Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

tokeep spinning things out until he won immunity in the forthcoming election.46 Mid-124 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHday on the twenty-eighth found the gauleiter duly in court with his editor Dürr.‘Before German judges,’ he seethed in his diary. ‘A ridiculous farce. Prosecutor demandedtwo months for Dürr and myself.’ The sentence was three weeks. ‘I just keptsilent,’ he added. ‘Once I’m immune I will accept full blame to spare Dürr.’47 Thejudgement concluded that the newspaper had published wicked and deliberate libelson the worthy Dr Weiss: ‘By calling him “Isidor” and publishing the comment, “Howdare you kick me with your flat little tootsies” they were underlining Dr Weiss’ Jewishorigins.’ Revenge in this case was sweet and cold: in May he received the printers’proofs of ‘Isidor’.48 As for the donkey cartoon, Goebbels allowed Angriff to publish itagain with this caption: ‘In convicting our editor Dürr the judge stipulated inter alia,“This donkey bears the face of Vice Police President Dr Weiss”.’49How he hated that man, and how the Nazis and communists alike laughed whentruncheon-wielding police officers accidentally thrashed Weiss as well.50 TheBrownshirts added a new verse to their marching song on ‘Isidor’ and Goebbelscomposed an unsympathetic leader for Angriff about ‘the story of a Jew who didn’twant to look like one,’ who ‘forbade people to call him Isidor because his name wasBernhard—‘Bear’s Heart’,’ and who in broad daylight was ‘thrashed by his own policeofficers with their rubber truncheons because they couldn’t believe they couldpossibly have a chief who looked like that.’ The result was yet another prosecutionfor libelling the humourless Dr Weiss.51THE Reichstag dissolved in March 1928. On the last day of the month Dr Weiss liftedthe ban on the party, because the elections would be held in May. Goebbels formallyrelaunched the party in Berlin at a ceremony on April 13, then sent long columns ofBrownshirts to march defiantly through the streets again.52 ‘We marched,’ wrote oneof his S.A. men,’ ‘and we marched. We marched although people bombarded us withevery conceivable projectile and missile.’53The five weeks of electioneering were crippled by lack of funds.54 Goebbels sat instreet cafes with his artist Schweitzer, suggesting poster themes.55 In the evenings hepatrolled the section headquarters at Alexander Platz, Tempelhof, Friedenau andGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 125elsewhere. Experimenting with propaganda techniques, he dictated one speech ontophonograph discs.56 He spent his spare time tinkering with ‘Michael,’ inserting nowvitriolic lines attacking the Jews, and ‘Blood Seed.’57 May Day found him in a grubbyPolish international train heading for Düsseldorf; sitting in the audience there heglimpsed his mother, brothers, and little sister Maria; he only rarely saw them nowadays.On May 17 he hobbled at the head of 250 S.A. men marching through Spandauand Tegel and into working class Wedding, heedless of the screeches and whistles oftheir baffled enemies—‘chinstraps tightened,’ he recorded proudly afterwards, ‘abunch of heroes, without flinching. With these lads we’ll conquer the world.’58In the final weeks before the election he detected signs of unrest among these‘lads’. Munich had appointed Walther Stennes, a former police captain aged thirtythree,to command the S.A. in this part of Germany: ‘a regular chap!’ Goebbels hadwritten in February, and ‘a splendid fellow’ in April.59 But he soon kept Stennes at adistance. He was independently wealthy, and had only joined the Party in Decemberwhen Goebbels insisted. Stennes had found in the Berlin S.A. an undisciplined rabblewho goaded the police to no real purpose.60 He had introduced Prussian discipline,and now he began asking for a larger slice of the cake—more Reichstagcandidates should be from the S.A. To Goebbels it was the old story, of ‘soldiers’meddling in politics. ‘The military should sharpen the sword,’ he decided, ‘and leaveit to us politicians to decide when it has to be used.’61That he was now fighting with the ballot box rather than by revolution seemed atotal betrayal of his own teachings. It was expediency. Besides, he intended to raidthe Reichstag as the ‘arsenal of democracy’ and seize its weapons. ‘If,’ he wrote, ‘wesucceed in planting in the Reichstag sixty or seventy of our own agitators and organisers,then the State itself will equip and pay for our fighting machine.’62AS Germany went to the polls on May 20 it streamed with rain. Nationwide, the NaziParty had finished tenth in 1924; it now did rather better, though is share of the votein Berlin was poor (only 1·5 percent). Over eight hundred thousand voted for theHitler movement, but only thirty-nine thousand Berliners. The Party increased its126 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHrepresentation in the Reichstag from seven to twelve. Goebbels heard the results ata jampacked election bash at the Victoria Gardens. They shouldered him around thehall with whoops of triumph. He would now be a Reichstag deputy: the other elevenlucky Nazis would include Gregor Strasser, Wilhelm Frick, and Hermann Göring.63As the spectre of prison faded, he wrote cynically in Angriff: ‘I am an I.d.I. and anI.d.F.: Inhaber der Immunität and Inhaber der Freifahrkarte,’ possessed of immunity and afree travel pass. ‘The I.d.I.,’ he continued, ‘can call a dungheap a dungheap. He doesn’thave to mince his language by calling it a State.’ And he added: ‘This is but a prelude.You’re going to have a lot of fun with us. It’s show-time!’1 Albert Grzesinski, typescript memoirs (BA: Kl.Erw.144)—See too his published memoirsInside Germany (New York, 1939), translated by Alexander S Lipschitz; and his brochureVerwaltungsarbeit im neuen Staat (Berlin, 1928; copy in Friedrich Ebert Stiftung archives.)2 Zörgiebel to JG, May 5, 1927 (BA: Schumacher collection, 199a).3 JG to Grzesinski, May 6, 1927 (ibid.)4 Stuttgart report, May 18, 1927 (police file).5 Police file.6 JG to Charlottenburg administrative court (Oberverwaltungsgericht), May 11 (BA:Schumacher collection, 199a); Zörgiebel to JG, May 23, 1927 (ibid.)7 Announcement of May 9, 1927 in NSDAP Hauptarchiv (NA film T581, roll 5; BA fileNS.26/133); on Haake, see JG’s diary, Jun 5, 1925; Feb 15, Jun 10, 1926; May 19, 1928.8 See Hinkel interrogation SAIC/28; and Lippert’s reminiscences in Angriff, Oct 30, 1936(BA file NS.26/968)9 Strasser to Hess, Jun 15, 1927 (BDC file, JG)10 JG to Hitler, Jun 5, 1927 (ibid.)11 JG to Hess, Jun 9, 1927