Goebbels57: Kill off the PrisonersIF Goebbels now realized that the war could not be won he kept this realization tohimself. On January 12, 1945 Stalin’s great offensive from the Baranov bridgeheadon the Vistula began. With his eastern front crumpling Hitler abandoned hisoffensive in the Ardennes and returned to Berlin. The Red Army did not halt until itreached the river Oder, just east of Berlin.From January 24 on Goebbels visited Hitler’s chancellery almost every eveningfor half an hour or an hour alone with Hitler.1 After their talk on January 28, hereturned home sunk in thought: ‘It is true,’ he dictated to Richard Otte for the diaryafterwards, ‘that a great man has to await his great hour, and that there’s nothing onecan do by way of suggestions that will help him. It’s more a matter of instinct than ofany logical process. If the Führer should succeed in turning back the tide of events—and I am firmly convinced that the chance will one day come for that—then he willbe not the man of the century, but the man of the millennium.’2With large sections of the front now fighting on German soil propaganda’s greatesthour had come, Goebbels instructed the gau propaganda officials on February 5;ugly reports were coming in of collapsing troop morale. Their propaganda must befirm, realistic, and unhysterical, and not deal in illusions. ‘This is not the time forempty phrases,’ he said. They had to offer proof that Germany could still triumph.‘Unfortunately it’s not possible to speak openly and authoritatively of the weightiestpolitical factor in our favour, namely the problems currently facing the enemy and884 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHthe friction within the enemy coalition, as any such utterances would damage thispromising development.’3 Goebbels exploited the aftermath of the Ardennes battleto spread rumours over Radio Arnhem and by breaking into the B.B.C.’s news broadcaststhat the British Field-Marshal Montgomery was claiming all the credit for haltingHitler’s offensive. It was one of his more successful gambits. The Americans weretaken in and Goebbels’ English counterpart Brendan Bracken had to make a formalapology to General Eisenhower.4Sustaining Hitler’s morale became no less important than that of the home front.As the Ardennes operations went into reverse, Goebbels scoured the books for historicparallels. He sent him one such passage from a book on Alexander the Great.5During February he began re-reading Thomas Carlyle’s eight-volume biography ofFrederick the Great which he had first dipped into fifteen years earlier.6 VisitingHitler at the end of the month, he related several chapters of the monarch’s life storywhich, Goebbels recorded, greatly moved them both. ‘What an example to us all,’he noted early in March. ‘And what a solace and comfort in these dark days!’7 He sawan uncanny parallel between the foppish Hermann Göring and the king’s fecklessbrother, and sent that chapter over to Hitler underlining the harsh treatment that theking had meted out to his sibling.THE air raids continued with unremitting violence. The Ufa company had compiled ahorrifying feature-length documentary on them, but as Ribbentrop had commissionedit Goebbels forbade its release.8 A feud, after all, was a feud.In mid January his ministry briefed every gauleiter on the latest British bombingtactics: four to six hundred heavy bombers would attack small cities repeatedly, saturatingevery square yard with incendiaries and with high explosive bombs fused todelay detonation long enough for the weapon to penetrate to the crowded basementsof even the tallest buildings.9 The morale problems multiplied. The view becamewidespread that an occupation of Germany by the Anglo-Americans would notbe ‘all that bad’ if it put an end to the bombing and the strafing attacks. Goebbelscircularized the gauleiters on the need to counter this dangerous defeatism by propa-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 885gating a base hatred of the imperialist and ideologically bankrupt British and Americans.The new
