Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

an underground army of partisans—was a flop.9 So far only oneman, the enemy-appointed mayor of Aachen, had been assassinated. Goebbels plannedto take over ‘Werewolf’ himself, giving it a newspaper and a radio station, using allthe tactics that he had developed in Angriff in the early Thirties. He even had a new‘Isidor’ in his sights—he was planning the assassination of the newly installed ‘Jewishpolice chief’ of American occupied Cologne as well as Heinrich Vogelsang, a ‘formerGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 899Nazi nincompoop’ whom the Americans had appointed the mayor of Rheydt, hishome town.10 The Americans immediately founded ‘the first free newspaper’ inRheydt, just to spite Goebbels.11 Worse, an American army lieutenant held a Passoverceremony for three hundred Jewish soldiers in his parental home in DahlenerStrasse—a Corporal Sidney Talmud of Brooklyn set up a camp stove on the familyporch and made pancakes for three hours.12 This really stuck in Goebbels’ craw.Even now, he complained, the war was still not being fought radically enough. The‘weakling’ Otto Dietrich was wet-blanketing his every move. When Goebbels announcedthat the mayor of Aachen had been ‘sentenced by a national tribunal’ Dietrichkilled the announcement pointing out that it was untrue.Hitler needed a Goebbels now, as defender of Berlin, more than a Dietrich. Hetold Goebbels that Dietrich was sacked.13 He had just dismissed General Guderiantoo—the mystery man of the Twentieth of July. Guderian, he said, had lost his nerveagain, just as in the Battle for Moscow.14 (This was a signal for Hitler to launch intowell-worn reminiscences on how he, single-handed, had saved the entire army thatwinter of 1941–42 after his generals had thrown their armies into retreat.) Hitlerbrooded on the fiasco that Sepp Dietrich had just suffered with his Sixth S.S. PanzerArmy in Hungary. He told Goebbels privately that he had come to accept that Himmlerhad no strategic talents after all. ‘Punctilious, but no warlord,’ was his assessment.The army’s Ferdinand Schörner, whose army group was fighting magnificently inCzechoslovakia, was the only general that Hitler spoke well of—‘one hell of a guy,the type you can blindly rely on,’ said Hitler, and Goebbels saw tears start into hiseyes again.15THEY parted, each invigorated by the other as so often before. Goebbels did not seehim again for two weeks. ‘One sometimes has the impression,’ he recorded on April4, 1945, modifying his famous argument of 1943, ‘that the struggling German nationis breaking out in a sweat at this, the direst moment of its crisis: and for thelayman it is hard to tell whether this is the herald of recovery or the harbinger ofdeath.’16900 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHAs the last ‘V–2’ rockets were launched at targets in Belgium, the S.S. newspaperDas Schwarze Korps adopted the infelicitous line that while Germany now had no hopeof avoiding military defeat ‘The Idea’ must live on.17 Dr Goebbels inveighed againstthe ‘too clever by half’ intellectuals who had penned such defeatist drivel. He issuedto the editors of surviving newspapers orders to underscore every act of old-fashionedvalour that came to their attention, and print stories about Allied atrocitiestoo—to prove that the British and Americans were no less barbarian than thebolsheviks.Under the code-name Werewolf he had persuaded Hitler to authorize the Luftwaffe’sfirst and last major kamikaze operation on April 7, 1945.18 While the fighter-controlradio wavelengths were swamped with female choirs singing the Horst Wessel anthemand voices urging the charioteers to die for Germany, over 180 Me109 fighterpilots took off that day pledged to ram the American bombers. Although seventysevenpilots died in the clash over the Steinhuder Meer west of Hanover, only twentythreebombers were destroyed. Goebbels expressed disappointment at this meagreyield of so much individual bravery.19That next day’s leader article in Das Reich that used radical language; even he found,reviewing the article, that he had ‘somewhat abandoned’ his previous ‘moderationand reserve.’ The one slender consolation that he offered was that one way or theother an end was indeed in sight. ‘The hour that precedes the sunrise,’ he remindedhis readers, ‘is always the darkest of the night. The stars that have cast their gentleglow have already subsided and the deepest darkness draws in the approaching dawn.None need fear that it will forget to come. The black veil of night will suddenly sinkand the sun will soar into the blood red firmament.’ As it was in nature, he concluded,so it was in the lives of men and nations, particularly in war. ‘We are confrontedby bloodthirsty and vengeful foes who will put into effect all of their diabolicalthreats if once they get the chance. Let nobody deceive himself on that score. Theone side will decimate the German people by bullets in the nape of the neck and bymass deportations, the other will ausrotten by terror and starvation.’20GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 901Hunger already stalked the streets. Learning that two hundred housewives hadstormed two bakeries in the impoverished suburb of Rangsdorf, Goebbels had twoof the ringleaders beheaded that night and ordered the fact announced by wall-posterand via the muted voice of Berlin’s cable radio. He hoped to hear no more aboutmobs storming bakeries after that.21 He asked his driver if the Berliners would fightto defend their city. Rach answered bluntly, ‘They see no point. For them the war’salready lost.’22That weekend Magda came downtown from Schwanenwerder. ‘A rather melancholyevening,’ Goebbels noted, ‘in which one piece of bad news after another camecrashing in.’ ‘We often find ourselves desperately asking where it is all going to end,’he added. They talked over their own rapidly approaching end. Ribbentrop and Göringwere both extending feelers to the British via Switzerland, Sweden, and Italy. Unlikethe Russians and even the Americans, the British slapped down every such manœuvre.‘There is not the slightest opening here,’ Goebbels noted. The Russians were allegedlydemanding East Prussia as the price of armistice and this was an impossibledemand for Hitler.23 A few days later Goebbels told Rach that the other ministerswere leaving—Göring had already sent his wife and child to safety; but, he added,Magda and he had decided to stay.24The Red Army was already overrunning Vienna. Goebbels blamed this on the softnessof their gauleiter von Schirach. He