Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

days later the trams and subways were runningagain, and eighty-five percent of the labour force was already back at work. AtMariannen-Strasse, where a building had pancaked, he watched rescue operationsfor a while and spoke with weeping survivors until hope for their families was abandoned.He began to fear that Berlin’s morale was indeed cracking.11 He orderedSchach to have shelters for eight hundred thousand more people built by the comingwinter—and to have the city’s 56,000 laid-up automobiles towed to safety.12Unquestionably, it called for moral fibre—or many feet of concrete—to stay on inBerlin. Goebbels asked Hitler to award the highest medals for bravery to Berlin’s topofficials Gerhard Schach and police chief Count von Helldorff.13 He pinned the decorationson them on February 9. ‘I have found my colleagues in Berlin to be worth theirweight in gold,’ he dictated. ‘For the most part they are veterans of the years ofstruggle, utterly loyal and willing to go through thick and thin with me.’14On the fifteenth Beppo Schmid warned that the bombers were again heading forBerlin. This time Göring also phoned, to say that he had given the flak artillery a free810 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHhand. Goebbels had time to bath and dine before the sirens sounded; 806 bombersbore down on his city. The 2,643 tons of bombs they dropped were widely scattered,but one demolished the Hotel Bristol killing all but eight guests.15The city’s ordeal was almost over. The British losses were steadily approachingunacceptable limits. On February 19, a crystal clear night, they lost seventy-eightout of 730 bombers raiding Leipzig. Eyes smarting from smoke and fumes, and headaching from ‘bunker sickness’, Goebbels again toured the bomb-ravaged streets ofhis capital. Hitler made no attempt to emulate him, either now or later.16THE Allies might have the bigger bombs, but the Nazis still believed they had thebetter cause. Addressing the senior officers’ indoctrination course at Posen on January25, Goebbels suggested that their ideology compensated for the material supremacyof their adversaries. ‘In the heavy raids on the Reich capital,’ he told them,‘six hundred thousand lost their homes in two consecutive nights.’ Just one such raidin 1918 would have brought the war to an end. ‘If I say that at the end of such anideological conflict there will be only the survivors and the dead,’ remarked Goebbelsopaquely, ‘this should not be taken as meaning that the inevitable outcome will bethe utter physical extermination of this or that section of the population.’17This Goebbels speech is only worth mentioning because the next day Himmlerspoke to the same audience bluntly about the fate of Germany’s Jews.18 When heannounced that they had totally solved the Jewish problem most of the officers sprangto their feet and applauded.19 ‘We were all there in Posen,’ recalled one of them, arear-admiral, ‘when That Man told us how he had killed off the Jews… I can stillrecall precisely how he told us, If people ask me, “Why did you have to kill thechildren too?”, then I can only say, “I’m not such a coward that I leave for my childrensomething I can do myself.”’20Goebbels was not one of Himmler’s audience, but he learned of a strange episodewhich happened the next day at Hitler’s HQ. Hitler, unsettled by the perniciousinfluence of the Seydlitz traitors’ propaganda, tried to inspire these same officerswith talk of the coming new secret weapons. ‘If the worse comes to the worst,’ heGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 811then said, ‘and if I am ever deserted as Supreme Commander by my people, then Ishall still expect my entire officer corps to muster around me with daggers drawn…’At this moment Field Marshal von Manstein, one of Goebbels’ bêtes noires, rose andcalled out: ‘And so it will be, mein Führer!’21 It was an interpolation of painful ambiguity.Hitler initially took it as a compliment; so, when he read the transcript, didGoebbels.22 But he shortly realized that it was in reality a ‘stupid interruption’ designedto provoke.23 For weeks, fumed Goebbels, Manstein had been demandingpermission to retreat. Between every line was however the field-marshal’s real messageto Corporal Hitler: this is your war, not mine—let’s see how your vauntedmilitary genius gets you out of this mess. ‘Our generals want defeats,’ he exclaimed.‘Not defeat—not even they are as blind as that.’24Defeat still did not seem inevitable, when viewed from No.20 Hermann-GöringStrasse. Addressing the gauleiters assembled in Munich on February 23 Goebbelsreported that despite the thirty to forty percent destruction of Berlin, arms outputhad actually increased. The flying bomb should begin operations early in April, followedsoon after by the rocket missile.25 ‘The Germans are still pinning their hopeson Vergeltung,’ dictated Goebbels, worried. ‘People are vesting far greater hopes in itthan they are actually entitled to.’26 He again prohibited any official use of the V-wordbut he promised the gauleiters that there would be reprisal raids.At this meeting Hitler both looked and spoke well; he too referred to their comingVergeltung. Both Bormann and Himmler put out perceptible feelers to Goebbels onthis occasion. On the twenty-eighth Himmler spoke to Goebbels’ field officials ontopics which included internal security and the Jewish problem (no record survivesof what he said.) Goebbels told his staff that he and Himmler had similar views aboutthe war.27 Over dinner that evening Hitler’s adjutant Schmundt discussed with himtheir problem-generals. ‘They’re as thick as thieves,’ he growled: they covered foreach other, but gave the cold shoulder to true zealots like Lieutenant-General Liebwho had commanded Forty-Two Corps in its successful breakout from the Cherkassypocket. Lieb had told Goebbels he had received a six-page handwritten letter fromSeydlitz urging him to defect. Goebbels suggested that as during the Gregor Strasser812 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHcrisis of 1932, when the gauleiters had sworn loyalty to Hitler, all their field marshalsshould sign a loyalty declaration now. Goebbels dictated a suitable text, and Schmundtleft at once to tour every battle front, beginning with the HQs of Rommel andRundstedt in France, to collect the field marshals’ signatures. Fully aware of his ownunpopularity among the generals, Goebbels advised him not to disclose that he wasthe author of the declaration.28IN an article published in January