Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

in all, went into Russian captivity and were not seen again).When Otto Meissner, Hitler’s pettifogging old Staatsminister, phoned later that dayfrom the safety of Mecklenburg to explain that ‘the Reich government’ had withdrawnfrom the danger zone ‘to preserve its freedom of action’ Goebbels snarled athim, ‘The Reich government is where the Führer and I are, not where you are! Fortwelve years I have had the urge to spit in your eye. For twelve years I have suppressedthat urge—and today I regret it.’30That night Bormann sent a telex down to the Obersalzberg, reading: ‘Wolf [Hitler]is staying here as situation can only be restored by him if at all possible.’The dawn of Saturday April 21 came with Russian artillery lobbing shells at extremerange into Berlin.31 White-faced Goebbels presided over one last eleven o’clockconference at No.20 Hermann-Göring Strasse, one long tirade against the traitorswho had talked Hitler out of invading Britain in 1940, who had lost their nerve inRussia, and who had failed again in Normandy in June 1944 and finally shown theircolours on July the Twentieth. When Fritzsche suavely objected the minister snapped,‘What can I do with men who won’t fight even when their womenfolk are beingraped?’32 Then an evil leer spread over his face, as he paced up and down behind hisbig desk. ‘It’s up to the German people,’ he murmured softly. They had literally askedfor national socialism. In November 1933 after Hitler quit the League of Nations40·5 million Germans had voted for his policies and only 2·1 million against. Hitlerhad not forced himself on them; and now, God help them. He folded his arms, andalmost spat out the final words: ‘Well, what were you working with me for, gentle-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 911men? Now they’re going to slit your pretty little throats.’33 According to WernerNaumann, he said: ‘Gentleman, we hung together and we’ll be hanged together.’34He stalked out, pausing only to fling them a Hitler salute.At noon-fifteen a Russian shell burst only a hundred yards away, shaking the wholestructure. Unshaken, he read out over cable radio the dramatic ‘Emergency Speech’that he had long prepared, pausing only to shake splinters off the pages as anothershell burst blew in several panes of glass. He had intended to send the metal boxescontaining the glass-plate microfiches of his diaries into the southern ‘fortress’ butthat road was now closed. That same Saturday afternoon he entrusted to Rudi Balzerhis latest diaries and the shorthand notes and told him to carry them out to thenorth. Then he told his secretary Otte to bring him all the secret papers from thetwo ministry safes to the Reich chancellery. ‘Go to ground,’ he told Otte. ‘WhenBerlin is liberated report back to me again.’ Otte rendezvoused at the Adlon withBalzer and they set out in an army staff car for Hamburg. About halfway, for no goodreason, the two men halted and buried the precious diary notes in a preserving jaroutside Perleberg.35*Goebbels made his final dispositions. His staff was now reduced to Naumann, HeinzLorenz—the unobjectionable former deputy of Sündermann, who had been dismissedwith Otto Dietrich—and perhaps thirty others. He told them that he proposed,when it was all over, to poison his children.36 In Berlin itself the only newspaperstill being printed was an emergency news-sheet, the Panzer-Bär. His last leaderfor Das Reich was a shrill call for Germany’s women and children to fight from therear against these insolent invaders who had wasted entire cities with the cruel airwarfare. Some, he wrote, might think nothing of living ‘under the knout of the Anglo-American banker-Jews’, but the true German would be hurling hand grenades, layingTeller mines, and sniping from rooftops and cellar windows.37* Armed with the map drawn by Balzer and aided by a proton magnetometer team fromOxford university, the author searched for this jar in the heavily wooded area in the thencommunist eastern Germany in 1970, without success. Otte, at the time still a servingGerman government official, was unable to accompany us.912 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHAROUND six o’clock the next evening, April 22, he received a shocking telephone callfrom Hitler who asked him, voice breaking, to go over straight away. ‘It’s all over,’was all that he would say.38In a few brief words Goebbels disbanded the propaganda ministry. He handed outpoison capsules to his staff. He told Oven to get Rach and a second driver for Magdaand the children. ‘We’re moving into the Reich Chancellery. No.20 Hermann-GöringStrasse will not be defended. It’s to be abandoned. The Volkssturm and S.S. men areto transfer to the Chancellery gardens. My staff are to join the troops.’ Magda askedif she should pack her toilet articles, and dismissed her children’s nanny with thewords: ‘We’re driving over to the Reich chancellery. We’ve all got to take poison.’39Hitler’s mid-day war conference had broken up with him on the verge of a nervousbreakdown after learning that S.S. Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner had not evenbegun the counter attack from the north on which everybody was banking. He hadslammed down his bunch of coloured pencils and declared that the war was lost. ‘Butyou’re very wrong, gentlemen, if you believe that now I’ll leave Berlin after all. I’dsooner put a bullet in my brains’—and with that he had pushed through them intohis private quarters saying, ‘Get me a line to Dr Goebbels.’They stood aside as Goebbels rushed into Hitler’s study. What followed, perhapshis finest speech, was delivered to an audience of only one frightened dictator benton killing himself within the hour. Setting the ultimate seal on his personal loyalty, hetold Hitler that he would move into one of the recently vacated bunker rooms himselfat once and bring Magda and the children with him too.40Back outside, Bormann begged him to talk the Führer into flying out while he stillcould. Goebbels blinked around, his eyes searching out Traudl Junge; he briefed theyoung, slim secretary to be so kind as to meet his family when they arrived. TakingGeneral Jodl aside, he revealed that Hitler had made up his mind to stand and fight inBerlin. Was there, he asked, no means of preventing the encirclement?‘There’s only one