Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

whowrote to Morgenthau that his plan was just ‘designed to pitch the vanquished into theswamp of slavery.’ ‘Where hatred speaks,’ warned this émigré, ‘revenge answers.’5Goebbels exploited the Morgenthau Plan as cynically in 1944 as he had Kaufman’sbook three years before, telling his propagandists to emphasize constantly the AmericanJew’s premise of ‘forty million Germans too many in the world.’6 Both the Alliesand the Soviets had the same intent, Goebbels could now suggest in Das Reich:, ‘Namelyto truncate the German people by thirty or forty million.’7From Canada, Churchill travelled onward to Moscow. Reading this hopefully as asign of increasing frictions within the enemy coalition, Goebbels ordered newspapersto abstain from comment. ‘I have the utmost respect,’ he said in private, ‘for thisseptuagenarian who flies half way around the world to glue together a crumblingcoalition on which his entire war strategy depends.’8HE would be the first visitor whom Hitler received after his illness; but the greatforeign policy debate did not take place. Goebbels spent a frustrating Sunday andMonday hanging around the Wolf’s Lair, not even invited to share mealtimes withHitler. Hitler was in bed recovering, but still sickly and feeble.9 He had neither timenor inclination for a long talk—he granted ten minutes here, an hour there—and hehad notÊ even read the Goebbels memorandum. Bormann had given him the gist of it,he said; he flatly refused to replace Ribbentrop, ‘a second Bismarck,’ in his eyes, andthat was that.10Returning by train to Berlin, Goebbels sat in silence with his head in his hands. ToOven, he seemed suddenly to have aged.11 The spectre of the hangman loomed dimlyahead.HITLER had however confided two decisions to him. The first was to mount a surprisecounter-offensive in the west to catch the Allies off balance at their weakest moment—the moment which Clausewitz had prophesied.12 He briefed his western frontGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 871commanders a few days later. Goebbels himself was not overly impressed. ‘It is stronglyto be hoped,’ he wrote skeptically, ‘that it will succeed.’13Hitler’s second major decision was to create a Volkssturm, a people’s army of everyremaining male between the ages of sixteen and sixty.14 That was a task that Goebbelscould throw himself into. Recruiting posters went up on Thursday, October 19.Seventy thousand Berliners volunteered at once, with twenty thousand more on Saturdayand thirty-five thousand the next day. In Silesia, Karl Hanke mustered over onehundred thousand men on the castle square in Breslau. Broadcasting nationwide onOctober 27 Goebbels recalled the words that Clausewitz had used writing of thePrussian ‘Landssturm’ raised to fight Napoleon at Leipzig: ‘It shall spread like a bushfireand shall finally smite the territory on which the invader has set foot.’ ‘We cannot,’said Goebbels, ‘be swayed from our resolute and immutable decision … to fightuntil a peace can be attained which will guarantee to our people their right to life,their national independence and, in a broader sense, the basis of their existence, thusjustifying the sacrifices.’ This sounded very much like a willingness to discuss terms.‘The Führer,’ he continued, ‘with whom I spent several days at his headquarters,stands like a rock amid the surging tide.’15 One of Hitler’s adjutants wrote privatelythat evening, ‘Dr Goebbels just spoke … It’s a treat to hear him every time.’16Not everybody agreed. ‘The German people can do without any propaganda stunts,’wrote one army corporal to Ribbentrop’s wife after listening to the broadcast. ‘Wecan see things just as they are.’ ‘Did you think,’ he challenged Mrs von Ribbentrop,‘that we ordinary squaddies don’t know about the bestial murders committed particularlyby our S.S. in Russia? Where for instance are the 114,000 Jews of Lvóv? Wewere there when they were trucked out of Lvóv in 1943 and 1943 and shot not faraway.’17The spectre looming larger with each news bulletin, Goebbels drove out to Lanketo celebrate his birthday.At midnight Hitler telephoned his greetings, his voice still husky and run down.‘My last weeks have been almost entirely taken up with plotting our revenge,’ hesaid, and Goebbels knew he was alluding to the coming great offensive in the west.872 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHHitler still would not hear of getting rid of Ribbentrop. Disappointed, Goebbelshanded the phone to Magda. They spent the evening together, husband and wife,vainly trying not to talk about the war. ‘It will never let us out of its clutches,’ hedictated the next morning, ‘until it’s all over.’18 It was to be his last birthday. Fortysevenand a half years would separate the humble cradle in Rheydt and the unmarkedgrave in Berlin.Poisoning the already strained atmosphere, the trials of the traitors in the People’sCourt continued all autumn. Dr Dietrich had strongly opposed allowing any newspapercoverage of them. Goebbels had overruled him.19 Hadamowsky observed thefirst day, when Witzleben, Hoepner, and Stieff were tried and sentenced; he praisedJudge Freisler as magisterial, national socialist, and superior.20 Goebbels had commissioneda film of the trial and hangings.21 Hitler however forbade its release fearinga backlash, an ‘undesirable debate’ about the trial.22 He ordered the execution footageparticularly kept under lock and key. Despite this newspapers reported that theBritish legation in Switzerland had shown a print to Swiss officers there. Investigationsshowed that it was a fake furnished by a Mr Saunders, a British secret serviceagent; it was evidently the origin of several post-war legends about the executionsincluding rumours that the men were hanged from meathooks and took ten hours todie.23The further trials brought many unsavoury facts to light about Ribbentrop’s diplomats.Goebbels adroitly brought them to Hitler’s attention. ‘The latest People’s Courttrials,’ he pointed out, ‘and reports that foreign service officials are refusing to returnto the Reich, have shown that the foreign ministry is riddled with traitors andpolitically unreliable elements.’ Perhaps, he mischievously wondered, the defectionof Germany’s European allies was the result of their sabotage?24 Still Hitler refusedto let Ribbentrop go.TRUE to Clausewitz’s prophecy, the Allies had run out of steam. On the western frontthey had also outrun their supplies. In the east, Hitler counter-attacked. In East Prussia,towns like Gumbinnen and Nemmendorf were recaptured, revealing the recent atroci-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 873ties which the Red Army had committed. Göring phoned Goebbels and describedthe