Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

to mince his language about this depressing but ‘by no means hopeless’situation. The Soviets had mastered a similar crisis in 1941, and the British in1940. ‘The misfortunes that have beset us are very painful but they are in no way888 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHsynonymous with the forfeiting of our victory and the consequent dissolution of theReich and the biological extinction of the German people.’ They had again stabilisedan eastern front, he said, and the territories they had lost would be regained. Theindescribable bolshevik atrocities in the east were however ‘no products of theirfantasy.’ ‘We would rather die,’ he said, echoing Stalin’s famous phrase, ‘than capitulate.’What was the consequence of the Allies’ aerial terrorism, he asked: just that theGermans hated them even more. He reiterated that they had to believe in victory,‘unless the Goddess of History be just a whore of the enemy.’ Now however headded that if victory be denied them then he would consider life no longer worthliving, ‘neither for myself, nor for my children, nor for all whom I love and togetherwith whom I have fought for so many years for a better and more noble existence.’He knew, said Goebbels, that people would ask him how victory could still betheirs. He drew on a familiar analogy. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘we’re like the marathon runnerwho has thirty-five of the forty-two kilometres behind him.’23This, his penultimate broadcast, was a brilliant effort. For the most part the receptionwas enthusiastic. ‘When Goebbels speaks,’ said S.S. Oberführer Kurt Meyerthat evening in British captivity,, ‘it really grips you.’ ‘At any rate,’ said an armygeneral, ‘he has achieved … a people which willingly cooperates with the government.’24 Others felt differently. Major-General Bruhn, also in British captivity, calledthe speech ‘the most two-faced, hypocritical exhibition there has ever been,’ andMajor-General von Felbert agreed: ‘What a scoundrel he is. If only I could lay handson that dirty beast, that swine … this lump of filth, this muck-worm!’25‘You can’t give the people confidence with speeches like that,’ remarked Dr Ley tohis mistress, criticizing that Hitler and Goebbels never saw the front line. ‘Thesepeople have no idea how grave the situation on the fronts actually is. If only one ofthem would leave his comfortable four walls and visit the fronts!’26Hitler did in fact visit the Oder front on the first Saturday in March, but whenGoebbels visited him on the fourth he refused even to allow the press to report it.Goebbels found him more depressed than ever, and he was horrified at the uncontrollabletremor in Hitler’s left hand. His sixth sense was however intact. HitlerGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 889bitterly pointed out that while his general staff and Himmler, now commanding thearmy group on the Oder, had expected the Russians to go for Berlin, he had anticipatedthat they would first move on Pomerania, to the north-east. He had as usualproved right. Goebbels wondered why Hitler could not get his own way with hisown general staff. When Hitler stressed the need to hold the Rhine, Goebbels couldonly agree: if the British and Americans once got through into central Germany,there would be no need for them to negotiate with Hitler at all. They talked aboutthe Dresden catastrophe—Hitler’s own half sister Angela had written him an eyewitnessaccount of the horrors. Goebbels proudly revealed that Magda and the childrenwould stay with him in Berlin. While Hitler’s spirits were still high, the HQgenerals with whom Goebbels spoke were very downcast. ‘The atmosphere in theReich chancellery,’ he noted, ‘is pretty grim. I’d prefer not to go there again becauseyou can’t help being infected by the mood.’27Himmler, like Speer before him, was now skulking in bed with nameless disordersin the clinic at Hohenlychen outside Berlin. On March 7 Goebbels visited him andthey warily explored each other’s views for two hours and exchanged venomousremarks about Göring and Ribbentrop. Goebbels said that he had warned Hitler thatby hanging on to Göring he was asking for trouble—he hinted at a top level mutiny;but still Hitler refused to draw the consequences. Himmler showed that he believedtheir only chance lay in doing a deal with the west; Goebbels disagreed—Stalin wasfar more realistic than the hooligans in London and Washington.28He had evidently given up all a deal with the west. General Dittmar noted onFebruary 27, ‘Everybody I speak with in the propaganda ministry is in favour of thewestern solution. But that too is a leap in the dark.’29GENERAL Schörner’s troops counter-attacked in Lower Silesia and recaptured Laubanfrom the Russians. On March 8 Goebbels visited the little market town. Schörnerwas a popular commander, because he was tough. He told the minister he was hangingdeserters in public with a placard round their neck: ‘I’m a deserter and refuse todefend German women and children.’ This was a general after Goebbels’ heart. At890 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHany rate, as he told Hitler afterwards, Schörner’s troops knew two things: that theymight die in the front line; and that they would die in the rear.30While badly damaged by the fighting, Lauban was not as bad as any town that hadbeen bombed, reflected Goebbels. Among the paratroops parading to hear him delivera fiery and wholly improvised speech on its market square he discovered hisformer department head Willi Haegert—and a sixteen year old, Willy Hübner, whohad just earned the Iron Cross for bravery.31 Goebbels saw to it that the picture wentround the world. He shuddered as he drove past the burnt out hulks of Soviet tanks,these steely robots with which Stalin was hoping to subjugate Europe. Back in Görlitzthat evening he spoke in the town hall to thousands of soldiers and Volkssturm men.He told them of the children murdered and the women violated by the Russians, andproclaimed à la Ilya Ehrenburg ‘Slay the Bolsheviks wherever you find them!’ ‘Thisenemy,’ he said, ‘can be beaten because you’ve beaten them before! Make them paydearly in blood for every inch of German soil. We shall fight them in the fields andforests, and in the cities, and in every street and in every building until they have lostso much blood that