Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Christmas Hitler sent hima leather-bound ‘Mein Kampf’ inscribed in recognition of the ‘exemplary manner’ ofhis fight.29At a Hanover conference of the north-western bloc on November 22 Gregor Strasseragreed that Goebbels should draft a new programme. Goebbels spent most of Decemberon it, since it had to be ready for their next gauleiter’s conference in Hanover.The redrafting was harder than he had anticipated.30 In its final form it comprisedtwenty-four basic demands: they were militantly anti-bourgeois. The Party wouldrespect private property, but nationalise all heavy industry and the great land estates.Meanwhile he set about literary projects of his own including a portrait gallery ofpolitical personalities, and a collection of his own political letters, ‘The Second Revolution.’31To his discomfiture, when Goebbels arrived for the Hanover meeting on January24, 1926 he found that Hitler had sent Gottfried Feder to attend. The debate onGoebbels’ ‘Elberfeld Guidelines’ lasted all next day. There was criticism of his lenientattitude on Russia and the communists.32 He went outside, smoked a cigarette,spoke for an hour, then saw the programme adopted. According to Kaufmann,Goebbels had not spared his criticism of Hitler and Munich. According to OttoStrasser, Goebbels even climbed on a chair and proposed that the ‘petit-bourgeois’Hitler be expelled from the Party.33 According to Rosenberg, Goebbels shrieked:‘Hitler has betrayed socialism!’34 Afterwards Strasser pumped his hand—and Federleft to report to Hitler.Concerned about this ugly trend, Hitler sent for Strasser; Strasser phoned Goebbelsafterwards, saying that ‘Wolf’—Hitler’s soubriquet—was ‘coming round to theirpoint of view,’ but was going to call a conclave of all Germany’s gauleiters at Bamberg,on his own home ground. Totally misreading the situation, Goebbels was delighted:‘In Bamberg,’ he decided, ‘we shall act the coy beauty, and seduce Hitler into ourcamp.’ ‘Nobody,’ Goebbels continued in his diary, ‘has any faith left in Munich.Elberfeld is to become the Mecca of German socialism.’ ‘In every city blood is flowingfor our idea,’ he argued. ‘We cannot fail.’3582 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHAt Bamberg on the appointed day, Sunday February 14, he met Gregor Strasserearly and they agreed their plan of action before walking over to the meeting. Hitlerdrove grandly past—he halted his chauffeur and offered Goebbels his hand, whichevoked a mental Ho-ho in the young man. But the laugh was on him. Hitler hadpacked the audience with loyal local officials: he spoke for four hours about highpolitics and diplomacy, and Goebbels thought it prudent, on balance, to keep hismouth shut. He heard Hitler oppose all thought of dispossessing the princes andlanded aristocracy (they were of course prominent among his backers). ‘For us,’ruled Hitler, ‘there are no “princes,” only Germans.’ He forbade all further discussionof the Party programme: it had been sanctified by the blood of the Party’s firstmartyrs. It was sacrosanct.I am quite stunned [wrote Goebbels the next day]. What kind of Hitler is this?A reactionary? Astonishingly clumsy and unsure of himself. The Russian question—he misses the point entirely. Italy and England ‘are our natural allies.’ Awful!‘Our mission is to smash bolshevism. Bolshevism is a Jewish sham! We are toinherit Russia!’ 180 millions of them!!!He recorded that Feder, Ley, Streicher, and Esser all nodded approval. Strasser losthis nerve and spoke only haltingly—‘Good old honest Strasser, ach Gott, we are nomatch at all for these swine down here!’36 Goebbels returned to Elberfeld full ofdoubts, both in himself and in Adolf Hitler. Strasser in fact panicked: he circularizedall the gauleiters asking them to return to him every single copy of the Goebbelsguidelines for destruction. Goebbels now had the image of a slippery intriguer, anopportunist. People called the ‘chap with the tiny, cold, monkey’s paws.’37 Behind hisback at Bamberg Streicher called him ‘dangerous.’38 Learning of this from Fobke,Goebbels fired off a furious handwritten letter to Streicher: ‘I am informed that yousaid … that nobody knew where I come from or what I am really up to in the movement.’What right, he challenged, had Streicher ‘of all people’ to cast aspersions onhim.39 He even wrote to Hitler complaining about Streicher’s calumny.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 83Bamberg brought a parting of the ways for Goebbels. He was shifting his loyaltyfrom Strasser to Hitler, though unconsciously and imperceptibly at first. In the nextissue of Letters he emulated Hitler’s condemnation of the demand by other nationalistorganisations for a boycott of Italy for her oppression of the German community inthe South Tyrol.40 After reading a brochure by Hitler on ‘The South Tyrol Issue andthe German Alliance Problem,’ Goebbels enthused: ‘He’s quite a guy… our chief!He’s dispelled my doubts again!’He still sat in on the north-western groups’ plotting. They met in Hanover.41 Meanwhilehe resumed his public speaking, reaching out for the first time to East Prussia;crossing the Polish corridor by train he decided that the Germans were a Scheissvolkto put up with such madness. Sightseeing in Königsberg he hung fresh ornamentsonto the fabric of his brain—the cathedral where Immanuel Kant was buried, andthe glorious architecture of the Teutonic Order.42When he returned to Essen, grimy capital of the Ruhr, it was decked out in swastikaflags for the Party really on March 6. Four thousand members filled the concerthall.43 The delegates in Essen agreed to the triumvirate’s proposal that there shouldbe one large Ruhr gau, amalgamating the smaller Rhineland and Westphalian gaue,with Pfeffer, Kaufmann, and Goebbels jointly in command.44 Goebbels bulks largerin his own diary version of this meeting than in the official minutes. The only briefmention was when he read out a bland telegram from Hitler: ‘The bad,’ said Hitler,‘must not be allowed to enslave the good.’45 This was a precept that both men were tooverlook in the years ahead.A few days later Hitler flattered Kaufmann, Goebbels, and Lutze with an invitationto speak in Munich. He pressed lavish treatment on the three: the motor car, thatshibboleth of Nazi Germany, played an important part in this softening up process.They found Hitler’s magnificent Mercedes waiting to drive them to their hotel. Accordingto Otto Strasser the wealth and power that this vehicle represented clinchedit for Goebbels. Hitler loaned it to them with a chauffeur to drive them down toLake Starnberg for an afternoon. His men had put up