Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

‘Terror,’ he wrote, ‘only works whenit is one-way.’Mounds of rubble now choked the centre of his city, a breeding grounds for ratswhich scavenged the flooded cellars for the remains of food or flesh. Typhus casesreached epidemic proportions. Goebbels imposed quarantines and compulsory vaccinationprogrammes. He found himself suffering outbreaks of perspiration and headaches,and one morning in May a red sore appeared on his face. ‘Do you think it818 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHmight be typhus,’ he asked his one-eyed adjutant Günter Schwägermann. A longdistance call was placed to Professor Morell in Bavaria. Morell sent round a specialist,who diagnosed a simple cold-sore.62Recovering out at Lanke with the children, Goebbels watched the frontiers ofHitler’s Reich still steadily shrinking. The Crimea was lost, and in Italy the Alliesbroke through at Monte Cassino. Harald Quandt’s commanding officer wrote thatthe young lieutenant was doing well, and the minister sent cigars and cognac downto his stepson’s unit.63 Magda had serious complications with her neck glands. Shesaw Morell later in May when she went to spend an evening with Hitler; the doctorinsisted she must have an operation.64THE American airforce had now begun ground-strafing attacks in Germany.65 On SundayMay 21, 1944 their fighter planes, flying only a hundred feet up, machine-gunnedseveral people in fields and streets.66 (Nazi pilots had enjoyed doing the same in theirheyday). On the twenty-third Goebbels secured Hitler’s approval for an article encouragingthe public to lynch such airmen if they fell into their hands.67 At midday onMay 24 the Americans again bombed Berlin. Coming across a downed Americanbomber pilot, Second-Lieutenant James G. Dennis, that day Goebbels’ propagandadirector Alfred-Ingemar Berndt drew his revolver and shot him in cold blood.68 AsBerlin burned, Goebbels began drafting the controversial article.It is not provided for in any Article of war [he wrote] that any soldier whocommits a heinous crime is exempted from punishment by reason of superiororders, particularly when such orders flagrantly violate every human ethic andevery international usage of war.He angrily quoted from J.M. Spaight’s book on air power ‘Bombing Vindicated’(‘It is not possible to draw a dividing line between the civilian population and thecombatants’), and from the News Chronicle. ‘We are in favour,’ the liberal LondonGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 819daily newspaper had written, ‘of wiping out every living creature in Germany—man, woman, child, bird, and insect.’ The left-wing British novelist H.G. Wells hadechoed these words, and even the Archbishop of York had officially described thebombing of civilians as ‘the lesser evil.’ Goebbels claimed sanctimoniously to haveabstained from citing these words before lest his public take matters into its ownhands and ‘do until the pilots … as they have been doing to others.’ Such compunctionsno longer applied, he now suggested: ‘It is asking too much,’ he wrote, ‘to expect usto use German troops to protect these child-murderers… Enough is enough.’After checking again with Hitler he published the article in the Völkischer Beobachter.69It provoked outrage—but also apprehension—in London.70 Ribbentrop had his presschief telephone an angry protest to Goebbels. ‘This article,’ the propaganda ministerretorted, ‘was written at the Führer’s behest.’71GOEBBELS had lost his awe of the officer caste ever since reading of how the Spartanshad born their diminutive and crippled king Agæsilaos joyously into battle on a shield.That gave him a hero with whom he could identify. After writing the ‘lynching’ articlehe travelled down to Sonthofen castle—a Nazi indoctrination centre—to speakto front-line generals and admirals.72 Himmler had already addressed them, oncemore mentioning his work in killing off the Jews.73 Wearing a dark blue suit, hejoined Goebbels, wearing the Party’s brown uniform, and the officers for dinnerafterwards.74 The text of Goebbels’ own pep talk is not preserved. He did not likehaving to make one to officers. ‘I’m just not in the mood,’ he told Lieutenant Oven.‘I’ve tried telling the Führer we’re wasting our time with these people.’ But he foundhimself placed next to the exquisitely named Major-General Hyacinth CountStrachwitz, and this officer, wearing the highest medals for valour, partly restored hisfaith in the officer-aristocracy.75He returned to Berlin via Augsburg—delivering here another pep-talk, though itwas hardly needed. Precisely three months after the British bombers had violatedthis city, it was already back to normal.820 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHTHE evacuation of the Jews from Berlin had dwindled to a trickle, and the Jewishproblem had all but vanished from his diary. He had put Berndt in charge of an anti-Jewish propaganda unit analogous to the old anti-Comintern.76 Other top Nazis stillwanted to proselytize, taking the anti-Jewish campaign worldwide. Rosenberg suggestedreinforcing their antisemitic propaganda among prisoners of war and foreignlabourers.77 Ribbentrop proposed setting up a phony ‘Jewish’ radio station to discreditall Jews everywhere; but Goebbels feared it would rebound upon the credibilityof his own propaganda. Besides, he complained to Hitler, the proposal violatedthe first law of all propaganda, simplicity.78Hitler’s occupation of Hungary had brought over seven hundred thousand moreJews into the Nazi fold. Goebbels had noted a few days before, ‘We’ll take care theydon’t abscond.’79 Eichmann extracted three hundred thousand for the Nazi war factories,and deported most of the rest to Himmler’s camps.80 Goebbels noted, basedon his own experience in Berlin, that once the Hungarian government embarked onanti-Jewish policies they would find themselves unable to stop.81 There was no goingback. He advised them to take care to justify their policies in the press.82He did not conceal his cynicism about what he meant by ‘justification.’ Speaking totwo hundred hand-picked German government and business officials in his ministry’sThrone Room in June, wearing a sober grey suit and an air of confidentiality, hereiterated his propaganda canons: simplicity, constant repetition, and a language capableof holding the intellectuals while not losing the common man.83 Nazi propaganda,he told this select audience, had only two themes, the dual struggle againstbolshevism and the Jews. One day, when the great powers met around the conferencetable, the question would arise how all this had come about. With one voice,said Goebbels, all must then answer: ‘The Jews were to blame!’84GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 8211 JG speech, Dec 31, 1943. BBC monitoring report, text and commentary (PRO fileFO.371/34454); NYT, Jan 1; SD report