Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

line was to be: ‘There is no difference between the bolshevik atrocitiesin East Prussia and the British and American atrocities on the Rhine.’ Their enemies’aim, he suggested, was the same—death to all Germans. ‘Gangsters at work!’ mustbe the new leitmotif of their propaganda.10At midday on Saturday February 3 one thousand and three B–17s attacked thecentre of Berlin, dropping 2,265 tons of bombs with the intent of creating maximumcasualties and chaos among the refugees thronging into the capital. ‘Five thousandpounders,’wrote one American bombardier, adding inexplicably: ‘Shacked [i.e., killed]women and children!’ Although most of the flak had been withdrawn to the Oderfront, twenty-one B–17s were destroyed over the city, and ninety-three sufferedbattle damage.11 The chancellery was hit again; fires raged, the streets were festoonedin trolley-bus wires, but by late afternoon virtual normality had returned.Hitler began a troglodyte existence in the bunker beneath his chancellery garden.It was not easy for Goebbels to hobble down the steps into the labyrinth of rooms,since Hitler and his staff occupied the remotest rooms at the deepest level, fifty feetbeneath the grass and shrubbery. For a time he called on Hitler about every otherday.12 The Führer’s cramped study was tiled in olive green and white, and sparselyfurnished—Anton Graff’s famous portrait of Frederick the Great, a faded photographof Hitler’s mother, and a sofa upholstered in white and blue being the onlyaccoutrements.*With the Russians now so close, on the last day of January 1945 Goebbels had sentSchwägermann out to Lanke, his lakeside mansion on the Bogensee, to evacuateMagda, their six children and two governesses into the air raid shelter atSchwanenwerder. The next day he declared Berlin a ‘fortress city.’ Surrounded byher brood, Magda was in a world of self-delusion. From Berthe the milliner’s shepurchased a green velvet hat, a black turban, and a brown hat trimmed with fur; she* Of which a bloodstained shred survives in private hands in the United States.886 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHmentioned that ‘when things calmed down’ she’d like to have a brown hat remodelled.13 ‘The news you’ll be hearing isn’t rosy,’ she wrote to Harald, now in Britishcaptivity, on February 10. ‘We’re all sound in heart and health; but as the wholefamily belongs together at times like these we’ve shut down Bogensee and we’ve allmoved back into Berlin. Despite all the air raids our house is still standing and everybodyhere—including your grand-mother and the rest of the family—is well housed.The children find it splendid that there’s no school and, thank God, they’ve noticednothing of the seriousness of the hour.’ ‘Papa and I,’ she concluded, ‘are full ofconfidence and we’re doing our duty as best we can.’14She often thought of Hanke, and once or twice they spoke until telephoning wasno longer possible as the Russian armies engulfed and encircled Breslau; Hanke, aman of undeniable bravery, wrote to his wife that he intended to hold on until helpcame from outside. ‘I can see at any rate,’ he said, ‘that the Reich will not succumband that is the main thing.’15 The gauleiters, Goebbels had often noted, were all cutfrom a different cloth than the generals. ‘You can be sure,’ he wrote to Julius Streicheron his sixtieth birthday, ‘that right now we are doing everything conceivable to bringthis great fight for the destiny of our people to a happy and victorious end.’16ON the following night, February 13, the British bombers crowned their orgy ofdestruction by obliterating the hitherto unscarred capital of Saxony, Dresden. Overcrowdedwith a million fleeing human beings—refugees, prisoners, evacuees, andchildren—a city innocent of air raid shelters, with all of its flak batteries removed tothe eastern front and its fighter squadrons grounded for lack of fuel, Dresden becamean inferno within minutes. Over a hundred thousand men, women, and childrenwere choked to death or burned alive in the ensuing firestorms as this andanother British raid three hours later engulfed and incinerated the city. For days afterthis apocalypse soldiers cremated the bodies five hundred at a time on makeshiftpyres in the city centre. Tens of thousands more remained interred beneath the ruins.On February 14 Goebbels saw Hitler at 7:15 P.M. for three-quarters of an hour. Hedemanded that Göring be stood before the People’s Court for negligence; but againGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 887Hitler weakly refused. Several times afterwards he had fierce arguments with Hitlerabout Göring and his way of life; both men agreed that Admiral Dönitz was a shiningexample, as Raeder had been before him. Goebbels even suggested Dönitz shouldtake over the Luftwaffe. On February 17 he proposed that they formally repudiatethe Geneva Convention—why else should Allied pilots feel they could murder, slash,and burn with impunity? They should start executing Allied prisoners: one for eachair raid victim.17Hitler told him to draft a proposal.Two days later, according to one source, the secret twelve-page document wasready in Goebbels’ safe.18 Several people claimed the credit for preventing the planfrom being implemented. Ribbentrop’s opposition was probably the deciding factorfor Hitler.19 Hitler told Goebbels later, with noticeable regret, that he had allowedHimmler, Keitel, and Bormann to talk him out of it.20 Fritzsche told interrogatorsthat he delayed the radio announcement until the order was rescinded.21DRESDEN was unmistakably the beginning of the end. As Goebbels contemplated Hitler’sstoical attitude to the growing certainty of defeat, comparisons with Frederickthe Great again crowded in on him. He put it to Hitler on February 27 that their onlyaim now must be to set a heroic example to their children’s children, in case a similarcrisis should ever beset Germany. Hitler agreed: it was necessary to work for one’speople, even if the achievements were only ephemeral. ‘At any moment,’ he pointedout, ‘a comet might crash into the Earth and destroy this planet in one mighty fireball.Even so, every man must do his duty to the bitter end.’22On the last day of February Goebbels broadcast to the nation for the first time inweeks. He spoke for seventy minutes. ‘Seen purely militarily,’ he admitted straightaway, ‘the launching of the successful Soviet offensive from the Baranov bridgeheadhas sharply changed the general war situation, and not to our advantage.’ He was not,he said, going