Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

1944 Goebbels bickered withRosenberg, Bormann, and the tiresome pedant Lammers over jurisdiction.31Rosenberg regarded all of the Soviet peoples as sub-humans. Koch continued hisbrutal policies in the Ukraine.32 Goebbels pleaded for a far-reaching proclamationdesigned to win over the Russian peoples. He was in no doubt that a slogan that theGermans were fighting the bolsheviks and not the Russian people would significantlyaid the propaganda battle.33 Hitler flatly opposed this: his view was that they couldhardly seize the Russian peasants’ last cattle at the same time as wooing them forsupport.34 Knowing that Hitler and Himmler vehemently opposed it the Germanarmy did not back Goebbels.35 Several times he resolved to discuss the issue withHitler, only to lose courage when he faced those steely blue-grey eyes.36So the unproductive bickering with Rosenberg continued.37 Rosenberg demandedthat Goebbels shut down Taubert’s eastern propaganda unit. ‘It’s perfectly obvious,’770 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHGoebbels wrote to Hitler, ‘that I as propaganda minister should have responsibilityfor all propaganda throughout the Reich.’38 The finance ministry cut off all his fundsfor propaganda work in the east.39 When Bormann conveyed his protests to the Wolf’sLair, Hitler—after further delay—agreed that all propaganda should be in one hand,and he signed a decree to this effect in August, allowing Goebbels to attach a propagandafield office (Reichspropagandaamt) to each Nazi governor in the east.40 Buttime was already running out: by the time they were in place (and then only inMinsk, Riga, Reval, and Kaunas41) it would be February 1944 and the Nazi dominionwas coming to an end. Goebbels blamed Rosenberg. ‘Now we’ve missed the bus,’ hesourly observed in February 1944.42Their unsettled policies toward the captive lieutenant-general Andrei Vlasov furtherillustrated this rift at the top. This renegade Russian offered to raise an army offellow prisoners to overthrow bolshevism in Russia. Goebbels backed him; againHimmler and Hitler did not.43 When Hitler did grudgingly allow the project to goahead, it was purely as a dishonest propaganda ploy.44 Goebbels’ radio stations thereupontook up Vlasov’s cause. After hearing one such broadcast on his automobileradio in July, Himmler wrote, ‘I forbid the S.S. once and for all to fall in, in any waywhatsoever, with the entire bolshevik-Vlasov act which the Wehrmacht are stagingand which the Führer has so clearly rejected.’45On the very next day the Soviet government established near Moscow the mirrorimageof the Vlasov movement—a Free Germany Committee under the communistwriter Erich Weinert.46 Its members were a ragbag of captured German officers,Jews, and other emigrés; its first manifesto was signed by Goebbels’ old sparringpartners in the Battle for Berlin, Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck. Two monthslater the Russians formed a renegade League of German Officers—primarily thosecaptured at Stalingrad like General Walter von Seydlitz.47Stalingrad had deeply afflicted German morale. The relatives of the one hundredthousand missing German soldiers had been dismayed by Goebbels’ revelations aboutthe fate of the Polish prisoners in Soviet hands.48 The slew of nightly British raids onthe Ruhr, coinciding as they did with a swingeing cut in the meat ration, furtherGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 771eroded morale. Moreover the German submarine campaign was in disarray as theBritish introduced new radar devices.49 Germany was passing through a trough in thewaves, said Goebbels; but the waves seemed to be getting ever taller.50 Women shoppersin Berlin were heard openly cursing this ‘damned war.’51 They inveighed againstGöring, and sometimes even against Hitler. Goebbels wished that he could persuadethese two to speak, or at least to pay their respects in a Ruhr city. Limping downWilhelm Strasse with Dr Naumann after dining with Hitler in May he spoke pointedlyof the need to instal a clear political leadership at home.52Speaking alone with Goebbels in his private quarters in the Chancellery, Hitleragain—allegedly—suggested they whip up more antisemitic propaganda as asmokescreen. Goebbels pointed out that it already accounted for eighty percent oftheir overseas broadcast output. The virus was already implanted throughout Europe.Antisemitism was steadily rising overseas, and Goebbels was proud to take thecredit.53 Turning to the bombing war, Hitler ruled out copying the Japanese exampleof executing captured Allied air crews. The Allies would shortly have a hundred thousandmore German prisoners, taken in Tunisia, and this probably influenced his decision.He was sick of war, he told Goebbels. He longed to take off his field-greyuniform and become a human being again. He was sick of his generals too: they wereall liars, disloyal, reactionary, and hostile to national socialism.54 Goebbels will nothave disagreed.THE imminent final loss of North Africa faced Goebbels with the problem of explaininghow Field Marshal Rommel had been spirited out of Tunisia to safety two monthsbefore.55 Over tea with Goebbels and Berndt, a dispirited and embittered Rommelsaid that the Italians really were useless as fighters.Italy was clearly the Allies’ next invasion target, with Sicily particularly at risk.Abwehr chief Admiral Canaris however boasted to Goebbels that he had recoveredfrom a corpse washed ashore in Spain a secret letter to General Sir Harold Alexanderrevealing that the Allies would invade Sardinia.56 Goebbels—like Hitler—suspecteda British plant, and they were right.772 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHHe did not know what to make of the pink-faced and flabby fingered Abwehr chief.At Colonel Martin’s pleading he had first met Canaris a month earlier.57 Flourishinga sheaf of papers Canaris claimed to have correctly predicted the strength of Sovietarmour before Barbarossa and the site of the Allied invasion of North West Africa inNovember 1942. ‘Despite all the assertions,’ dictated Goebbels, unconvinced, ‘ourpolitical and military Intelligence just stinks.’58IN the middle of May 1943 the last Axis positions in Tunisia were overrun. As withStalingrad, Goebbels had prepared an impressive radio ceremony to cushion the news.Hitler forbade the broadcast. Goebbels made no secret of his irritation.59To set the loss of North Africa in perspective he wrote a clever leading articleentitled ‘With Sovereign Calm.’ ‘A victory of initially only the barest significance canturn out to be decisive in a war,’ he argued, ‘while one that has been contested overimmense areas and at the cost of many men and much material may soon pale intoinsignificance.’ Let nobody claim that the loss of North Africa was on the same historicalplane as Britain’s expulsion