Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

at the Berghof at nine P.M. on March 13, Hitler flatteredhim by meeting him at the door. Over dinner they debated why the British were stillrefusing to heed the bolshevik peril. This had been the subject of Goebbels’ mostrecent leader article in Das Reich..39 ‘Without doubt,’ observed Goebbels afterwards,‘history will see Churchill … as the gravedigger of the British empire. With hisshortsighted, vindictive policies he has manœuvered Britain into a blind alley, withno way out.’It snowed heavily all day. Up in Eva Braun’s quarters the two men watched theKodachrome home movies that she had made in 1939 and 1942. The minister notedsilently how much Hitler had changed since then. He was stooped and aging, but hisconfidence in Field Marshal Rommel was still unalloyed. After lunch the next day hetold Goebbels that he longed for the invasion to come so that he could make a cleansweep in the west and then settle Stalin’s hash as well. He was even toying with theidea of weakening the west deliberately in order to lure the Allies in. Goebbels didnot like that at all.40 Hearing rumours two weeks later that Hitler was indeed pullingtwo S.S. divisions out of France, he sent Colonel Martin down to the Berghof to findout, determined not to allow it to happen.41March 1944 brought a decisive downturn in the German public’s morale. Thefailure of the submarine war, the lack of reprisals, and the shrinking Reich frontiersall gave the lie to Goebbels’ public assurances.42 Colonel Martin returned fromBerchtesgaden quoting General Jodl as stating that if the Allied invasion succeededthey had lost the war.43 Tempers in the ministry frayed. After one row, Gutterersnappily advised the minister to recommend a political end to the war before theReich itself was destroyed. That afternoon Gutterer reappeared with Dr HermannMuhs, the former Staatssekretär in the ministry of church affairs, and repeated thetreasonable advice. The worst of it was, Goebbels knew they were right. ‘Your proposalsare out of line,’ he retorted, and told them to clear out—‘I don’t want to see816 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHyou again.’44 Lying, he told Hitler that Gutterer was unwell, and started rumoursthat he was involved in a newsprint-purchasing scandal.45 In a little ceremony onGutterer’s birthday he formally replaced him as Staatssekretär by Werner Naumann,a truly meteoric rise for his young bureau chief who was at that time still only thirtyfour.46Premonitions of death occurred to Goebbels. ‘I want to be buried in some openspace in Berlin,’ he decided.47 The clock was already ticking. He had ordered thecable radio network to provide a running commentary to city dwellers during airraids. Insidious as a Chinese torture, the hollow tick of a radio clock now separatedthe air raid bulletins.48 It got on the strongest nerves and Goebbels replaced it with amelodious four-note jingle which he composed himself.On April 1, 1944 Hitler appointed him City President of Greater Berlin.49 Hemoved the office to the corner of Lietzenburger and Emser Strasse, and—in linewith total war—reduced its payroll immediately from six hundred to fifty.50 Vestedalready with sweeping powers over life and death as Defence Commissioner, he authorizedother gauleiters to execute looters after air raids and to publicize thoseexecutions immediately.51On the eve of Hitler’s birthday he wrote him a fawning letter (‘How often has yourstruggle been fraught with the same hazards as today’) and broadcast a eulogy contrastinghim with the ‘parliamentary mayflies’ among their enemies.52 ‘From the firstday of this war to this very hour there has not been, despite all the enemy’s vilecalumnies, one single case where a soldier has broken the oath sworn to his Führerby laying down his arms; nor one workman who has betrayed his trust to the Führerby stopping work. We know that our enemies abroad cannot understand this fact andattribute it to brute force.’53 He closed by predicting, ‘He, and not his adversaries,will be the man of the century.’ His call to the Berghof at two minutes past midnightwas, said Hitler, the first to reach him. He wished him ‘at least thirty’ happy returns.As he drove out to Lanke, leaning back into the upholstery of his Mercedes, theypassed a church with a scorched and tattered swastika newly draped from its ruins.‘It’s the Furtwängler spirit,’ he said: ‘When the going gets tough…!’54GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 817The threat of invasion hung over all the Nazi leaders. Hitler admitted that he sleptonly three hours a day. His limbs literally trembled when he speculated on the whereand when of the invasion.55 Goebbels too was edgy, though for another reason: hehad to compose a leader article for Das Reich which events might well overtake beforeit appeared two weeks later.56 That Easter weekend the tides were again justright. But no invasion came. Hitler reassured Goebbels that Rommel had an oldscore to settle with the British and Americans. ‘So let them come!’ dictated the ministerin his diary. ‘I am very pleased with the sovereign calm with which the Führerfaces events.’57 But that very phrase—Hitler’s ‘sovereign calm’—belied his own deepermisgivings. The public too was on tenterhooks. ‘The letters I am getting,’ he recordedon May 13, ‘talk almost solely about the invasion. People are not only expectingbut looking forward to it. They’re only afraid that the enemy may not try.’58 AsApril became May, and no invasion came, the S.D. reported that a sense of disappointmentwas setting in.59Twice in April and again on May 7 and 8 the American bomber squadrons struck atindustrial targets in Berlin.60 A thousand pound bomb scarred the Chancellery, butlife otherwise soon returned to normal. Goebbels remarked privately that GeneralDouhet, the much vaunted theorist of air power, had a lot to answer for. ‘First it wasour airforce generals who thought they could bomb Britain to a pulp, ripe for invasion.Now the strategic-bombing wizards are on the other side.’61 As he addressed ahundred officers in the Throne Room the sirens heralded yet another American visitation,and he had to finish his speech (about the inevitability of a German victory) toa skeptical audience wedged into the new bunker beneath Wilhelms Platz. In DasReich he again hinted at the coming V-weapons.