Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

War Effort,’ Mar19, 1942 (USAMHI, Donovan papers, box 37a).36 Memo by William B Donovan to President Roosevelt, No.304, Mar 3, 1942 (FDR Libr.,PSF, boxes 165–6, ‘OSS’)37 E.g., on Apr 19, May 3, 9: cf. ditto, No.563, May 29, 1942 (ibid.)38 Ditto, No.563, May 29 (ibid.); MinConf., Jun 15, 1942.39 MinConf. Jul 22; see also Aug 6, 8, 1942.40 Ibid., Aug 10, 1942.41 MinConf., Jul 3, 1942.42 Diary, Jun 5, 1942.43 Bormann to JG et. al., Jun 8, 1942 (NA film T175, roll 139, 7362f).44 MinConf., Jul 14, 1942.45 Diary, May 14, 18; unpubl. diary, May 27, 1942.46 JG as RPL., guidelines, Feb 15, 1942 (Yivo, Occ. E20.)47 MinConf., Jul 6, 1942.48 Diary, Feb 24; in general, see the report by Hadamowsky and Taubert on the administrationof the east, Sep 17, 1942 (Yivo, Occ. E18).49 Unpubl. diary, Apr 25, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 261).50 Ibid., Feb 14; and May 2, 1942.51 Ibid., May 22, 27, 28, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 267).52 Ibid., Jun 1, 1942 (NA film T84, roll 267).716 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH53 Diary, Jun 5, 1942.54 MinConf., Jul 1, 1942.55 Ibid., Jul 7, 9, 1942.56 JG, ‘Die sogenannte russische Seele,’ Das Reich, Jul 18; circulated to all Reichsleiter andgauleiters, Jul 14 (NA film T581, roll 16; BA file NS.26/291); and see OWI report No.6, Jul6, 1942 (NA film RG.226, entry 16, box 115, 18962.)57 MinConf., Jul 28, 1942.58 Diary, Jun 5, 1942.59 MinConf., Jul 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 1942.60 Ibid., Jul 23, 1942.61 Ibid., Jul 8; on Aug 3, 1942 he added, ‘In particular avoid comments that the air raidswill not decide the war.’62 JG, ‘Auch der Versuch ist strafbar,’ Reich, Aug 2; issued as usual by radio and DNB severaldays ahead. See ‘Goebbels über die Zweite Front,’ in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Jul 30, and NYT,Jul 30, 1942, p.3. In his diary on Aug 1, 1942, JG wrote, ‘Never has an article of mineattracted such lively interest as this one. It is quoted under banner headlines on the frontpages of the entire European press.’63 MinConf., Auf 18, 22, 1942.64 Unpubl. diary, Aug 14–15, 1942 (BA file NL.118/125).65 MinConf., Aug 11, 1942.66 See ibid., Aug 19, 1942 (Moscow archives).67 Unpubl. diary, Aug 21, 1942 (Moscow archives).68 Ibid.69 Ibid., Aug 22, 1942.70 MinConf., Aug 21, 1942.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 71746: The Road to StalingradGERMANY had now been at war for three years. Her public’s brittle morale wastroubling Goebbels and he drafted an article on ‘The point of war,’ reviewingthe events since 1939 from a lofty ideological plane.1 British leaflets were becomingmore insidious, particularly one appealing, ‘Get rid of Hitler!’2 The messageseemed unthinkable, but within the four walls of No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasseeven he began to express reservations about some of Hitler’s decisions. Once hestepped out through the padded double-doors and into his morning ministerial conference,however, he radiated unswerving loyalty to his Führer.3He had recently issued a circular to journalists discouraging inflated terms like‘unique’ or ‘historic’ to describe their victories, and words like ‘warlord’ for anybodyother than Hitler.4 Morale improved as Hitler’s armies fanned out to the southand east across the shimmering, dusty Russian steppe, and Goebbels methodicallywarned the media against overweening optimism.5 They captured the oil cities ofMaykop and Kraznodar; the Russian population rose against them under the influenceof Moscow’s propaganda and, as the High Command chided Goebbels, with no visibleeffect from his. Hitler repeatedly warned him to damp down any spreadingoptimism.6 He ordered General Friedrich Paulus to advance with the Sixth Army onStalingrad, a city of two million souls dominating the Volga waterway.The Russian summer’s heat was as savage as the late winter’s cold. The temperaturesoared to near fifty degrees Celsius. On August 8 Goebbels dictated: ‘The battleof Stalingrad has begun.’ As Marshal Timoshenko withdrew before Hitler’s tank on-718 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHslaught, Stalin ordered him to stand and fight. Goebbels compared this harshly wordedorder approvingly with Hitler’s order of December 1941. ‘You can see,’ he dictated,warming once more to the Soviet leader, ‘that in Stalin we are dealing with a man ofcalibre.’7As Soviet resistance at Stalingrad stiffened, so did Goebbels’ instinctive reluctanceto mention the city’s name. He had not forgotten Otto Dietrich’s blunder of October1941. From late in August onward he repeatedly embargoed all reference to thebattle. Nobody could say how long it would last. But already Stalingrad was on everytongue, both friend and foe.8FOR a week he vanished from Germany, visiting Venice again for the biennial filmfestival.Before leaving he wrote for Das Reich an article entitled ‘Don’t be so righteous!’, acritique of the Germans’ pedantic sense of justice and over-objectivity. ‘We’re sofrightened of doing an injustice to somebody,’ he wrote, ‘that when in doubt weprefer that the injustice be done to ourselves… Hating is something we Germansstill have to learn.’ Too much objectivity, he concluded, would be the death of them.Their global mission was, he said, not to purvey culture to the world, but to ‘bringhome the grain and oil’ to Germany.9 He repeated his attack on his bugbear, overobjectivity,in a secret address delivered to about sixty senior Berlin journalists in theministry’s Throne Room on September 23. He warned against harbouring any illusionsabout victory. They must not under-estimate their enemy. ‘The German publicis not as hardy as the British,’ he pointed out. Britain had yet to lose a single war. ‘TheGerman public,’ he repeated, ‘suffers from a craving for righteousness and from acraze for objectivity. It keeps looking for the laudable in our enemies.’ Their chroniclove-affair with Churchill was just one example.10* He dinned into this select audiencehis principle of constant repetition. If he were English, he said, he would have* The Germans cheered Mr Churchill when he drove through the ruins of Berlin in 1945,and the city of Aachen later awarded him the Charlemagne prize.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 719kept repeating ever since 1939 that they were fighting Hitler, and not the Germans;he would also have hammered home ad nauseam the eight points of the AtlanticCharter. He warned them that their biggest problem in coming months would be