Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

planned to continue the other prong ofhis eastern campaign, across the Caucasus mountains, all winter, then building agigantic broad-track railroad from Germany to the new eastern territories.Together they addressed a huge Sports Palace meeting on the thirtieth. HereGoebbels called for the first time for what he described as total war. ‘The more totalthe war the better,’ he said. Developing also his new propaganda line of ‘Strengththrough Fear’ he warned of the consequences of bolshevism but assured this mightyaudience that the worst was over. He drew the familiar comparisons with the lastGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 725months before 1933. ‘The weaker the position of our enemies becomes,’ he said, ‘themore bloodthirsty their dreams of revenge, which they proclaim not only against thenational socialist regime but against the German people as a whole.’47Sitting beside Hitler Goebbels heard him announce: ‘We shall be assaultingStalingrad, and taking it too—you can bank on that.’ And, thundered Hitler into themicrophones, ‘You can take it from me, nobody is ever going to shift us from thatspot.’Rommel’s position in Egypt also seemed impregnable. The field marshal came toBerlin and stayed for several days at Schwanenwerder, marking up his maps for theFührer and regaling Goebbels with stirring tales of the desert and of the armouredgladiators who were disputing its command. Goebbels treated him to all the newsreelsissued since Tobruk, and to his first ever glimpse of a colour movie, the lavishlyproduced ‘Golden City.’48ALLOWED back into Magda’s home at Schwanenwerder for the Rommel visit, Goebbelswas happy to see the children again after so long.49 His new press expert RudolfSemler found himself wondering sometimes however whether the minister reallydid love his children.50 He seldom showed them true affection, noticed Semler, andonly rarely saw them now. He refused to lower himself to play trains with littleHelmut; now seven, Helmut’s blue-grey eyes often had a vacant look which did notendear him to his father. With his precocious oldest daughters Helga and Hilde theminister either flirted outrageously or tested their intellect to the point of tears. Theothers he virtually ignored except for photo calls. ‘Our children have inherited yourgood looks and my brains,’ he chaffed Magda once. ‘How awful it would have beenthe other way around.’ (He was a connoisseur of Bernard Shaw from whom theremark originally came.)His forty-fifth birthday came. Hitler sent him a handwritten letter. Goebbels signedhis reply ‘At your undeviating and loyal service.’51 The German Newsreel Company’sgift to him was a private half-hour feature showing the Goebbels family—the childrenreciting poetry, riding ponies, chasing a squealing piglet, and greeting their726 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHmother or Rommel as their respective limousines drive up. Helga, ten years oldnow, with finely moulded features and braided hair, was more ladylike than ever.52 ‘Iwant just two children when I marry,’ she once emphasized. ‘Otherwise I won’t havea moment to call my own!’53 Their mother, Magda, was now something of a virago.Most of her earlier femininity had passed to her five daughters—and to Helmut too.The newsreel camera found him in the classroom of the village school. ‘Twelvebirds sitting in a row, Helmut Goebbels!’ the teacher challenged. ‘A huntsman shootsone dead. How many are left?’After much coaxing and flubbing while a forest of young hands waved around him,Helmut eventually arrived at a plausible answer: ‘Eleven?’‘Wrong!’ answered the teacher triumphantly. ‘None! The rest all fly away when thegun goes off!’ Helmut offered a goofy smile through his protruding upper teeth—the only thing he had inherited from his absentee father, who barely featured in thefilm himself.BY that time, the late autumn of 1942, Hitler’s calculus was also going wrong. Hisarmies faced a stalemate in the Caucasus and perhaps even defeat in Stalingrad.Stalingrad became a matter of personal prestige between Germany’s Führer and theSoviet leader after whom it had been named.54 The morale reports from all Goebbels’sources brought mounting evidence of public disquiet.55 People were openly wonderingif Stalingrad was to become a second Verdun. In private, speaking to MajorMartin, the minister criticized Hitler’s strategic decisions as increasingly unrealistic.56 With the sudden and unexpected collapse of Rommel’s front at El Alamein,Goebbels’ own private nightmare began. To the chronic pessimist Hans Fritzsche,returning from a tour of duty on the Stalingrad front, Goebbels admitted, ‘You wereright.’57He betrayed none of this in public. Speaking on October 21 he scoffed, ‘One cannotprosecute a war without iron, oil, or wheat’ (Stalin had now lost both the Donetzbasin and the Ukraine).58 Challenging the enemy’s insidious theme that Hitler hadlost the race because the Americans would shortly intervene he published in DasGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 727Reich an article entitled, ‘For whom is time working?’59 He set up a special unit tostart a whispering campaign about ‘miracle weapons’, both real and imaginary.60 Hefelt it necessary to warn all his senior staff not to display pessimism about the future.61 But each passing week augmented the grounds for pessimism. On the night ofNovember 6 the B.B.C. announced a British victory at El Alamein and the capture oftwenty thousand Axis troops, most of them Italians. Goebbels’ machinery lapsedinto silence.62 At his eleven o’clock conference on the seventh he suggested that theydescribe events at Alamein as ‘fighting’ rather than a ‘battle’. With pursed lips hethen announced, ‘Three large British convoys have left Gibraltar. This fact is a militarysecret and to be treated as such.’63The Abwehr, Germany’s military Intelligence service, could offer no clue wherethese convoys were headed.64 Goebbels feared they were bound for southern Franceor Italy itself.65 But as Goebbels set out for the Munich anniversary of the 1923putsch he heard that the Allied warships were landing tens of thousands of troops inFrench Morocco and Algeria. At the Brown House in Munich Hitler phoned Paris,Vichy, and Rome; he secretly invited Vichy France to join the war on his side. But ashe began his speech at the beer hall he still had no reply.66Though still flawed by over-confident predictions about Stalingrad, it was otherwisea good speech. ‘There was a time,’ Goebbels heard him say, ‘when the Germanslaid down their weapons at a quarter to twelve. I never, ever, stop until five