Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

all the others‘just as we, for example, have been doing highly successfully in the Reich Air-WarfareInspectorate.’ He boldly guaranteed, if given such powers, to raise fifty newdivisions within three or four months, while Speer would still get additional manpowerfor his arms factories. True, the enemy would crow that the Nazis were attheir last gasp. But had not Churchill—his hero—called for an all-out effort afterDunkirk? Had not Stalin, when Moscow itself was threatened, cried ‘Better to die onGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 835your feet than survive on your knees?’ In another well-aimed dig at Speer, Rosenberg,and Ribbentrop, all authors of many a verbose memorandum, Goebbels remindedHitler that this was the first such document he had submitted in twenty years.With suitable contrition he added:In the twenty years that I have been with you, particularly in 1938 and 1939, Ihave occasioned you much private grief. You always responded with a nobility andcharity that today still fill me with deep emotion when I think of them.‘But,’ he added after these allusions to the Lida Baarova affair and probably theKristallnacht, ‘I believe I have brought no dishonour upon you during this war.’In battles in Roman times, he concluded, the message was, when all seemed lost:Res venit ad triarios! —When the first two ranks fell in battle, he explained, it was upto the third rank, their hardiest warriors, to save the day. ‘This hour now seems tohave struck for the nation… The people wants to do more than we are asking of it.Call in the triarios to fulfil the people’s wish!’48THE events of Goebbels’ next few days are uncertain and not easy to reconstruct. Hisdiary entries of July 19 to 22 inclusive are missing.49 Perhaps he never dictated them.Perhaps he did, but later ordered them destroyed. What is certain is that Goebbels’heroic document of July 18, 1944 was forgotten midst the extraordinary events thatrocked Hitler’s empire two days later.There was an odd prelude. On July 19 a news report was telephoned from Berlinto Stockholm that Heinrich Himmler was shortly taking over all military personnelmatters, currently the business of Generals Schmundt and Fromm. No sooner hadthis report reached Stockholm than all telephone lines from Berlin were cut.50 It isworth recalling that the telephone monitoring agency was Göring’s monopoly. Thenext day was no less crowded with the inexplicable: Field Marshal von Brauchitsch,the retired army C.-in-C., was seen being driven through Berlin in full uniform.51 It836 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHalso seems necessary to report here that General Heinz Guderian, Hitler’s formidableinspector of tank forces, knew full well what was about to happen and elected towait outside Berlin.52 Himmler too kept well away from Berlin until later that day.The behaviour even of Albert Speer, a close associate of both Generals Fromm andWagner, also seemed odd in retrospect to Dr Goebbels. For a long time after theTwentieth of July nobody trusted anybody any more.1 Diary, May 25, 1944. ‘I can not share this viewpoint,’ he noted.2 Speech text in VB, Jun 6, 1944; cf. Heiber, Goebbels-Reden, vol.ii, vol.ii, 323ff.3 Oven, 322f; JG had also seen her in Feb 1944 (ibid., ‘Feb 10, 1944,’ 230.)4 Schäffer proposed to JG on May 25, 1944 printing propaganda on the aluminium foilanti-radar strips (‘chaff’) dropped on Britain (ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01, vol.813).5 Berndt to JG, Jun 3; one copy found in Sep 1964 concealed in the Black Lake, Czechoslovakia(Hoover Libr. TS Germany P96 B531); another in ZStA Potsdam, Rep.50.01,vol.816.—JG dismissed Berndt for an indiscretion at this time (diary, Jun 7; Berndt toHimmler, Jul 11 (T175, roll 33, 1405) and notes, (pp.1399, 1402) and Aug 2 (BDC file,Berndt); promoted to SS Brigadeführer on Apr 30, 1943, Berndt joined the 5th SS Pz. Div.‘Wiking’ on Jan 19, 1945, and died in action at the end of the war in Hungary.6 Rommel left for Germany on Jun 4, 1944 to visit his wife (Rommel diary, and DavidIrving, Trail of the Fox, London & New York, 1977, 361.)7 Oven, ‘Jun 5, 1944,’ 336.8 Diary, Jun 6, 1944.9 See Bormann’s note on the table talk on Jun 5, 1944 (BA file NS.6/166).10 JG had first met Hase on Dec 11, 1940, when he adjudged the new city commandant ‘amagnificent officer with a very positive attitude toward the party.’ By 1941 this honeymoonwas over. Hase threatened to place the ‘Frasquita’ bar off limits to the troops; JG suggestedhe ask his permission first (MinConf., Mar 3, 1941).11 Since Jun 1 the SD had been aware of certain BBC messages whose broadcast whichwould presage the invasion. See Kaltenbrunner’s telex to the OKW, Jun 1, and OKW toForeign Armies West, Jun 2 (NA film T78, roll 451, 6880f); Army Group B war diary, Jun 5(NA film T311, roll 3, 2156ff); and David Irving, Hitler’s War, 633.—At 9:15 P.M. on Jun 5,1944 the Fifteenth Army had intercepted the first such BBC messages. Oven, 336f, says hetried to phone JG with news of this.12 Milch diary, May 7, 1947 (author’s film DI–59).13 Diary, Jun 6; Semler, ‘Jun 6,’ 127f; and Oven, ‘Jun 6, 1944’, 336f.14 Karl Koller diary, Jun 6, 1944 (author’s film, DI–17).GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 83715 Diary, Jun 7, 1944.16 Report by Allen Dulles (OSS), Berne, cited by Donovan to FDR, Jul 5, 1944 (FDRLibr., PSF box 168).17 JG in Das Reich, Jun 11; OSS report, Jun 16, 1944 (NA file RG.226, entry 16, box 0877,file 76692).18 Diary, Jun 16, 1944.19 Oven, ‘Jun 13, 1944,’ 352f.20 George Axelsson in NYT, Jun 11, 1944.21 Diary, Jun 17, 1944.22 Oven, 357f.23 NYT, Jun 18; war diary, ‘Flak Regiment 155(W),’ Jun 17, 1944.24 Diary, Jun 20, 1944.25 Ibid., Jun 14, 1944.26 Ibid., Jun 16, 1944.27 JG, ‘Führen wir einen totalen Krieg?’ in Das Reich, Jul 2; diary, Jun 20, 1944.28 Koller diary, Jun 21, 1944; Freeman, 158.—On Jun 26 JG wrote Hitler recommendingthe Swords to the Knight’s Cross for Emil Beck and Johannes Engel for heroism during theraid (BA file NL.118/106).29 Diary, Jun 22, 1944.30 Ibid., Jun 20, 1944: Kaltenbrunner had furnished him with an SD monograph on ‘Stalinand total war.’31 Ibid., Jun