Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Soviet resourcesare already exhausted.’12 Nothing could conceal however that Nazi propaganda wasnow on the defensive. He forbade editors to adopt phrases coined by the enemy like‘United Nations’ or even ‘Allied,’ since these were throwbacks to the previous worldwar and designed to remind the Germans subliminally that they had lost that onetoo.13 Made-in-USA phrases like ‘Liberty ships’ and ‘Flying Fortresses’ were alsobanned, as was the phrase ‘Fortress Europe.’14 The latter invoked, he said, the pictureof a fortress under siege, complete with the inference that sooner or later it wouldbe overrun.15 All of which did not prevent him, from time to time, using the phrase‘Fortress Europe’ himself.16He was not yet worried by the Americans as such. Before returning to Rommel’sstaff in May 1942 Berndt had suggested they use the occult in their propaganda tothe Americans; Goebbels had agreed that they were just about dumb enough to fallfor it. ‘Time for Nostradamus once again,’ he noted.17 Baron Ulrich von Gienanth,his former press attaché in Washington, watched some interrogations of Americanbomber crews and told Goebbels that they were very inexperienced and in a state ofshock, weeping with home-sickness and ‘ready to carry out any unpatriotic act.’ The736 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHBritish were tougher, he said, but equally devoid of political ideals. ‘Nearly all ofthem voice antisemitic remarks,’ noted Goebbels optimistically, ‘but more from instinctthan insight.’18ATTEMPTS at supplying the Sixth Army by air were failing. By December 1942 rumoursof a Stalingrad crisis were sweeping the country. ‘Things have not panned outas we expected,’ Goebbels dictated to his diary on the eighteenth. ‘It doesn’t seem tobe as easy to force open the enemy ring round Stalingrad as some of us had thought.’19The High Command ordered a news blackout. The army ordered its radio commentatorto purvey only optimism.20Some fundamental decisions were called for. Hitler’s HQ slowly bestirred itself.On December 28 Martin Bormann finally visited Dr Goebbels to canvass his ideason total war. Goebbels had been developing these ideas for over a year. He had publishedan article about ‘total war’ for Das ReichÊ on February 17, 1941. ‘The Germanpeople,’ he had written in his diary six months later, ‘has a right to a socialist war.’21 Ayear later he was convinced that Stalin was squeezing more than Hitler out of hispeople. ‘A nation that endeavours to fight such a total war,’ he had dictated in September1942, ‘has exceptionally dangerous powers of resistance.’22 Reporting backfrom the eastern front later that month his friend and adviser Major Titel spoke ofthe outrage that ‘certain abuses’ at home were causing among the troops.23 Goebbelsthereupon put his ideas for ‘radicalizing and totalizing’ the war to Walther Hewel,Julius Schaub, Alwin-Broder Albrecht, and other long-standing members of Hitler’spersonal entourage.24 If it had worked for Stalin, he argued, then how much betterwere the prospects in Germany where there was so much more slack waiting to betaken up. But while he himself lived a most ascetic existence, those around him didnot. Hans Fritzsche for instance was among the elite who liked to indulge in oysters,real coffee, and fine wines at Otto Horcher’s gourmet restaurant in Berlin.25Britain had introduced compulsory labour service for women in March. Goebbelshad long believed that at least women without families aged up to fifty should work,regardless of their social standing.26 In December 1942 he stated this to Hitler andGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 737added that school-age boys and girls could help man the anti-aircraft guns.27 ButHitler had complex biological arguments against it, and others close to him likeGöring and the manpower commissioner Fritz Sauckel assured him that such crisismeasures were not called for.Goebbels worked hard to promote his belief in total war. In each offensive, heargued, they had lacked the ten percent that mattered. He discussed it separatelywith Speer, Funk, and Krosigk, but petty jealousies still smouldered between themas well as between Göring, Lammers, and Bormann; each of them had spent yearsestablishing their own power base, and none would willingly cede territory.28 Speeragreed on the malady. ‘In every offensive,’ he said to the central planners, ‘we lackjust ten percent.’ He warned of a coming war of attrition if they could not managethat extra effort. ‘I spoke with Goebbels recently,’ he continued. ‘He holds the viewthat the public is actually waiting to be called upon to make this last supreme effort.’29 In 1944 however Speer would become one of the most trenchant opponentsof Goebbels’ total war.Pride as much as prejudice constrained Hitler from agreeing to Total War. Notuntil the Sixth Army’s position in Stalingrad seemed desperate as it was now did hesend Bormann to Goebbels’ mansion at Lanke on December 28 to explore with him,as Bormann jotted in his pocket notebook, ‘a total effort by the German people toincrease its war potential.’30 Bormann flattered Goebbels cleverly, calling him, the‘harbinger’ of total war and speaking of their Führer’s faith in him.31 The proposalswhich Goebbels outlined for releasing manpower to war industry and the forces didnot however commend themselves to Bormann: they were rooted in his fiery socialistadolescence; he wanted punitive sacrifices by the ‘upper ten thousand’ who stillacted as though there were no war. ‘I am glad,’ the minister remarked afterwards atdinner, ‘that I have always lived in frugal wartime style.’32 Despite Bormann’s misgivings,Goebbels set to at once, drawing up a plan for all-out war. ‘I see my main task inthe weeks ahead,’ he dictated at Lanke three days after Bormann’s visit, ‘as being toradicalize our internal management of the war so that there can be no more talk of738 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHsparing the home front and spoiling the war.’33 He closed the next day’s entry, thefirst of 1943, with this philosophy: ‘The radical and most total war is the shortest.’34For several days after submitting his proposals he heard nothing. He pressed theWolf’s Lair daily for a decision. Bormann urged Goebbels to be patient, pleadingthat it was not so simple to draft new regulations. The minister’s staff drafted a moredetailed outline plan: it included the introduction of labour service for women, cutbacksin the manufacture of consumer goods, the closure of