Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

the Silesian832 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHcapital recovering from the operation on her jaw. Hanke, the gauleiter, met Goebbelsat the station. Both men had matured in the furnace of war, and put their differencesover Magda behind them.34 Hanke was about to marry the high-society divorceewho had borne him a daughter in December 1943 and Magda had developed a romanticinterest in Werner Naumann.35 Goebbels visited her at the clinic; ProfessorStocker had succeeded in extracting the painful nerve without leaving a scar. Husbandand wife exchanged a few stiff pleasantries.36Speaking to fifty-three thousand people gathered in and around Breslau’s CenturyHall Goebbels warned that for Germany it was now or never. There would be no‘next time,’ he said. ‘If we do not throw them back now, our adversaries will eraseGermany and everything German from the face of the globe.’ The Allies, he continued,had reduced cities like Berlin, Hamburg, Mannheim, Kassel, Frankfurt, Cologne,and Essen to smoking ruins (Breslau was still out of their range); but they hadfailed to break the people’s morale.37 He took much the same line in his next articlefor Das Reich:: ‘The greatest political error that our adversaries have committed inthis war is to impose on the Reich a struggle of life and death.’38The Allies listened to his message no less intently than the Silesians. ‘Goebbels,’President Roosevelt learned, ‘has taken and twisted the slogan of unconditional surrenderand made the people feel that the slogan means unconditional annihilation.’39‘He also stresses here the theme,’ the same source reported, ‘which we can expect tohave repeated from now on, that bolshevism is on the threshold of Europe.’40WITH Göring in disgrace, the undeclared fight for Hitler’s succession began. Speerand Goebbels, ostensibly still friends and allies against Göring, jostled each other forcontrol of total war and the supreme authority that would go with it. Leading industrialiststold Goebbels that they had investigated the Wehrmacht and found hundredsof thousands of idle troops, just as he had told Hitler. But Speer too had reported thisto Hitler; Speer suggested a new Total War committee.41Speer thought he had a trump card. After lunch one day he showed to GoebbelsPeenemünde’s secret film of the coming rocket missile. The film left Goebbels breath-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 833less. Hitler had told him more details of this fourteen-ton projectile when they lastmet—it was ‘like something out of the imagination of Jules Verne,’ he told his staff.42In full colour the newsreel showed the bomb-proof underground factory where slavelabourers were assembling the rocket engines. At a firing range deep in Poland aspecial rocket transporter hoisted the ‘V–2’ upright onto its fins. Repeated launchesfilmed from inside the blast-proof control bunker showed the missiles lifting off andgathering speed above the surrounding tree-tops, balanced atop a blinding whiteflame, and vanishing into the blue sky leaving only jagged vapour trails. Speer toldGoebbels that at the height of its trajectory the V–2 was one hundred miles above thesurface of their earth. ‘If we could show this film in every movie theatre,’ exclaimedGoebbels as he hobbled out past the S.S. men guarding the door, ‘the most hardboiledpessimist could no longer doubt our victory.’43They talked until two in the morning. Speer told him that during June they hadturned out 3,200 fighter planes (he had just taken control of aircraft production.)He would increase output to four thousand by closing down four-engined bomberproduction. He agreed that there were a million men to spare in the economy. Hesuggested that Hitler would be more receptive now than when Goebbels had lastventured to speak with him. Goebbels however shied away from another marathondebate and decided to set down his views on paper.44 Interestingly, Speer again decidedto get at Hitler first and submitted another paper on total war to Hitler twodays later, appropriating many of Goebbels’ ideas as his own.45There was little time to lose. Thundering hordes of tanks and men were bearingdown on East Prussia. Hitler flew back to his Wolf’s Lair HQ there on July 16; thearmy’s general staff HQ, awed at the Russian approach, moved five thousand of itsofficers in the opposite direction. ‘I’d like to turf out every cowardly man-jack ofthem,’ snarled Goebbels.46 The chief of general staff General Zeitzler resigned, pleadinga nervous breakdown.47Hitler carried on regardless, unaware that the hand of history was about to beraised against him.834 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHDATED July 18, 1944, Goebbels’ memorandum on Total War, which we shall examinefirst, was a masterpiece of advocacy. In its final form it was forty-one pages long, andphrased as a personal appeal from one of Hitler’s oldest supporters. ‘I have stood byyou for twenty years now,’ he wrote, ‘and believe I have always been a staunch companionwhen the going was roughest.’ Events of the last weeks, he said, had provedhow thinly their front lines were manned. While his faith in the party was boundless,that in the Wehrmacht was ‘badly shaken.’ Given the right powers, the gauleiterswould be able to raise vast quantities of manpower. He believed that Speer too couldrelease more currently exempted young men from industry to the forces. ‘We mustact today,’ he insisted, ‘if we want to see results in three or four months’ time.’Germany needed a firm hand, he argued. In Berlin, each day still brought invitationsto official receptions and other functions. Events had rendered Rosenberg’sministry totally redundant. Nobody would miss Ribbentrop’s press office either if itwas dissolved. During the winter air raids, he recalled, some government agenciesvanished for weeks, but nobody had missed them. ‘How primitively we worked earlierin the party,’ he argued, tugging at Hitler’s nostalgia-strings. Hitler himself mustnow give sufficient authority to ‘men of backbone and character’ to take charge—men not yet wearied by this war (a sideswipe at Speer, who had returned only in Mayfrom his three-month convalescence.) Yet another ‘committee’ such as Speer wasproposing would do more harm than good, objected Goebbels. ‘I went along withthe farce of the “Committee of Three” and would warn most urgently against anyrevival of it.’After shamelessly reminding Hitler of his own achievements since 1926 Goebbelsurged him to give ‘a man of your confidence’ the job of coordinating