Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

posters advertising Goebbels’speech (on ‘National Socialism or Communism’) at the famous Bürgerbräu beerhall.84 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHHitler embraced him before the audience, amidst cheers and tumult, and Goebbelsnoticed tears in his eyes.46Over dinner he took in the unfamiliar faces around him—Hitler’s “decent, calm,friendly, clever, reserved” private secretary Rudolf Hess; his meticulous treasurerFranz Xaver Schwarz; his diminutive general manager Philipp Bouhler. Hitler showedthem over the new Party HQ at No.50 Schelling Strasse, and again talked of Italy andBritain as future allies and warned of the danger from Russia. On social policies heoffered perspectives which had not occurred to Goebbels before, so he claimed. ‘Hehas thought everything through… A hothead like this might just become my Führer.I bow to my superior, to this political genius!’ On April 9 Hitler signed an Ausweis(certificate) for the three to run the Ruhr gau until further notice.47Goebbels took flowers round to Hitler the next morning and they talked againabout foreign policy. ‘His case is compelling. But I think he has still not quite sized upthe problem of Russia.’ Nonetheless, the two men were finding eachother. ‘I stronglyurge you,’ Goebbels wrote to Gregor Strasser on April 19, ‘to arrange to talk thingsover with Hitler as soon as possible.’ That day he and Hitler drove up to Stuttgart tospeak at two meetings and again Hitler flung his arms around him. ‘Adolf Hitler,’ theyoung man wrote mushily in his diary back at Elberfeld, ‘I love you: because you aregreat and simple at the same time—what we call a genius.’48He returned to Munich for the Party’s annual general meeting at the Bürgerbräuon May 21. The minutes show that 657 Party members were present. Goebbels recordedthat he was greeted with a ‘storm of joy and enthusiasm.’ The minutes wereless lyrical. They show that Hitler mentioned him only once in his two-hour statement:I am glad to say that this year has seen several first class speakers come to thefore, with our friend Goebbels from Elberfeld out in front (applause).49Goebbels put it more vividly: ‘He publicly lauded me to the skies,’ he recorded.THE regional headquarters had moved into a suite of five rooms at No.8 AuerschuleStrasse in Elberfeld.50 Goebbels was not happy with his own position in the gau how-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 85ever. On June 6 the local party officials (Bezirk leaders) staged a meeting to resolvewhich of the three should be actual gauleiter. The choice fell on Kaufmann. Lutzehinted to Goebbels that Kaufmann had rigged the vote with the help of Koch andJoseph Terboven.51 Disappointed, Goebbels decided to leave the Ruhr. He travelledto Berlin two days later, ostensibly to speak at Spandau and Neukölln, in fact to talkthings over with Gauleiter Schlange. Several of Schlange’s men asked Goebbels totake over. For the time being he declined, unable to decide between Munich andBerlin.FOR the time being he is still preoccupied with the opposite sex. They are a welcomedistraction from work, a habit rather like the cigarette smoking which he now findsimpossible to give up. On June 10, 1926 he receives a letter from Else Janke, the firstof several Dear-John letters from her. He asks his diary callously, ‘Has the right momentnow come?’52 Dumping this half-Jewess will make way for other less compromisingfemales and for his own possible transfer to Munich away from the politicalintrigues in Elberfeld.His roving eye appraises every handsome woman regardless of social or maritalstanding. He finds Lutze’s wife Paula ‘bewitching,’ and decides that he is somewhat inlove with her.53 He ogles anonymous women on seaside vacations and indeed whynot? He is young and eligible. ‘Opposite me,’ he writes one July day in a Berchtesgadenhotel, ‘sits a beautiful, beautiful woman.’ He spends three days stalking this gorgeousbrunette— ‘she stays demure, and I am a silly ass. I am running after her like aschoolboy.’54That same day, as he is visiting the Obersalzberg for the first time, his carriageblocks the narrow mountain lane, immobilized by a broken axle. A blonde countrywench is unable to get past until he stands in front of the horses. ‘Oh what a beautyyou are,’ he remarks in his diary. ‘She laughs out loud and waves to me long after. Wewrite her a little note—the coachman’s lad takes it back to her—asking her to makea signal on the morrow.’55 That is the last he hears of her.86 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHHe gamely accepts defeat, aware of his cruel handicap. ‘My foot bothers me a lot,’he writes. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’ ‘Every woman,’ he writes helplessly thatsame day, ‘goes straight to my blood. I chase around like a starving wolf. But I ambashful as a child.’56HE had all but found his way to Hitler.Hitler had come north for the first time spending the third week of June 1926 inthe Ruhr and Rhineland where he addressed private audiences at Elberfeld, Bochum,and Essen. At Essen he spoke to two thousand, and met Director Arnold, their localbacker. Goebbels studied him closely, seeing him alternately as a likeable humanbeing, as a towering intellect, and as a wayward, wilful character. He studied histalents for gesture, mimicry, and oratory. ‘A born agitator,’ he concluded. ‘One couldconquer the world with that man.’57 In Essen on the eighteenth Hitler faced Ruhrindustralists for the first time and lectured them on his economic and social policies.‘Fabulous,’ recorded Goebbels, echoing the frankly admiring language of the localRheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung. ‘He can turn his hand to literally anything.’58 Beforeleaving the Ruhr the next day Hitler finally ruled that Kaufmann should be the solegauleiter. Goebbels could ill conceal his chagrin.59It encouraged him therefore that at the Party’s first annual rally for three years,held at Weimar on July 3–4, 1926, the contingent from Berlin liked him (the capitalhad sent four companies of S.A. stormtroopers); it provided an added impetus thatone of the Berliners, Josephine von Behr, an affectionate girl who had plied him withchocolates in Berlin in February, was there too.60 His own prepared talk on propagandahad Hitler in stitches.61 Hitler himself talked on politics, ideologies, and organisation.‘Profound and mystical,’ summarized Goebbels. ‘Almost like a Gospel.’The