Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

they were white. ‘Mein Gott,’he exclaimed. ‘How can the Führer watch such scenes without sending for the culpritsand throttling them with his own bare hands?’19Worse followed. The New York newspapers began to jeer at the conspicuous absenceof the Nazis’ vaunted secret weapons.20 Late on Monday June 12 Naumannburst in, flushed with excitement. The Berghof had just confirmed that the Vergeltunghad begun. Goebbels ordered a press clampdown—a prudent measure as the HighCommand shortly admitted that only ten flying bombs had actually been launched(four of these had crashed on take-off and the ‘bombardment’ had been halted.) OnThursday night however the operation resumed in earnest. Two hundred and fortyfourof the pilotless missiles were catapulted, each cruising noisily across southernEngland with a one ton warhead aimed at London. This author willingly concedesthat nobody who heard the droning approach of those weapons would gainsay theirability to terrify.At Schwarz van Berk’s suggestion Goebbels called it the ‘V–1’. It conveyed a hintof more to follow.21 Although Hitler wanted fanfares, Goebbels allowed only a onesentencereference in the next communiqué.That Saturday afternoon however the Berliner Nachtausgabe ran a banner headlineannouncing THE DAY FOR WHICH EIGHTY MILLION GERMANS HAVE LONGED IS HERE. OttoDietrich had done it again. In a blind fury, Goebbels heard that people were layingodds that the war would be over in a week. He limped up and down clutching thenewspaper, scored through and through with his ministerial green pencil.22 Forcedto reverse his policy, he directed Fritzsche to broadcast that evening about the Vweapons;that night his radio stations transmitted eye-witness accounts and recordingsof the terrifying organ-like roar as the missiles started out from their bases forcentral London.23ON June 19, 1944 a Major Otto-Ernst Remer, the tall, lean new commander of the830 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHBerlin guards battalion reported to him. A brand-new Oak Leaves cluster won onthe eastern front distinguished his medal bar. They saluted and shook hands—a partnershipthus beginning that was to change the course of history one month later. Thatday the chief editor of the Völkischer Beobachter reported back from the western front.The generals in Normandy, he told Goebbels, had warned him to stand by for disagreeablesurprises.24In Goebbels’ view a serious crisis was looming. Speaking with him some days earlierGeneral Schmundt had already spoken of the Allied beachhead, though still contained,as swelling like a malignant tumour. The time had come, agreed Goebbels,for ‘exceptional measures,’ which he defined once again as bringing in ‘real totalwar.’ Schmundt begged him to make that point at the Berghof.25 He then persuadedHitler to agree to discuss this issue with Goebbels.26 To start the ball rolling theminister drafted a significant article entitled ‘Are we Waging Total War?’ Departingfrom his previous theme that all Germans must participate, this urged that power begiven in a total war to ‘the fanatics.’27Determined to pull no punches, he arrived at the Berghof early on a rainy, greyJune 21, 1944. It was not a propitious moment. First, the American army had justcut off the Cherbourg peninsula. Second, only that morning Speer had warned thatthe air attack on their oil refineries was choking off their oil. Third, General Dietl,also present, now warned that Finland was about to pull out of the war. Fourth, evenas they spoke 1,311 American heavy bombers, carrying two thousand tons of bombsand escorted by 1,190 fighter planes, were thundering toward Berlin.28 Fifth, Hitlertold him that he was convinced that a major Soviet offensive was to begin the nextday, the anniversary of Barbarossa.As they talked, the phones rang constantly, and message slips were handed in:Berlin was again blazing. Alone with Hitler after lunch, Goebbels launched into athree-hour debate, pleading for control over Total War. They needed a Gneisenau ora Scharnhorst now, he said, not worthless time-serving soldiers like Field MarshalKeitel and General Fromm (both of whom he mentioned by name). Handled properly,the Wehrmacht could squeeze a million extra combat troops out of its bloatedGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 831‘tail.’ Hitler however called Fromm an irreplaceable specialist, and he defended Keitelwith much the same stubbornness; true, he heaped contumely on Göring for surroundinghimself with sycophants and refusing to hear home truths; but still he wouldnot hear of getting rid of him. As for letting Goebbels take charge of Total War, herejected it outright. This was still not the right time. He proposed to muddle throughas before. He comforted Goebbels with the meagre promise that if, but only if,things got out of hand he would send for him: but not until then.Thwarted, Goebbels broached the topic of foreign policy. But Hitler was less inclinedthan ever to hope for a deal with Britain. ‘Britain will be totally destroyed inthis war,’ he again predicted. ‘They’ve had it coming to them.’29Goebbels left at seven P.M. as Berlin, a sea of flames, needed him; he realised that hehad got nowhere. Even as he dictated into his diary the next morning, on June 22,the loyal commentary that ‘so far’ Hitler’s instinct as to timing had always provenright, the Soviet summer offensive was beginning—precisely when and where Hitler,against all the sober counsels of his general staff, had predicted. Goebbels watchedwith impotent anger as Stalin put total war to work. He had mobilized an entirenation, while the luxury-loving Germans were still spared, at their Führer’s incomprehensiblebehest.30Within days this Soviet offensive had demolished the German army group Centre.Naumann returned from a three-day tour of the sector; one glance at his map toldGoebbels that their eastern front could not fall back much further. ‘Bold as brass,’ hegrimly noted, ‘the Soviets are saying that their push is aimed at Berlin.’31Ministering to the needs of posterity, he ordered the miles of horrific air-raid newsreelfootage transferred to a secure location.32 A rash of suicides broke out among theNazi generals. Even Rommel was in difficulties—‘He has not quite come up to ourexpectations,’ recorded Goebbels on July 4. In the privacy of his bedroom he begansmoking cigarettes again; he needed tablets to sleep as well.33WITH Berlin sweltering in a heatwave he took a train through the bomb-flattenedsouth-eastern suburbs to speak in Breslau on July 7. Magda was already in