Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

arrived. White-painted arrows appearedat every street corner telling those who remained which way to run iffirestorms broke out.34 Slit trenches were dug in the streets and parks, water tankswere built, and the remaining art treasures were crated up and trucked out to safety.Removal vans carried Magda’s priceless carpets and porcelain out to Lanke, followedtwo days later by an Aladdin’s hoard of antique furniture and silver toiletarticles, clocks, engraved cigarette boxes, desk furniture, candelabras, mirrors, powderboxes, and inkwells along with gold-rimmed crystal ware, and a ten-foot byfifteen-foot tapestry.35 Fearing that even the white-walled, horseshoe-shaped mansionat Lanke was a landmark for bombers, Goebbels ordered it draped with eightthousand square metres of camouflage netting.36Deciding that they too were not essential after all, several of the more preciousmembers of the Berlin theatre community fled. Goebbels hauled the offenders backand packed them off to the munitions factories. Writing an understated article, ‘AWord about the Air War,’ in the newspapers after the public had noticed that hemissed a week after Mussolini’s overthrow, Goebbels called for discipline and a steadfastheart from his Berliners. ‘What the British could take in the autumn of 1940—for which more than one of us admired them at the time—we must now show wetoo can take,’ he declared, and then turned the compliment as deftly as he uttered it:‘But just as Britain turned a new page in the air war after 1940, so too we shall turnGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 787a new page now.’ The Battle of Berlin, he announced, would soon be joined. ‘AsBerlin’s gauleiter, I shall not, of course, be leaving the capital.’37In this defiant spirit he prepared his capital city for its hour of glory. He investigatedwhether his own household bunker would withstand the latest enemy bombs.Architect Hugo Bartels replied candidly that the concrete was thick enough for thebombs of 1941, but they had got a lot bigger since then.38 Bartels also warned that ifa firestorm broke out any papers in the safe would be incinerated along with thepeople in the bunker. ‘During an alert,’ Goebbels dictated on the sixth, ‘all floors ofHermann-Göring Strasse are to be manned by members of the guard, [Wilhelm]Rohrssen [house manager] and Lüdecke.’ He added that Emil the butler was to takenot only the minister’s briefcase but also the pistol into the bunker—since Mussolini’sarrest, Goebbels intended to be prepared for anything.39Taking his immediate staff, Goebbels flew over to inspect the damage to Hamburg.As their Junkers 52 droned across the first villa-dotted outskirts there was little tobe seen. ‘You always tend to expect the worst,’ said Goebbels, then caught his breathas the plane banked and acres of charred and lifeless ruins unfurled like a black flagfrom beneath the wing. Gauleiter Kaufmann, a small, spry figure, impressed himdeeply with what he had done. ‘I am convinced,’ said Goebbels as they flew back,‘that we’d have won the war long ago if it was up to the party rather than the generals.’40He had unconsciously begun prefacing his utterances with the phrase ‘if I wereFührer,’ and venturing criticisms of their Führung—i.e., of what their Führer did.41He could afford to. Thanks to his air-raid relief work his popularity was steeply rising,while Göring’s was in terminal decline. Nothing, remarked Goebbels, was harderto recapture than lost prestige. He had still not made up all the ground he had lost in1938, he admitted.42WITH the evacuation of two million civilians and almost all children, Berlin was nowready. The nights were long enough for the British once more.788 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHOn August 23, 1943 they came, 625 heavy bombers carrying 1,765 tons of bombs,but what followed was a bomber-massacre. Under Major Hajo Herrmann the fighterdefences had developed new tactics using largely visual sightings. The British lostfifty-six bombers; 765 Berliners died, and only twenty-seven of these were children.Goebbels took it as a very personal victory. On the last night of the month the enemycame again. This time Milch had pots of magnesium blazing around the city andplanes laying vapour mists across which the marauding enemy bombers crawled likeclumsy insects on a fluorescent table-cloth. The Luftwaffe brought in every availablefighter squadron, from as far afield as Denmark and central France.43 Of the 512heavy bombers which reached Berlin, forty-seven were destroyed. Only thirteenBerliners died, and no children at all. Mr Churchill had difficulty in mounting a thirdraid at all. On September 3 he sent 295 bombers, all Lancasters; they lost twentyafter killing only 346 Berliners (one of them a child). Unable to sustain such losses(126 bombers in three raids, and many more damaged beyond repair) he called offthe attack.44Coming so soon after the holocaust in Hamburg, this victory gave a palpable boostto Berlin’s morale.45 There were also fringe benefits as thousands of captured Britishairmen, Churchill’s erstwhile elite, passed through the Dulag Luft interrogation centre.Milch recommended throwing parties for these Englishmen with high-class callgirls—he understood that Goebbels had ‘girls on hand for such purposes’; Guttereragreed, and briefed Milch to ask the prisoners about Lord Haw-Haw, about the bombingatrocities against women and children, about the massacres at Katyn and Vinnitsa,and about the Jews.46 In January 1944 Goebbels would ask for a breakdown of capturedaircrews, to prove his theory that Mr Churchill was using primarily Canadiansand New Zealanders for his ‘terror’ raids.47EARLY on September 8, 1943 the telex machines again began to rattle out disquietingrumours about Italy. At five-twenty P.M. Lieutenant Oven alerted Goebbels that Eisenhower’sHQ had announced that Italy had capitulated. At six P.M. the B.B.C.confirmed it. With difficulty Goebbels got a line to Rome. The embassy there wasGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 789frankly incredulous as the king and Badoglio were still denying the reports. Shortlythe switchboard lamp labelled ‘Der Führer’ blinked: Hitler gruffly instructed Goebbelsto take the night train out to Rastenburg. He had anticipated this treachery, aided byintercepts of transatlantic phone calls from Churchill to Roosevelt revealing the Italianplans. He instructed Rommel to invade northern Italy at once. ‘You cannot breakyour word twice in one century,’ dictated Dr Goebbels, alluding to Italy’s earlierdefection in 1915, ‘without having your political escutcheon stained for ever