Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

in 1931 to a peak of 119,000just after the seizure of power in 1933.29ON his birthday October 29, 1927 the Berlin political police lifted the speaking banon Goebbels; but he was still on probation. The posters announced that he was tospeak on Tuesday November 8 in the working class suburb of Neukölln on ‘The GermanPeople’s Dance of Death.’ Even without the swastika, Goebbels’s hand was unmistakeable.Addressed to ‘Men of the fist and Brow, Proletarians of the Factory Benchand Study Cubicle,’ the posters heaped ironic praise on the grandiose achievementsof the Social Democrats since 1918., ‘Full of awe we marvel at the granite foundationsof the new Social Order founded by the soldiers of the revolution and theirgreat Social Democratic generals at the end of the war. Peace, freedom, work andbread! All of these Social Democracy has given to the German working man, plus’—in large letters—‘A LIFE OF BEAUTY AND DIGNITY.’ Tickets were fifty pfennigs (only tenfor the unemployed.) Thus the battlewagon was rolling again, and on November 6 hehad the pleasure of seeing his semi-religious play ‘The Wanderer’ premiered in amatinee by the ‘National Socialist Experimental Theatre Company’ too.AT the end of 1927 Dr Joseph Goebbels, agitator, streetfighter and journalist, receiveda letter from Cologne, as though from another world: the Catholic charity inCologne was still trying to recover its student loan to him.30 They had reduced theirclaim to four hundred marks. Goebbels tossed the letter away.Permitted to speak but with his Party still banned in Berlin, he was careful to speakwell of Hitler to people with close ties to Munich.31 He particularly befriended RudolfHess, Hitler’s private secretary, flattered Hess’s fiancée Ilse with flowers and wroteher praising the Führer in the sure knowledge that his words would be passed on. ‘Iwas with the chief in Nuremberg on Sunday and Monday [the 14th and 15th],’ he122 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHwrote to Ilse on November 16. ‘What a guy he is! I could almost envy you for beingaround him the whole time. We can all be downright proud of him. Now,’ he continued,‘I have barricaded myself back into this omnibus-ridden asphalt desert…Meanwhile we’re back in combat with this magnificent ugly dragon, Berlin. We’re ateach other’s throats again and that’s why things are looking up again. Thank God,they’ve started cursing at us again.’32These Goebbels methods worked.The propaganda [he defined in a speech] which produces the desired results isgood, and all other propaganda is bad…Ê Therefore it is meaningless to say yourpropaganda is too crude, too cruel, too brutal, or too unfair for none of thoseterms matter… Propaganda is always a means to an end. It is an art which can betaught to the average person like playing the violin. But there comes a point whenyou say, ‘You’re on your own now. What remains to be learned can only be accomplishedby a genius.’If people say, ‘But you are only propagandists,’ then you should answer, ‘Andwhat else was Jesus Christ? Did he not make propaganda?… Is Mussolini a scribbleror is he a great speaker? When Lenin went from Zürich to Saint-Petersburgdid he rush from the station into his study to write a book or did he speak beforea multitude?By early 1928 Hitler confided in him intimately. In January he told Goebbels hewas planning shortly to meet ‘Benito’.33 In February he promised him that if theNazis secured enough seats in the forthcoming Prussian election, Goebbels wouldbe their bloc leader; and that he would also be a Reichstag candidate like GregorStrasser.34 A month later Hitler dangled the latter promise over him anew. ‘The Chief,’Goebbels recorded smugly, ‘used very bitter language about Dr [Otto] Strasser.’Strasser had founded a newspaper in Essen competing with the local gauleiter’s.‘Now they all see how right I was in my fight against this filthy swine,’ wrote Goebbels;he would take pleasure in helping the gauleiter, Joseph Terboven, to smash Strasser.‘That’s what you get for heaping filth on me month after month,’ he remarked in hisGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 123unpublished diary. ‘Revenge is a repast best savoured cold’ (one of his favourite aphorisms.)35His speeches were now one of Berlin’s top attractions. ‘[Goebbels] spoke on March23 in the Swiss Gardens at Friedrichshain,’ the political police solemnly reported,opening yet another dossier. ‘Poked fun at Mr Polizeivizepräsident Weiss.’36 Weiss hadtwenty-one thousand officials, fourteen thousand uniformed police, three thousanddetectives, and four thousand civil servants; there were forty-seven thousand photosand half a million fingerprints in his Rogues’ Gallery; his museum even had the originaluniform of the Captain of Köpenick.37 Yet he could not keep down this poisonousdwarf limping at the head of his Nazis in Berlin. Indeed, in March Goebbels sent offto the printers his 168-page lampoon of Weiss, ‘The Book of Isidor,’ subtitled ‘APortrait of our Times, Packed with Laughter and Hate.’38The entertaining public face off between the pompous police chief and the propagandistcontinued throughout the year. One beerhall battle on February 23 endedwith his driver Tonak again injured, stabbed this time three times in the back dangerouslyclose to the heart.39Those were hectic weeks.40 The next morning Goebbels was arrested at six A.M.That evening he was heading for Cottbus with his S.A. ‘lads’. On March 12 he wroteto the courts asking to be excused from testifying in the trial of Nazis involved in thegun battle at Lichterfelde station.41 But the political police would not brook anydelays, and he had to testify42. ‘He is in fact the leading personality,’ they pointed out,‘in the fight against the police headquarters.’43 Six of his men involved in the gunbattle were sentenced to a total of three years and seven months imprisonment. OnMarch 24 he was back in court. ‘Today I have six hearings,’ he recorded. Four werefor slandering ‘Isidor,’ one for high treason and one for causing bodily harm.44 Thecourts fixed April 28 for the case against Goebbels and Dürr for libelling Dr Weiss inAngriff. Goebbels did his damndest to wriggle off the hook, writing several appealsfor postponements.45 Weiss’ deputy Wündisch, head of the Berlin political police,demanded that Goebbels be arrested if he failed to show up, as he was expected