Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Hase inquired whether the kitchens could provide a meal,and there was a courteous exchange about whether a Rhine wine or a Moselle wouldcomplement it better before Goebbels turned to more pressing business. After awhile, Hase asked Remer, ‘Major, could you ask the minister whether I can go—mywife is waiting for me.’At this moment however an S.S. man brought a message in to Goebbels. A searchof Hase’s office had turned up a rubber stamp reading ‘Stauffenberg’ and a pad ofblank gate-passes. ‘I am sorry,’ said Goebbels, ‘but I must ask you to remain.’39Shortly General von Kortzfleisch, the one-eyed commander of Wehrmacht DistrictIII (Berlin) appeared at Goebbels’ door. No doubt anxious to establish his credentialshe snapped at Hase, ‘Well, Mr von Hase! You didn’t expect to find me here!’He told Goebbels that earlier that day General Olbricht had placed him under closeGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 847arrest when he failed to declare for the plotters, and had replaced him with GeneralBaron von Thüngen (the judge on whom Goebbels’ enemies had banked at that morning’shearing against Colonel Martin). Kortzfleisch unhesitatingly identified Fromm,Olbricht, and Stauffenberg as the ringleaders.40Goebbels spared him, although there were sound reasons not to. This was an eveningwhen he turned a blind eye on many an officer’s shortcomings. Even Guderian’sactions seemed ambivalent, but Goebbels thought highly of him and Hitler wouldshrewdly appoint him to replace Zeitzler the next day. All of these men—includingHase, Witzleben, Thüngen, Schöne—would eventually be hanged. In fact death wasalready beginning its harvest. General Fromm had already had his fellow-conspiratorsOlbricht, Quirnheim, and Stauffenberg shot by firing squad in the light of motorheadlamps behind the Bendler Strasse building.He hoped he had thus saved his own neck. Brought up to Goebbels’ study, the sixfoottwo general, until now commander of Germany’s reserve army, demanded tobe allowed to speak by phone with Hitler. Goebbels ordered his arrest. He believedhe was beginning to understand. So this was why the barracks were full of idle troops.Fromm, Olbricht, & Co had been cynically holding them back for their Valkyrie. ‘I’llsee to it, general,’ he told Kortzfleisch, ‘that your barracks empty. And that they arerefilled. Bank on it!’ Inadvertently, the traitors had made Total War a near-reality, andhis heart sang with joy.His house overflowed with fearful ministers, party officials and prisoners. Arrivingthere after midnight Major Balzer found fifty people milling around upstairs. Somebodyasked him to keep an eye on Fromm. Still feigning innocence, Fromm relatedthat after returning from the Wolf’s Lair that afternoon Stauffenberg and Olbrichthad placed him under arrest. ‘The background as described by Fromm was a bitobscure,’ reported Balzer, ‘and he was very agitated as he regarded his conveyance toGoebbels’ home as a kind of arrest.’ After ten minutes’ questioning by Kaltenbrunner,Fromm was removed—‘It certainly looked like an arrest to me,’ reported Balzer thenext day.41 Smoking nervously, Goebbels telephoned Magda in Dresden and told hersome officers had tried to murder Hitler. She burst into tears. More officers arrived848 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHduring the night, including General Hermann Reinecke and Colonel-General Stumpff,commanding Luftwaffe forces within the Reich. Göring telephoned an offer of flakunits to crush the army revolt. Goebbels turned it down. After midnight Himmlerput in a belated appearance. His explanation that he had been ‘directing counteroperationsfrom outside Berlin’ seemed reasonable enough. In Goebbels’ studyHimmler expressed relief that Goebbels had used the army itself and not the WaffenS.S. to crush the putsch. There must not be the slightest blemish on the army’s name.42It was now July 21. The fated day had passed. At three-forty A.M. Bormann issued atriumphant dispatch. ‘The traitors’ action can be regarded as at an end.’43 Aroundfour-thirty Goebbels emerged from his study and announced, ‘Gentlemen, the putschis over.’44 He escorted Himmler to his car and shook hands with him. By five hishouse was almost deserted. He took Naumann, Schwägermann, and Oven upstairs,pausing on each tread to tell them more tidbits. At the top he briefly shared a littletable with a bronze bust of the Führer. ‘That was like a purifying thunderstorm,’ hesaid, irreverently propping an elbow on the famous quiff. He lit another cigarette.Months later he would reflect, ‘The Twentieth of July was in fact not only the nadir ofour war crisis, but Day One of our resurgence.’45WHILE Hitler called all his ministers to the Wolf’s Lair on July 21, Goebbels necessarilystayed in Berlin. At his ministerial conference he narrated what had happened,though with cosmetic flourishes. The tanks assembling in Berlin, he averred, wereGeneral Guderian’s, which ‘the Führer had provided for protection.’ Kortzfleischhad been magnificent. Hase, he scoffed, had behaved like a fool on his arrest—askingif he ‘might telephone his wifey’ and might he have a sandwich and a bottle of wine,‘preferably a Moselle.’ It was their duty, Goebbels insisted, to ensure that no stainattached to the army’s other generals. Himmler, he revealed, had told him that Frommhad kept six hundred thousand soldiers idle in Germany; these would now be releasedto the fighting front. Thus, this putsch was a real breakthrough toward TotalWar.46GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 849Some of his listeners remained unconvinced. Immanuel Schäffer wondered howall this could have escaped Himmler’s notice. And what about Göring’s wiretappers?47 The London press had a field day, with sarcastic references to several ofGoebbels’ previous utterances. Goebbels instructed his outposts to organise spontaneousopen-air demonstrations of the public’s happiness and joy.48Inevitably, he claimed that Hitler’s ‘miraculous escape’ was further proof that theirFührer was protected by Providence. Otherwise he ordered the putsch glossed over,like the Hess affair. He released no word of the plotters’ aims, let alone of the truescale of the conspiracy which had extended from the eastern front to Paris and Vienna.49 The traitors remained for Goebbels a ‘minuscule clique of reactionary officers.’Despite all his efforts however there was enduring damage to the army; it violatedsensibilities that their traitors had been hanged, rather than shot. Officers felt thattheir entire caste had been impugned.50 Indeed, the Twentieth of July left residualissues which were still unresolved in Germany fifty years later.1 RMVP circular; in files of Propaganda-Staffel north-west, Jul 24, 1944 (Hoover Libr.,Lerner