Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

were coming to life’ asother Soviet atrocities in Latvia were revealed.3 In March 1943 Moscow had begun aserious dispute with the Polish exile government in London over their countries’future common frontier.4 It was now that the German troops uncovered at Katyn themass graves of thousands of Polish prisoners of war, their hands crudely bound withbarbed wire, expertly executed by the Russians by bullets in the nape of the neck.The first such grave yielded 4,143 victims.5 On April 4 an S.S. Unterscharführerreported that they had already found the corpses of a Polish general, senior staffofficers, a bishop—and diaries.6 The letters and diaries in the corpses’ pockets hadexpired, like their authors, in April 1940 when the Russians controlled the region.‘Once again,’ dictated Goebbels, ‘one sees how the Jews work hand in hand, andwhat Europe may expect if it ever falls into the hands of the eastern or westerndenizens of this subversive race.’7GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 767Goebbels acted swiftly and shrewdly. He briefed his staff at his April 8 morningconference that he was sending neutral journalists and Polish community leaderswith captured British medical officers to witness the opening of further mass graves.8Berndt, his finest propagandist, had now returned from Tunisia: Goebbels put him incharge. By April 13 twelve thousand rotting corpses had been exhumed.9 ‘One darenot think what would become of Germany and Europe if this Asiatic-Jewish torrentever burst upon our country and continent,’ wrote Goebbels after seeing the filmfootage.10 He ordered his editors to feature Katyn two or three times each week.Undeniably embarrassed by the discovery, Moscow alternately called the graves ‘ancientburial grounds’ and blamed the Nazis.11 Shocked by the revelations, the Polishexile prime minister General Wladyslaw Sikorski appealed to the International RedCross to investigate Katyn; Stalin broke off diplomatic relations with Sikorski.12Goebbels was dizzy with pride at this unexpected triumph of his propaganda. Katynwas suddenly a threat to Mr Churchill’s carefully constructed grand coalition. TheBritish prime minister (that ‘vassal of the Jews’13) did as Goebbels himself wouldhave done: he thrice denied all evidence of Soviet culpability for the massacres. Whena British plane-crash shortly killed off the inconvenient Polish prime ministerSikorski—the pilot survived—Goebbels found still further grist for his perniciouspropaganda mills.14The success of the Katyn revelations in a Germany long saturated with anti-Sovietatrocity propaganda was only limited. Editors soon tired of carrying the story. Thepublic profoundly mistrusted the revelations. One reaction cited by the S.D. wasthat they had no right to get worked up since the Nazis had liquidated far more Polesand Jews than had the Russians.15 One minor annoyance was when German ammunitionwas found in some of the graves, probably part of the pre-Barbarossa deliveriesto Stalin.16 When still more Soviet mass graves were found at Vinnitsa, the peoplecommented: ‘We also ruthlessly wiped out all opposition elements in the east.’17IN Nazi occupied Poland the impact of Katyn was equally disappointing.768 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHThe minister had tried for months to settle his differences with Hans Frank, butthe uproar caused by Himmler’s anti-Jewish measures rendered all coherent propagandawork impossible.18 Over lunch on May 9 Hitler and Goebbels agreed thatFrank had lost control, but there was nobody fit to replace him.19 As anti-Germanincidents multiplied, Frank blamed the S.S.; on May 26 Himmler disclosed to himthat he was going to evacuate the last 250,000 Polish Jews regardless.20 When Goebbelsagain suggested Frank’s replacement in June, Hitler exonerated the Governor-General:‘He has to extract food supplies, prevent the unification of the people, ship outthe Jews and yet at the same time accommodate the influx of the Jews from theReich.’21According to him, Hitler ordered him to link the Jews directly to Katyn.22At the end of April Goebbels composed another major assault on the Jews for DasReich. In this he argued that the Jews had wanted this war. The warmongers in Londonand Washington were all Jews, as were the Soviet secret police and commissars.23 ‘It is therefore a matter of state security,’ he explained, ‘for us to take certainsteps in our own country.’ This was now a race war, in which the Jews aimed at thedestruction of the German people. The Jews had always been criminals, he continued:‘The Jews have not enjoyed such remarkable rewards because they are clevererthan non-Jews, but because they operate by a different code of ethics.’ Hitler’s January1939 prophecy was ineluctably coming true. ‘One day the same punishment willbe meted out to Jews worldwide as they are suffering in Germany today.’ ‘There is noplace for sentimental considerations,’ he emphasized. ‘When they hatched their plot forthe total destruction of the German people they were signing their own death warrant.’24 Newspapers around the world quoted surprisingly freely from the article,and he took this as proof many people in every editorial office thought like him.25Despite the apparent implicit admissions in the article, when his press officer showedhim foreign allegations about ‘Gestapo extermination camps’ in Poland, where Jewsand others were being gassed and cremated, Goebbels dismissed them as ‘sensationalism.’26 Nevertheless Bormann notified every Reichsleiter and gauleiter includingGoebbels in July that Hitler did not want public discussion of any ‘overall solution’GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 769(Gesamtlösung) of the Jewish problem. ‘It can however be stated,’ Bormann informedthem, ‘that the Jews are under confinement and being given appropriate employment.’27Goebbels knew different. In the first six months of 1943 fourteen trains had carried14,620 of his city’s Jews to Auschwitz. Over thirty-one thousand Jews had nowbeen expelled from Berlin by the joint efforts of Goebbels, Speer, and the police.28THROUGHOUT these months the Nazi propaganda policies in the eastern territorieswere chaotic. In occupied Poland there was the usual conflict between rival Naziagencies. Propaganda was run from Kraków by a capable civil servant,Oberregierungsrat Wilhelm Ohlenbusch, but he was permanently at loggerheadswith Hans Frank’s press chief Dr Gassner, an Otto Dietrich appointee.29 Gassner hadreplaced the independent Polish press with gutter publications which included pornographicPolish-language magazines whose explicit purpose was to undermine familylife and thus destroy Polish society; conversely Gassner prohibited the importationof the ‘healthy’ publications produced in Germany under Goebbels’ fiat, like Motherand Child.30As for the Soviet Union, right up until February