Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

resolved that the Russians would not have awalkover in Berlin. Volkssturm and Hitler Youth battalions were already drilling atthe bridges and streets which they would have to hold. But, Goebbels learned, stocksof gasoline, food, and coal were already running low. The Americans boasted thatthey had captured one hundred tons of Gold, the entire German reserves, in a saltminein Thüringia. Goebbels recalled that he had opposed Funk’s decision to evacuatethe Gold from Berlin.25 The railway board now admitted that they had taken stepsto transport the two wagon-loads of Gold back to Berlin—but the Easter weekendhad intervened.26General Theodore Busse, whose Ninth Army was holding the Oder front, had assuredhim that he would hold off the coming Soviet offensive. Goebbels hoped that902 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHin the west General Walther Wenck’s Twelfth Army would seize the initiative againstthe exposed American flank in Thüringia. As for the wider outlook, he took theoptimistic view to Count von Krosigk that all that mattered now was ‘staying on ourfeet’ until the enemy coalition fell apart.27 The finance minister argued that it was notenough to wait, but that the Reich could not expect serious results from sending outsecond-class foreign ministry men—a reference to Ribbentrop’s recent abortive peaceinitiative in Stockholm.28 ‘Goebbels agreed spiritedly,’ recorded Krosigk in his diary,‘and confided to me that certain feelers have already been put out.’ Goebbels madeno secret that he still coveted Ribbentrop’s job, and hinted that Krosigk might put aword in with Hitler. When the count pointed out that he had not seen Hitler foryears, Goebbels offered to set up an audience: Krosigk might start with budgetarymatters, the Führer would talk sooner or later about the broader situation, ‘andthat’s where you jump in.’ Nothing came of it.ON the twelfth Goebbels paid his regular Thursday visit to the front, the Oder bridgeheadat Küstrin, only a few miles from Berlin, his car loaded with cigarettes andcognac for the men. Like all populist statesmen it thrilled him to descend from theOlympian heights to the levels at which the ordinary man fought, lived, and died. Hesat up smoking and drinking with General Busse’s staff until midnight had long passed.Busse reassured him that his army would withstand the coming Soviet onslaught.‘We’ll stand fast here until the Engländer kicks us up the arse,’ he roared.29‘If there is any justice in history,’ Goebbels declaimed to the officers, ‘a turningpoint must soon come—one like the miracle of the House of Brandenburg in theSeven Years War.’‘Who’s the empress who’s going to snuff it this time, then?’ asked one of the colonels,in a tone just short of sarcasm.The propaganda minister drove back to Berlin. An air raid was under way. Fromtwenty-five miles away he could see the slow, lurid flashes as the blockbusters exploded,the glittering showers of marker flares and target indicators cascading out ofthe black, starless skies above—‘The darkness before the dawn.’ The streets wereGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 903deserted as he drove up to No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse, but there was a knot ofpeople waiting for him on the steps.A babble of voices greeted him. Somebody thrust a Reuter’s bulletin into his hands:The American president Roosevelt had died at Warm Springs that afternoon.30Goebbels clutched the slip of paper, his polished, receding forehead illuminated bythe fires started by a shower of incendiaries on the Hotel Adlon—his gau headquartersnow—and the Reich Chancellery further down the street. His eyes glistened,though with Goebbels true tears only rarely came. ‘Champagne!’ he finally croaked.Was the Nazi sun not now about to soar into a new, blood-red firmament? ‘Champagne!Bring out our finest champagne—and put me through to the Führer!’31‘Mein Führer,’ he shouted down the line. ‘It is written in the stars that for us thesecond half of April will bring the turning point. This is Friday the Thirteenth. Theturning point has come.’1 Diary, Apr 1, 1945.2 Ibid., Mar 27, 1945.3 Ibid., Mar 30, 1945.4 Ibid., Apr 1, 1945.5 Ibid., Mar 30, 1945. On this episode see too JG’s conversation with Schwerin von Krosigkon Apr 9: Krosigk diary, Apr 13, 1945. USFET document DE.443/DIS.202 (Hoover Libr.Lerner papers; and Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection.)6 Diary, Mar 30, 1945.7 So he told Krosigk; and see JG diary, Mar 24, 1945.8 Ibid., Mar 31, 1945.9 See ibid., Mar 27. As it was set up under SS Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann,JG refused to have anything to do with it. See the interrogation of SS-ObergruppenführerOhlendorf, Jul 7, 1945: CSDIC(UK) report, SRGG.1322. The RMVP had set up its own‘Werwolf’ Referat (section) under Hitler Jugend Bannführer (colonel) Dietrich, 31, a radicalNazi in Berlin. See US Seventh Army report SAIC/CIR/4, ‘Propaganda OrganisationRMVP and RPL,’ Jul 10, 1945 (NA file RG.332, entry MIS-Y, box 116).10 Diary, Mar 31; he had begun plotting Vogelsang’s assassination by dependable BerlinNazis soon after Rheydt was captured. Ibid., Mar 11, 1945.904 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH11 Ibid., Mar 11, 1945.12 NYT, Mar 31. ‘“It is retribution come home,’” said First Lieut. Joseph Shubow of Bostonwho presided over the service.’—And see NYT, Mar 2, 18, 1945.13 Cf. Sündermann, ‘Mar 30, 1945,’ 328ff.14 On the dismissal of Guderian: Oven, ‘Apr 2, 1945’, and the Guderian papers (IfZ,Irving collection).15 Diary, Mar 31, 1945.16 Ibid., Apr 4, 1945.17 Ibid., Apr 8, 1945.18 For the preparations of this Totaleinsatz see the Koller diary (author’s film DI–17); thewar diary of the Luftwaffe high command, entries for Mar 18, Apr 3, 6, 7, 1945 (NA filmT321, roll 10); and ADI(K) reports 294/1945 and 373/1945.19 Diary, Apr 9, 1945 (the final published entry).20 JG, ‘Kämpfer für das ewige Reich,’ in Das Reich, Apr 8, 1945.21 Diary, Apr 8, 1945.22 SS Hauptsturmführer Alfred Rach, interview publ. in Pinguin (Rowohlt Verlag, Hamburg)May 1949 (in IfZ archives).23 Diary, Apr 8, 1945.24 Rach interview.25 Bormann’s diary, Feb 14, shows Funk discussing with Hitler the evacuation of the preciousmetal from Berlin. Funk told Ohlendorf afterwards that Hitler was ‘completely mad’(it was the day after Dresden). CSDIC(UK) report SRGG.1322, Jul 7, 1945.26 Diary, Apr 9, 1945.27 Conversation on Apr 9. See Krosigk diary, Apr 13, 1945. USFET document DE.443/DIS.202 (Hoover Libr. Lerner papers; and Trevor