Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

zones’ as Britishpropaganda was using the phrase to legalize their raids.3 Goebbels had no inhibitionsabout appearing. In Cologne his fellow-Rhinelanders greeted him with warmth andhe responded in their native dialect. Seeing Cologne’s historic High Street in ruins,he remembered Hitler’s words; what mayor would have dared to demolish this historicboulevard—now a few British blockbusters had done the job for them.4 Speakingat Heidelberg university he adopted more intellectual arguments to win over hislisteners.5The night train back to Berlin stopped at Erfurt station, scene of many a tryst withAnka Stalherm. Here he received news that the Allies had landed in Sicily. He mut-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 781tered unpleasant remarks about ‘macaroni eaters.’6 He did not expect the Italians tohold out for long.His agents had told him that the German people no longer believed in victory.7 Hehalf shared that view. Visiting Rechlin, the Luftwaffe’s experimental research station,he displayed an uncharacteristic pessimism to the airforce colonels and engineerswho met him after dinner. ‘The situation does look very fraught,’ he admitted, ‘andone doesn’t really know which way things are going to go.’8The time was ripe, he decided, to embark on the biggest movie epic the Reichwould ever make, ‘Kolberg’, the inspiring story of Gneisenau’s historic defence ofthe city under Napoleonic siege from 1806 to 1807. ‘The film will fit well into thepolitical and military landscape which we shall probably be facing when it appears,’he observed.9 He wrote to Veit Harlan conferring on him as director sweeping powersto show that a nation united could vanquish any enemy.10 The film cost 8·5 millionmarks to mark, eight times the average. Shooting began late in October 1943and continued throughout 1944; eventually 187,000 soldiers were conscripted asextras, with six thousand horses in some scenes. The city of ancient Kolberg, rebuilton a film set outside Berlin, burned for the cameras as satisfyingly as had ‘Atlanta’ in‘Gone with the Wind.’During these weeks it seemed that his oratory was all that held Germany together.In mid July General Schmundt, Hitler’s chief adjutant, brought 150 staff officers tohear him. He spoke in melodious tones for two hours and without notes. ‘You couldhave heard a pin drop,’ recalled one major. ‘I’ve seldom seem anyone so polite andcharming.’ The minister was dressed, he recalled, in grey trousers that were perhapsa shade too light, a double-breasted jacket that was a shade too blue, and a black andwhite tie that was a little too large. ‘He had a dreadful limp too. But one completelyoverlooked all those faults, and he held ones undivided attention.’11‘There is no going back,’ Goebbels told these officers. ‘We’ve burned our bridges.’Developing a new theme he said that they had won their victories in ‘the first half’too easily. Switching to another line he talked of how convalescents needed spiritualsuccour. ‘Sometimes a patient owes his life to a nurse who exhorts him at the hour of782 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHcrisis, “Don’t lose courage. You’re going to pull through. You’re going to be all right.You’re just feverish, it’ll pass by. A good night’s sleep and tomorrow it’s all over.”Obviously,’ continued Goebbels, ‘it would be stupid for the doctor to tell the patienthow sick he really is.’ Perhaps that was a tactless argument, in the circumstances.‘The Soviet Union has also survived exceptional crises,’ he added wistfully. ‘ But atthe head of the Soviet Union there is a little clique of very energetic, even brutalleaders with the determination to bring their people through.’ Before he ended hewarned these officers, ‘This passage of arms is decisive. Let nobody think that if weget it wrong this time we can have another shot at it in twenty years’ time. It’s now ornever.’12The passage which his audience most vividly recalled was his analogy betweentheir current strategic position and the moment in the 1936 Olympics when theJapanese marathon winner collapsed after the breasting the tape. ‘Nobody who sawit,’ he said, ‘will ever forget that. Why? Because here was an individual making asuperhuman effort… Over the last five kilometers he perhaps told himself, I don’tcare if I pass out or have a heart attack—I’m going to hit that tape first!’ If, heconcluded, like the traitors of November 1918 a nation did not intend to stay thecourse then it would do better not to begin.‘I think that did the trick,’ he said to Lieutenant Oven afterwards. ‘You’ve got touse a lot of analogies with these people.’ He threw back his head and guffawed.The crisis in public morale could not be so easily laughed off. The British fire raidswere sometimes killing thousands every night. Somebody suggested requiring everybodyto wear fireproof dogtags to facilitate the identification of corpses. Shades ofthe Yellow Star! Goebbels shuddered and discarded the idea.13‘I am afraid,’ he dictated, ‘that the British are about to reopen the air war with amassive assault on one German city at their next opportunity.’14THAT was the uneasy mood in Berlin on July 24, 1943—a broiling hot Saturday. Oddnews reports were trickling in from Rome. The Fascist Grand Council there hadgone into a huddle. Desperate for a break, Goebbels took his train down to Dresden.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 783Perhaps Magda had divined that he was bringing her white roses, because she waswaiting with Naumann on the platform in a dazzling white summer dress. LieutenantOven watched with voyeurish curiosity as his minister planted a kiss on her lips.The following morning’s news was bad. Using new electronic counter-measuresto blind the radar defences, the British had wrecked Hamburg. Hitler had withdrawnthe city’s heavy flak to Italy only two days before. Two hundred thousand people hadlost their homes. The city was still burning. At nine P.M. Goebbels returned to Berlin.Gutterer told him he had ordered fire brigades into Hamburg from all over northernGermany. But there was worse to come. At No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse theyfound the switchboard ablaze with blinking lamps. Benito Mussolini had been forcedout of office and arrested; Marshal Pietro Badoglio, no friend of Germany, had replacedhim. It was stunning news. Goebbels gaped at Gutterer: he ordered Naumannback from Dresden: he sank into a chair in the breakfast niche,