Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

intact. He went down to thesleeping cabin in his family bunker—its light-panelled walls embellished incongruouslywith priceless paintings including Rembrandts, Spitzwegs, Rubens, and Giottosalso sheltered from the inferno outside.Magda was already there. ‘One of the wildest nights of my life,’ he dictated thenext morning, referring to the raids. ‘But I think we came out on top.’ He woke to asearing headache and the smell of burning. There was no power, heating, or water; hecould neither wash nor shave. He groped his way out of the bunker by candlelight.Fifty thousand troops, conjured up seemingly from nowhere by the army, were alreadyclearing the streets and railroad tracks. He dictated a proclamation to theBerliners, and since there were no newspapers he had a million copies handed out atcommunal feeding centres.41 His ministry was stone-cold and windowless. Momentarilydisheartened and needing fresh faith, he did what Churchill did—he had hischauffeur Alfred Rach drive him into the worst hit areas and let the crowds thronground and slap him on the back. He spied one old crone making the Sign of the Crossover him and chanting a blessing, and he did not even take that amiss. He heard oneshout of ‘plutocrat!’ as his limousine bumped past, from somebody who may nothave recognized him.42Seventy-five percent of the city’s labour force turned up for work that day. Thatwas not bad. As dusk fell the sky still glowed red. Beppo Schmid’s monitoring postsheard the bombers preparing to take off but bad weather intervened. Goebbels droveout to the totally undamaged Schwanenwerder peninsula: their house was warm,the phones here and the radio worked, and there was hot water in the bath. This thirdattack had taken eight hundred lives, and there were now four hundred thousand802 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHhomeless, but morale was still high.43 The B.B.C claimed that up to forty thousandhad died in the two latest raids. Goebbels allowed them their belief.Lunching with him in the badly damaged Chancellery, Lammers told him thatHitler had ordered all the ministries to stay put. Dr Goebbels was to set up an AirWar Inspectorate to prepare every city in Germany for a similar ordeal.44 The earlysymptoms of another raid again fizzled out that night.As munitions minister, Albert Speer was more visibly shaken by the raids when helunched with Goebbels on Thursday the twenty-sixth. It was not just that his ministryhad been totally burned out; Berlin housed one-third of the Reich’s electricalengineering plants, mainly in the Siemensstadt suburb. He warned Goebbels thattheir V-weapons would not now be operational until March. ‘They keep droppingback,’ noted Goebbels.45At first that night the British seemed bent on Frankfurt, but that was a feint andtheir bomber formations suddenly turned north to Berlin. The Alkett plant and twomore of Berlin’s finest opera houses were hit. Alkett’s, the only assembly plant forthe assault gun, produced one-quarter of all tanks other than the Panther and theTiger, and nearly half of all field artillery. Without hesitation Goebbels ordered Countvon Helldorff to save Alkett’s. ‘Tanks are more vital than operas right now,’ he toldSchach, and pushed the button on his console to tell Hitler of his decision.46 Threemore times he phoned Hitler that night. Speer, joining him in the bunker afterwards,talked of dispersing Alkett’s wrecked production lines to safety elsewhere. BeppoSchmid reported that they had shot down a hundred of the attacking bombers, andthis raid had killed only eight Berliners. Through secret propaganda channels, Goebbelshowever spread the whisper around the world that Berlin was finished.47He felt like a hero. The next day he addressed the entire Reich Cabinet. After hehad finished telling them of the battle, every minister and Staatssekretär present gavehim a standing ovation. The last time that had happened was in 1933 when Hitlerpulled Germany out of the League of Nations. Going behind Ribbentrop’s back hebegan sending regular commentaries on foreign policy to Hitler.48 His star was in theascendant. He spent all day with Hitler again on December 19.49 ‘I was able to joinGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 803you at headquarters more frequently than ever this year,’ he wrote him afterwards.‘These visits have given me far more than you, mein Führer, could possibly divine.’50A FIFTH raid had hit Berlin with over two thousand tons of bombs on December 2.Forty more bombers had been destroyed. Grimly fought and with no quarter givenon either side, the aerial Battle of Berlin continued all winter. While Goebbels directedthe city’s civil defence, Magda handled the tide of public queries and complaints.Her files contain harrowing letters from mothers robbed of their children,and from widows of party ‘martyrs’—she had looked after their needs ever since1934; she controlled a small account from which she judiciously dispensed welfare(NSV) funds to those in need, often asking local party agencies to make discreetinquiries first. (‘Subject frequents pubs and tobacco stores’, she might be told; or‘Miss A— has seven illegitimate children, not just three as she claims’). Her advicewas always tactful. When women asked whether to baptise their infants Magda, whohad baptised none of hers, replied quoting Frederick the Great—‘Blessed be each intheir own way.’ Her replies could be uncompromising too. A Miss Charlotte Goebel,who had lost everything in the November air raids and wanted only to return to hernative—and remote—Danzig was informed: ‘In all such cases where blitz victimswith employment here have deserted Berlin, Mrs Goebbels has refused any aid whatsoeverand they have had to return to their workplace in Berlin.’51Addressing a youth film festival on November 28 Dr Goebbels warned the britischengentlemen that they would never score an ‘easy, cheap, and totally unmilitary’ victory.The British were hoping to win by a war of fire and flame against women and children.‘In the name of the citizens of this capital, and in the name of the entire Germanpeople, let me give them this reply. Never!’ To rising applause he announced: ‘InGermany today there is no more urgent demand than that we pay back the criminalson the Thames with added interest for what they have done to us.’ Day and night, hepromised, this reprisal was being prepared. ‘When one day retribution comes, andit’s the British