Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection.)28 By Fritz Hesse. Diary, Mar 17, 18; and Oven, ‘Apr 2, 1945.’29 Oven, ‘Apr 12, 1945’ and the Krosigk diary.30 DNB quoted at 00:08 A.M. the BBC news item: BBC monitoring report, Apr 13, 1945(IWM archives).31 Heinz Lorenz, interview, Mar 22, 1967; Werner Naumann, testimony, May 18, 1950(IfZ, ZS.274); and see Frau Inge Haberzettel’s statement to Leslie Randall in Evening Standard,London, Feb 16, 1946 (Trevor Roper papers, IfZ, Irving collection). She was a memberof JG’s office.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 90559: The Man of the CenturyAS HE looked at his family now Goebbels can have seen them only as actors ina drama, of which he had cast himself in the leading role. Their approachingend inspired no horror in him. Once he had hoped for a peaceful death, a privatefuneral, and burial in some open space in Berlin. ‘I’d prefer to die quite alone somewhere,’he had remarked in 1941, ‘and be buried only by those who really love me.’1This now seemed an unlikely circumstance. Lord Vansittart had only recently declaredthat the only issue remaining on war criminals was ‘the site of the gallows andthe length of the rope.’2In January 1940 when a conversation with Hitler had lightly turned to methods ofsuicide Goebbels had agreed that the pistol was best.3 Later he inclined toward cyanideand asked Ley to obtain enough for his entire family.4 By 1943 he had resolvedthat suicide in extremis was the only way to lasting glory. Had he not expected GeneralPaulus to ‘forfeit fifteen or twenty years of his life’ to earn a thousand years ofimmortality?5 He told the swashbuckling S.S. Major Otto Skorzeny that he could notfigure out why Mussolini had not killed himself after his arrest that July: ‘He did notlack the means—we know he had the poison on him… Why didn’t he swallow it themoment he found himself in captivity and his life’s work in ruins.’6 ‘If all our efforts,work, and struggle should lead nowhere,’ Goebbels commented a few days later,‘then I should not find it hard to die. In a world where there was no room for myideals there would be no room for me.’7 He added weight to his memorandum toHitler in July 1944 by promising something that his rival Speer never could, the mass906 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHsuicide of his entire family if they lost the war. ‘Each time I am out at Lanke with mysix children, then I realize all over again that neither I nor my entire family could, orshould, live on into an era that is not our own.’’8The more he read the letters of Frederick the Great the more Dr Goebbels tooknote that the great monarch was never without his poison capsule during the criticalyears of the Seven Years’ War, and that he aspired to be ‘buried beneath the batteriesof his artillery.’9 The death of his old friend Eugen Hadamowsky, of which Goebbelslearned on March 2, 1945, ‘leading his company into action … a bullet through theheart,’ also affected him deeply.10 After this, said S.S. Gruppenführer Berger, Goebbelstapped his breast pocket and said: ‘I and my whole family will commit suicide.’ ‘Ihave the right,’ the minister intimated to him, ‘not to die alone if I commit suicide,but for a whole lot of my followers to die with me.’ The S.S. general contradictedhim—he personally had no intention of dying with Goebbels: ‘You have had nothingbut good out of national socialism. I have had only worry and work, so I don’t feelthe same moral obligation.’ Goebbels just looked at him blankly.11Magda was at one with him on this matter. She was fatalistic and perhaps evencallous about it all. Looking across the room at her at a Berlin society function backin 1933 the French ambassador had remarked, ‘I have never in my life come across awoman with such cruel eyes.’12 Death did not frighten her. After Werner Naumannlit a cigarette for her in March 1945 with a special-agents’ lighter, she expressedcuriosity about it; Naumann opened it to reveal a poison capsule concealed within,and at her request—in front of Dr Goebbels—gave it to her.13 Once she had leanedover tipsily to the family major domo Wilhelm Rohrssen and confided to him howshe imagined her family would die. ‘We shall all be invited to the Führer’s,’ she slurred.‘And there we shall drink chocolate. This chocolate will taste good, and it will be ourlast.’ She raised her glass to Rohrssen. ‘The Führer will not die without my husband,’she promised.14 ‘We shall all die—even you.’ Shortly she would have Joseph to herself,and there would be no contenders.OF course even after Roosevelt’s sudden death the British and Americans did not haveGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 907one bomber less, nor the Russians fewer tanks; but as Goebbels told Krosigk on thephone that morning, the news would cause a sea-change in morale. ‘We can andmust see in it the dispensation of an all-powerful History and Justice,’ he explained.15‘Why not just say of God?’ rejoined the finance minister. He wrote to Goebbels anhour or two later, arguing that Roosevelt’s death was a Divine gift—‘but one thatwe’ve got to earn.’ The president’s death removed the last obstacle to dealing withthe United States. In this letter Krosigk also sowed the idea in Goebbels’ mind thatthe Americans and the Russians were really making for Prague now, not Berlin.16GOEBBELS’ diary as recorded on the glass microfiches in Moscow ends with April 12,1945; the plates also record several hundred pages of shorthand notes, and there isreason to believe that these contain his final diary dictation, which Otte had no moretime to transcribe.17Hitler’s desk diary shows only one appointment at this time with Goebbels, atmid-day on April 15.18 Magda evidently came too—it was a Sunday—because Hitler’spilot Hans Baur saw her stepping in through the back gate just as Hitler wasinspecting the outside of the three-storied bunker which Speer had now completedbeneath the garden. Hitler was shocked to see her and offered her Baur’s plane to flydown to the Obersalzberg. ‘Berlin will be a rat trap!’ he said.19‘Mein Führer,’