillwas talking of a ‘thousand bomber’ raid, the German air staff of seventy bombers(of which they claimed to have shot down forty); while Goebbels assumed that Churchillwas exaggerating a bit, he felt that seventy was far too low. Massive retaliation wasout of the question, as the Luftwaffe had its main weight on the eastern front. Hitlerstruck at Canterbury, but had only seventy bombers for the purpose. An unseemlypropaganda war developed. The American press spoke of an earthquake hitting Cologne,and inflated the casualties—they claimed sixty thousand dead (the real figurewas 474).25 Significantly changing his tactics, Goebbels authorised live radio interviewswith survivors like those broadcast by the B.B.C. at the height of the Naziblitz.26His shortwave broadcasts to North American linked these ‘terror raids’ to the Jewishproblem, accusing Roosevelt’s ‘propaganda kikes’ of ‘yiddling’ while Cologneburned.27 He did not underestimate the Americans’ propaganda; he particularly fearedtheir seductive theme that the Allies were fighting the Nazis, and not the Germanpeople. If the British had struck this chord, he admitted to his staff, it could havebeen fatal.28 His best hope was to drive a wedge between London and Washington, asonce he had done between London and Paris.29 In broadcasts to American audienceshe portrayed the British as bunglers who existed only at Stalin’s caprice; then he toldthe British to beware the rapacious, empire-stealing Americans. He depicted theUnited States as disaster-prone and ‘too weak’ to be of real assistance.30 These unsophisticatedmessages worked. ‘One only has to read the [American] newspapers,’Roosevelt was informed, ‘or ride in a bus or visit his [sic] club, bar, or coffee shop.’31710 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHIn Germany meanwhile Goebbels put it about that their ethnic cousins in the UnitedStates were being forced to wear yellow armbands: and thus the vicious circle wascompleted.32 ‘America talks,’ his shortwave propagandists mocked, ‘but has neitherthe means nor the intention to be a really effective help.’ He began harping on Germany’s‘superior leadership’ to rationalise why all the Allies’ superiority in men andmachines would not avail them.33 He coined the phrase Roosevelt’s War, and beganputting it about that the president was mentally ill like Woodrow Wilson beforehim.34He now controlled a Radio Free America ostensibly run by ‘independent Americans’in Europe. Early in July 1942 Goebbels closed down four of the other ten‘black’ transmitters; among those remaining on the air were the New British BroadcastingStation (starring William Joyce), a Voice of Free Arabs, and the Russianlanguagestation directed by ex-communist Albrecht. Goebbels had also set up aVoice of Free India as a