Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

I fighton to victory and hang on to the capital, then maybe hope will spring in British andAmerican breasts that it’s possible to stand up to this whole peril, side by side withNazi Germany, after all. And the only man for the job is me.’‘Leave this city,’ emphasized Goebbels in this surreal conversation deep beneaththe chancellery, ‘and you lose the rest as well.’Hitler speculated further. Might not the west now turn to him as the only forcecapable of holding back the bolshevik colossus? ‘I would think it one thousand timesmore craven to finish myself off down on the Obersalzberg than to make a last standand die in battle here.’Reverting to his own leitmotif, Goebbels reminded him that the Russians too mightyet prefer to strike a bargain with Nazi Germany. ‘Once Stalin sees this trend among916 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHthe western powers resulting from a German victory in Berlin, he may well say tohimself, “If I’m not going to get the kind of Europe I had in mind, I’m just throwingthe British and Germans into each other’s arms. So let’s cut a deal with the Germans.”’He predicted that Stalin would shortly start a propaganda campaign againstthe Allies, accusing them of having ravaged Germany’s cities with their air raids. ‘Heis a far better propagandist than the British,’ said Goebbels.Hitler was still pondering his own image in history. ‘Better,’ he growled, ‘to fighthonorably to the bitter end than to live on a few months or years in disgrace anddishonour.’This was very much Goebbels’ philosophy; he enlarged on this sepulchral theme,as though it were still an entirely abstract prospect. ‘If worse comes to worst,’ hemused, ‘and the Führer dies an honourable death in Berlin, and Europe goes bolshevik,then in five years at most the Führer will have come a legendary figure and nationalsocialism a mythus sanctified by a last grand finale—and all of its mortal errors thatare criticized today will have been expunged at one fell swoop.’At a war conference later that day he remarked optimistically that the Anglo-Americanpress had already coined the phrase ‘Third World War’ in uneasy anticipation ofthe coming clash with Russia. An impregnable Berlin might just be the last straw forthe enemy coalition.LATE on the twenty-sixth Luftwaffe general Robert von Greim arrived as Göring’ssuccessor. The renowned aviatrix Hanna Reitsch who accompanied him helped Magdawith bedtime duties with the children. Once Hitler came in, took off his own goldenparty badge and pinned it onto Magda.57 Goebbels often stood by his children’s bedside,gazing at their sleeping forms. In November 1940, during the first British blitzon Berlin, he had seen them all sleeping in each others’ arms like this in the cellar atSchwanenwerder—‘all looking as sweet as little angels,’ he wrote in that day’s diary.

Goebbels58 Once Traudl Junge heard the children through the door,...‘I went in,’ she wrote, ‘and found them sitting on their three bunk beds, tightlyholding their ears so that the others did not interfere with their three-part song. AndGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 917there was Hanna Reitsch singing with them and conducting.’59 ‘The children,’ wroteMagda two or three days before the end, ‘are wonderful. ‘They manage all by themselvesin these more than primitive conditions… There’s never a word of complaintor the hint of a tear from them. When the bunker trembles under the artillery bombardmentthe bigger children shield the smaller. Their presence here is a boon to usall, as they even coax a smile from the Führer now and again.’60Philosophizing in their bunker fastness, Hitler and Goebbels waited for those relievingarmies. Lorenz heard Goebbels interrupt the war conference on the twentyseventh,‘Gau HQ reports that Wenck’s group has linked up with our bridgehead atPotsdam.’‘The really crippling thing is,’ said Hitler soon after, ‘that one doesn’t know forcertain what is going on.’ Phone calls dialled at random established which streetswere now in Russian hands.‘God grant that Wenck gets here,’ murmured Goebbels. ‘Just suppose: Wenck getsto Potsdam, and the Soviets are right outside here in Potsdamer Platz!’‘And I’m not in Potsdam,’ chimed in Hitler, ‘but here in Potsdamer Platz.’Later that day Soviet tanks flying swastikas broke right through to Wilhelm Platzbefore being shot down. Hitler, who had once directed army groups of a millionsoldiers and more, was listening to reports on the placing of individual howitzersand self-propelled guns in the streets above.61 For a while Hitler and Goebbels reminiscedabout the mistakes they now realized they had made in not liquidating theirenemies in 1933. That was the hidden snag about being elected legally to office. InVienna too, in 1938, the sheer peacefulness of the revolution had robbed them of thechance to liquidate all their enemies. Next time, they both resolved in this grotesqueconversation, if there ever was a next time, they would not act Mr Nice Guy withtheir opponents.62SHORTLY before dinner Magda collared the S.S. dentist Dr Helmut Kunz and askedhim to help when the time came. She led him upstairs to where her children werepreparing for bed, and introduced the Sturmbannführer to them, without saying918 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwhy. Goebbels looked in briefly and said goodnight to the children too. The dentistchatted easily with them all for a while, before returning to his bunker surgery.63On the twenty-eighth, as the bombardment increased, Greim left the bunker. Boththe Goebbels parents took the opportunity to write a last letter to Harald in Britishcaptivity.64 Magda’s was defiant. ‘Our magnificent ideology is all for naught,’ shewrote, ‘and with it everything beautiful, admirable, noble, and good that I have cometo know in my life. Since there will be nothing to live for in the world that willendure after the Führer and national socialism, I am taking the children with me.They are too good for the kind of life that will ensue, and a merciful God will understandme for delivering them.’ The rest of the letter betrayed a no less hardy fanaticism.‘We have only one aim—to keep faith with the Führer unto death. That we areto be allowed to end our lives together with him is a favour from Fate that we neverdared to hope