Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

than court-martial theplotters.Goebbels and Himmler revealed this decision to the party’s gauleiters assembledin Posen the next morning, August 3.39 In fourteen days, said Goebbels, twenty-twogenerals of army group Centre had deserted to Soviet captivity—and several werealready broadcasting from Moscow.40 Three German armies had been wiped out, heasserted, because the generals in Berlin had devoted less energy to the eastern frontthan to Valkyrie; yet he still insisted that it had been only ‘a tiny clique’ of traitors—‘I think four or five were shot all told, and I think ten at most are standing trial thisMonday.’ On the morrow, he announced, the traitors were to be expelled from thearmy by a court of honour. ‘Those found guilty will be sentenced to death, dressed inconvict garb, and hanged regardless of their rank as field marshal or whatever else.’You could tear out your hair [he continued] at how these accursed criminalsduped their Führer: how often the Führer pleaded for one more regiment andwas told they didn’t have one. But if you needed troops in the air-raid areas—inBerlin one day [November 23/24, 1943] they coughed up sixty thousand men!Then they had them—so you can’t help thinking that they weren’t sending thetroops to the front because they needed them for treachery at home, to put theparty down.Fearing defeat at Moscow in 1941 all Stalin’s men, he alleged, had begged him tosurrender. Stalin had retorted, ‘I’ve only just begun!’ That kind of spirit would stillsave Germany now, just as it had saved England in 1940. ‘Comrades,’ appealedGoebbels, ‘remember how Stalin put out the slogan, “Better to die on your feet thanGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 859survive on your knees”? … A hundred times the Führer has said, “That is the onlyman I regard as my equal.”’Returning briefly from Posen to HQ to hear Hitler address these gauleiters,Goebbels’ train made slow progress as all the routes east were now choked withtroop-transports. He allowed himself a contented grin at this visible proof that totalwar had begun.ALMOST every week he reported to Hitler.41 The post office patched together for hima secure nationwide conference-network to enable him to adress all forty-threegauleiters each noon by loudspeaker telephone. Few of them willingly missed thisdaily briefing. Hans Frank in Kraków and Kurt Daluege in Prague joined the network,as did Epp in Munich and Kaltenbrunner in Berlin. Only his old enemy ErichKoch disdained it and when the police HQ in Königsberg was bombed out at the endof August he did not have the link restored.42By now the Red Army had overrun nearly all of Hitler’s eastern dominions. TheNormandy beachhead had burst, hæmorrhaging Allied troops into France. Goebbelswarned farmers to prepare for a coming food crisis. After attending a GoebbelsCabinet on August 28, agriculture secretary Darré recorded that Goebbels had spokenwell: ‘We’re fighting with our backs to the wall.’43Public sympathy for Dr Goebbels was slipping however. Writing his weekly Reicharticle had become a burden.44 His facile suggestion that the Bomb Plot had broughtthem ‘one step closer to victory’ attracted derision.45 There was a growing belief thatGerman could no longer win—that their leaders could not have bargained for sucha rapid collapse in the west. Kaltenbrunner wrote to Goebbels that the implementationof total war was still taking too long for the public’s liking, and that they lookedto leading personalities ‘and their wives’ to set an example.46 Taking the hint, Goebbelsonce more put Magda to work, making war goods at home at Lanke. ‘As I’m switchboardgirl, manageress, and Jack-of-all-Trades out here,’ Magda wrote patiently to afriend, ‘you’ll always reach me here except for Mondays when I have to turn mywork in at the factory!’47860 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHSpeer began to mutiny as he saw his skilled labour siphoned off into army uniform.He wrote blistering letters, but with Keitel and Bormann backing Goebbels he hadlittle leverage.48 He complained privately that Goebbels was violating agreements,not returning calls, and creating faits accomplis. He demanded that his name nolonger appear in newspaper reports about arms production, since the gauleiters hadtaken charge. He unloaded a sheaf of protest telegrams onto Goebbels’ desk, but theminister remained unmoved.49 ‘You’ve been asked to give up 150,000 of your fifteenmillion men,’ he reminded Speer. That was just one percent. ‘I’d like to see one of mydepartment heads tell me he can’t produce as much with ninety-nine men as withone hundred… No, Mr Speer, arguments like this won’t wash with me!’ Speer, hetold his staff, was about to find out whom he was up against. ‘I can’t help wonderingwhy the traitors put his name on their list.’50To Speer’s chagrin, on the first of September Goebbels learned that nearly all ofthe gauleiters had met their August manpower targets. Three hundred thousand menhad been called up—thirty new divisions. Despite that, arms production had actuallyincreased. Speer had not a leg to stand on. His vanity punctured beyond repairhe none the less flew to the Wolf’s Lair to protest about Goebbels. From there hephoned Goebbels, who gave him short shrift, and Speer ‘acted all cut up,’ as he waspleased to dictate to Otte afterwards.51 He was having his twice-weekly bath thatevening when the phone rang—Hitler’s S.S. adjutant Otto Günsche, instructing himto take the 8:13 P.M. courier train out to Rastenburg. Speer was calling for a showdown.Its departure delayed until nine o’clock while the minister completed histoilette the train arrived at Rastenburg twelve hours later.52 Preempting the debate,however, Goebbels sent Hitler a telegram reporting the three hundred thousandnew troops. ‘I intend,’ he dictated on the train, ‘to plead with the Führer not to letSpeer pick the currents out of my cake.’53THE Führer-bunker had been reinforced yet again, but even with twenty-two feet ofsolid concrete surrounding them they could all hear the rolling thunder of the approachingRussian guns. While Speer glowered, Hitler took the propaganda ministerGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 861over to the map table and showed him where he would emplace those three hundredthousand new men. As the two ministers left the bunker their friendship was behindthem.54Back in Berlin Goebbels found a minute from Hadamowsky reminding him ofClausewitz’s dictum that