Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

1944 entitled ‘In Ninety Days’ Goebbels predictedthat the Allied invasion would come within that space of time. It was a leaf fromChurchill’s propaganda book. If nothing happened, he could claim that the Allies hadfailed. The Americans alone would suffer half a million casualties, the article prophesied.‘On the German side,’ he added, ‘they will find army commanders confrontingthem who have already triumphed once in the west, and who tossed the Britishback across the Channel in a sorry state… And above them all stands a Führer wholaid France low in six weeks.’ He pointed out that the Allies had failed to destroy theLuftwaffe. Every Allied airman venturing over Germany was doomed, wroteGoebbels: if not dead today, then dead tomorrow. ‘We have forgotten nothing,’ hewrote, hinting again at the coming Vergeltung. ‘The world will have no pity when it’sthe British people’s turn.’29Visiting Hitler’s Berghof on March 3, Goebbels found that Eva Braun had enlistedthe help of some lady friends to distract Hitler from the possibility that he might befighting a losing war. One eye grotesquely bloodshot from a burst blood vessel, Hitlerdisclosed that he was soon going to invade Hungary; he asked Goebbels to gearup his propaganda machine accordingly. After disarming Hungary’s army, he said,they could tackle her aristocracy and Jewry. As soon as he had smashed the comingAllied invasion, he added, he was going to switch forty divisions to the eastern front.Sooner or later the Allies would have to start talking to him. Meanwhile he haddelayed their Vergeltung until the second half of April, rather than shoot his bolt tooearly. Beefing up the Little Doctor’s own morale Hitler portrayed the colossal firepowerof the Panzer divisions with their new Panther and Tiger tanks. He promisedGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 813that their fighter planes’ heavier armament and new radar would foil the enemy airoffensive in the coming winter. Göring was a wash-out, he admitted, but it was theirduty to help him. ‘He can’t stand criticism right now,’ Hitler explained. ‘You’ve gotto watch your tongue very carefully when you tell him things.’ He also forbadeGoebbels to attack their Moscow traitors. ‘The Führer holds our generals in uttercontempt,’ noted Goebbels. ‘The generals … want nothing better than to trip himup.’ He hoped that the field marshals’ declaration of loyalty would restore Hitler’strust in them.Stalin had done well, he reflected, to liquidate his generals early on. ‘Only in theJewish Problem have we pursued such a radical policy,’ he dictated, taking pride inhis own historic accomplishment. ‘Rightly so. And today we are the beneficiaries.The Jews are out of harm’s way. Yet people told us again and again, before we tackledthe Jewish Problem, that there was no solution.30 Even so there were still six thousand‘privileged’ Jews living in Berlin and he could not get at them.31With the tail end of ‘Butcher’ Harris’ winter air raids still blistering Berlin noteverybody considered it a privilege to remain. Wilhelm Furtwängler was a shiningexception. He insisted on staying behind to conduct morale-boosting concerts forthe blitz victims and munitions workers. ‘We won’t forget that after the war,’ Hitlerpromised Goebbels. He ordered a private shelter built for the great conductor.Furtwängler graciously declined and asked that a public shelter be built in a working-class area instead.32RETURNING by train from the Obersalzberg to Berlin, Dr Goebbels had good reasonto feel that his political come-back from the wilderness was beginning. It was asthough he had drunk deeply of a fiery potion, observed Lieutenant Oven. Goebbelstold his adjutants that Hitler had asked him to return within a week (characteristically,he told his diary that he would try to.) Standing in the swaying corridor, handsthrust deep into his pockets, he said: ‘I’m convinced that if I’d lived a generationearlier I’d have become Reich Chancellor in 1917. In times of danger the cry always814 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHgoes up for a strong man.’ Had not England sent for Mr Churchill in 1940?33 (Therewas that comparison again.)His city’s daytime ordeal now began. At dawn on March 6 the early-warning radarspicked up seven hundred and thirty B–17s and B–24s leaving England escorted bynearly eight hundred fighter planes. One hundred Luftwaffe fighters engaged themover Dummer See destroying twenty-three within minutes. Four hundred fighterplanes began tearing at the following American formations. Forewarned by telephone,Goebbels stood on the terrace of his lakeside mansion at Lanke, sweeping the palehorizons with binoculars for the attackers. As the silvery shoals of high-flying bomberspassed silently almost directly overhead, keeping tight formation, he broke intoan ungainly gallop across the lawn, crushing dandelions and crocuses underfoot toget a better view. He had never seen the British—they still began their lethal businessafter dusk and left before dawn—but here was the other enemy, crewed byairmen in leather flying-jackets emblazoned with slogans like ‘Murder Inc.’34 A fightersquadron scrambled from a nearby airbase and zoomed low overhead. He waved tothe pilots. He could hear distant cannon-fire as the leading formations began theirbombing runs on the Erkner and Bosch factories. Puffs of smoke hung in the airwhere the heavy flak shells burst. One or two B–17s lurched out of station andspiraled earthwards spilling smoke and parachutes. Sixty-nine went down this day,with over a hundred more crippled beyond repair. As the fearsome aerial tournamentended, Goebbels’ flunkies served lunch. The family came out of the bunker,and while Magda clucked disapprovingly he described to his spellbound youngsterseverything he had seen. He told them proudly that their city was now the mostheavily bombed city in the world.35The next American raid, by six hundred bombers on the eighth, killed only fortynineGermans and twelve foreigners, and left a mere 1,500 homeless.36 Altogetherhowever the enemy air raids had now killed 116,000 Germans, Goebbels confidentiallyrecorded.37 He was impatient for the Vergeltung to begin. Hitler had ordered Speer tohave the V-weapons ready by April 15 but Speer, it seemed, was recovering fromdepression in a clinic. Goebbels sent Naumann to visit him. Speer pleaded for aGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 815further postponement. ‘Fourteen days won’t bake the cakes any better,’ snortedGoebbels; he suspected that Speer was getting cold feet about reprisals.38WHEN Goebbels arrived back