Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

by deed.Then we stage a revolution!Ê … The will to power will procure the means topower. The others may have the weapons but we have what he does not: thewillingness to use force, and this willingness will procure the weapons that weneed.20Speaking in Düsseldorf that summer he reiterated: ‘Without weapons we’ll getnowhere.’21FOR the moment Goebbels’ only weapon was the printed word. During the last daysof June 1927 he rained a carefully timed series of blood-red posters on Berlin. Thefirst read simply, ‘Attack!’ The second, ‘Attack is coming.’ The third, ‘The attack willcome on July 4.’To edit Angriff he had picked Dr Julius Lippert; Lippert was imprisoned shortlybefore the first issue, and Dagobert Dürr, a former meteorologist, stood in for him.But the first edition squibbed. The badly designed, anæmic sheet sold only twelvehundred copies; the next only nine hundred. Losing money and morale, several ofhis staff walked out.Goebbels was no quitter. His street salesmen adopted ruthless tactics. Angriff’scirculation staggered upward to around two thousand. Its style was soapbox oratoryin print. With a Jesuit’s sure instinct for the niceties of the law he defamed withoutlibelling; his pen dipped, thrust, parried, then dipped again. It was more anti-capitalistthan Hitler approved of, but the Berlin working classes lapped up the subtleantisemitism of Mjölnir’s caricatures. Goebbels contributed a venomous diary columnand a weekly leading article ripe with lush verbal raspberries about ‘the readerrabbleof the gutter press.’ The newspaper would develop a sarcastic, irreverent,scurrilous, mocking style of its own, not unlike the satirical newssheets of later dec-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 119ades: written partly in a well-captured Berlin dialect, its humour was a mixture ofsophomoric poetry, puns, innuendos, and insider-jokes for the entertainment of avery few. The chief butt of its humour was of course the unfortunate Dr. BernhardWeiss, the self-important, horseback-riding, bespectacled Jewish ex-cavalry officerwhose features were, even his dearest friends admitted, anything but Aryan. Eachweek Angriff carried a regular column mocking the police force, entitled ‘Watch thattruncheon!’ The paper’s pages were strewn with puns on the name Weiss, with bothblatant and surreptitious antisemitism, with unflattering comments on his riding anddriving skills and on the shape of his nose, and with assertions that of course his realname was Bernhard—was it not illegal now to suggest anything else?22 Soon it wasenough for Goebbels to paint a word picture of Him, motoring in a princely limousinedown Kurfürstendamm, for every reader to know who was meant.23He seized upon his opponents’ more cherished slogans. If enemies called him aBandit, his next posters announced him as the Arch Bandit of Berlin. A politician ofthe Weimar republic had spoken of provided a ‘life of beauty and dignity.’ Goebbelsrode that phrase into the ground over the next six years. He began an article on themounting suicide rate with the ironic comment, ‘The following were unable to endureany longer the happiness of this Life of Beauty and Dignity.’ He recognized thatthe target must always be an identifiable individual, like ‘Isidor,’ rather than an ideaor group. Humourless, dedicated and self-important the police chief Dr Weiss madethe perfect butt.24 Goebbels used that ‘Isidor’ with such a thudding regularity that allBerlin came to assume it was Weiss’s real name, as did some of his own officerswhom he then also prosecuted. Weiss had enjoyed a high profile until Goebbels’debut in Berlin: the papers carried many pictures of this diminutive, self-importantofficial at public functions sporting a silk hat, tailcoat,and striped pants. Mounting acampaign brilliantly designed to undermine his authority, Goebbels published nofewer than six leader articles about him.25 In every issue of Angriff until No.44 therewas an attack on Weiss; its cartoons depicted him as a flatfooted Jew with bow legs,thick lensed pince-nez, moustache and jug ears. Undaunted by the laws of libel120 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHGoebbels accused Weiss in effect of being a Jew and trying to conceal it. When Weisssued, again and again, the courts decided that ‘Isidor’ alone was not libellous.If a group of people [mocked Goebbels] took it into their heads to call a guy namedFridolin something else—”Max,” for instance—would Fridolin ever dream oftaking them to court?So why does Dr Bernhard Weiss have us up before the judge just because we callhim ‘Isidor’? Does he think the name doesn’t suit him? Or does it suit him toowell—perhaps because Isidor is a euphemism for a Jew? Since when was it derogatoryto be a Jew, then?26The supreme court in Leipzig found with Goebbels that to call a Jew a Jew was nomore defamatory than to call a catholic a catholic.AT the end of the third week in August 1927 the Nazis staged their third national rally,this time in Nuremberg. One one hundred thousand people poured into the city:with unemployment rising, curiosity about Hitler’s party was increasing. Berlin’sforbidden S.A. turned out in force, eager to wear their uniforms; fifty of them hadmarched all the way to Nuremberg and Goebbels sent hundreds more in charteredtrains. On their return ‘Isidor’ Weiss ordered the trains stopped at Teltow and hispolice arrested 435 Nazis.27 They were detained in police cells all day, and seventylost their jobs in consequence: Goebbels could not care, because martyrs were moreuseful to his gau. As Schweitzer’s banners for the Nuremberg rally had said, ‘Ours isthe Future.’ In northern Germany, in Hamburg and Brunswick, the National Socialistswere now winning electoral seats. By the end of the year the Party would have72,590 registered members.Of these however only some four thousand were in Berlin. Still banned, the gauwas not finding the struggle easy.On October 29 Goebbels was thirty. At a small party his office staff handed him anenvelope containing torn-up notes for the loans used to launch Angriff and two thousandmarks in cash, and gave him the news that they had collected 2,500 new sub-GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 121scriptions to the weekly. It was about to break even. In February 1928 it would beselling 31,000 copies each week.28 Powered by his articles, the newspaper wouldappear twice weekly from September 30, 1929 and daily from November 1, 1930,increasing its daily circulation from an average 68,600