Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

‘A People inCrisis! Who will save us? Jakob Goldschmidt?’—a reference to the alleged sell-outof the Post Office to the multi-millionaire Dr Goldschmidt, owner of the Darmstadt& National Bank.78 Goebbels delivered a poisonous ninety-minute tirade against thepress, furious at spiteful coverage of Hitler’s speech at the Clou.79 Singling out onejournalist, he told his two thousand listeners to note down the home address of Dr.Otto Kriegk of the Lokal-Anzeiger (who was present)—a typically Nazi trick—andsuggested they find out where others lived and administer ‘a national socialist headmassage’ to them too.80 The olive-complexioned Goebbels had just recommendedhis audience to display their ‘forceful gratitude’ to a journalist on Germania whoboasted the suspiciously Germanic name of Karl-Otto Graetz but was really, he said,a ‘swine of a Jew’ (Judensau)81 when Fritz Stucke, an elderly but politically activeparson, called out sarcastically, ‘A fine image of Germanic youth you look!’82 ‘I takeit,’ shouted Goebbels, breaking the pained silence that followed and pointing to thedoors, ‘that you’re keen to get flung out on your ear?’83 When Stucke opened hismouth again, taunting Goebbels: ‘You mean you?’, burly young men bundled himdownstairs, dragging him the last few yards by his feet.This time Goebbels had gone too far. By the time his guest, leader of Sweden’sNazis, had also spoken hundreds of police were cordoning the building. A policemajor stormed in and closed the meeting down. He ordered the audience to file outsingly and be searched for weapons. The police haul was a veritable arsenal of black-108 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHjacks, knuckledusters, knives, and revolvers84; eighteen Nazis were arrested for resisting.The press smelt blood and tasted revenge. Their lurid reports had S.A. thugsbattering the parson with beermugs and kicking him; doctors, they said, marvelledthat his skull was not fractured.85Twenty four hours later the police served a restraining order on Dr Goebbels,banning him from speaking in Berlin, and dissolving his gau.86 They also charged himwith incitement to violence.87 After just six months in Berlin the unstoppable gauleiterseemed to have run into an immovable object: the police president of Berlin.1 Julek Karl von Engelbrechten, Eine braune Armee entsteht. Die Geschichte der Berlin-Brandenburger SA (Munich, 1937); Martin Broszat, ‘Die Anfänge der Berliner NSDAP 1926/27,’ in VfZ, 1960, 85ff; for JG’s battle with the Strassers and Kampf Verlag see IfZ file Fa.114.2 Albert Grzesinski, Berlin’s police chief (May 16, 1925–Oct 6, 1926) boasted in his unpublishedmemoirs, Im Kampf um die deutsche Republik. Lebensweg eines heute Statenlosen (Paris,1933; BA: Kl.Erw.144) that he had installed informers in both the KPD and NSDAP HQs inBerlin, sometimes ‘big shots’ (Prominente): ‘Often only a few hours after decisions were takenin secret conferences, a written report on them lay on my desk.’ JG was later warned of this(diary May 16, 1928).3 Diary, Aug 21, 26.4 Ibid., Sep 3, 10, 1926.5 Ibid., Oct 20, 1926; VB, Oct 26, 1926.6 Muchow report No.3, Aug; (see note 14 below); in introducing these reports MartinBroszat (Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 1960, 85ff,) was wrong in stating they ‘are onlyrecently available for research’—they were available in the Hoover Institution’s Guide to theNSDAP Hauptarchiv as early as 1964. See too police file, Aug 26, 1926; and Engelbrechten,45f.7 Diary, Aug 28, 1926; JG confirmed in his later notes on diary 1925/26: ‘Aug 28: refusalto Hitler re Berlin’ (BA file NL.118/108)8 Diary, Sep 8, 1926.9 Ibid., Sep 11; and see warm his references to her on Oct 17, 1926.10 Ibid., Sep 17, 1926.11 JG, Kampf um Berlin (Munich, 1932), 24; and see the 2pp. history of Berlin gau, Jan 27,1937 in NSDAP Hauptarchiv (NA film T581, roll 1, BA file NS.26/133; and T581, roll 5,GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 109BA file NS.26/5), and Angriff’s tenth gau anniversary edition Oct 30, 1936 (BA file NS.26/968; ZStA, Rep.50.01, vol.1189).12 Diary, Sep 17, 1926.13 Ibid., Sep 23, 25, 28, 1928.14 Reinhold Muchow, Propagandazelle NSDAP, Ortsgruppe Neukölln: situation reportNo.1, Jun 1926 (NSDAP Hauptarchiv. NA film T581, ROLL 5, BA: NS.26/133. Cit. hereafteras Muchow report.). Muchow would die in a foolish shooting accident in 1933.15 Dokumente der Zeitgeschichte. Dokumente der Sammlung Rehse (Munich, 1938); cit. hereafteras Dokumente.16 Diary, Oct 16; Muchow report No.5, Oct 1926.17 Schmiedicke to JG, Oct 16, 1926 (BA: Schumacher collection, 199a); see Heiber, DasTagebuch von Joseph Goebbels 1925/26 , 112f..18 In his notes 1927/28 he summarised: ‘Oct, Potsdam. Mark [Brandenburg] rally. ... PigstyBerlin. ... Decision: I’ll come.’ (BA file NL.118/108).19 Schmiedicke to JG, Oct 28 (BA: Schumacher collection, 199a.)20 Diary, Oct 18, 1926.21 Notes on diary (BA file NL.118/108). The hitherto largely missing diary for Nov 8,1926—Jul 21, 1928 is on microfiches in the Moscow archives, Goebbels papers, Fond 1477,box 2.22 Muchow report No.1, Jun 1926.23 Data supplied to the author by the German Federal Office of Statistics.24 Brüning MS (Syracuse Univ. Libr.)— A typical government loan was one raised by themerchant banks Lazard Speyer-Ellissen; E Heimann; Lincoln, Menny, Oppenheimer; LBehrens & Sons; M M Warburg & Co; Veit L Homburger; Salomon Oppenheimer Jr & Co; JDreyfus & Co; Mendelssohn & Co; Simon Hirschland; Jacob S H Stern, and A Levy (HooverInstitution files).25 Files on the Kutisker’s fraud on the Prussian state bank: records of Generalstaatsanwaltbei dem Landgericht Berlin, now in the Landesarchiv Berlin, Rep.58, item 62; Sklarek’sfraud on the Berlin state bank, item 61. I am indebted to Dr R G Reuth for drawing myattention to this source on historic court cases; according to Bering, 283, a Nazi state prosecutorin 1933 decided that these case files, some three thousand of them which wouldnormally have been shredded, should be preserved.26 Dr Bernhard Weiss, born Berlin Jul 30, 1880, died London Jul 29, 1951; member of theBerlin political police since May 1918; their chief from1920 to 1924, when he was suspendedfor raiding the Soviet trade mission; Social Democrat. Subsequently chief of criminalpolice, then vice police chief after 1927. See his own 160pp book, Polizei und Politik(Berlin, 1928; a copy is in the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Bonn).—This prominent and badlywronged citizen of Berlin emigrated in 1933 via Czechoslovakia to London where his daughterHilde Baban still lives; stripped of German citizenship in 1937 for