Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

the fields of agitation and propaganda.’40 He was thrilled by any film accompaniedby Russian music.41 Seeing Eisenstein’s famous ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ he rejoicedin this spectacle. The sub-titles were so cunningly phrased that they defiedcontradiction. ‘That is what is really dangerous about this film,’ he concluded. ‘I wishwe had such a film.’42Thus the power of the film as political propaganda dawned on him. He saw ‘Verdun’twice. On the first occasion it had just seemed tiresome and noisy with a shockinglack of political direction; but the second time, viewed with Hitler and publisherMax Amann, it deeply affected them all and Goebbels called it ‘a great war movie’after all.43 He began to take an interest in the Party’s own film production efforts. Hesupervised the cutting of the film of his September 1928 rally in the Sport Palace,and helped with a little production called ‘Fight for Berlin’—his diary shows himdriving out to Bernau to direct scenes involving three hundred S.A. men.44 As thegenre got into his blood, he produced a second Nazi movie, ‘With the Berlin S.A. toNuremberg.’45 At its premiere, he introduced it with a little homily on cinema as apropaganda weapon.46GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 145DECEMBER 1928 finds Joseph Goebbels tired but increasingly fulfilled. He spends hoursorating to the Reichstag. He has his own newspaper. He has a piano. He has at lastperfected his autobiographical drama ‘Michael’47 and is about to rewrite his working-class one-acter ‘Blood Seed’ for the Party’s Wallner Theatre.48 He will finish it inthe Reichstag under the droning voice of some despised democrat. He sends copiesto Ilse Hess and all his other friends—but even now Anka’s is the only opinion hecares about.49On December 9 we find him, heart thumping, in a train steaming into Weimar’sstation. He finds her waiting on the platform, and lends her the first proof copy of‘Michael’ (in which she is of course herself the heroine) to come off the presses.‘She’s been through a lot of travails,’ he writes afterwards. ‘We love each other asthough but a day separates 1920 from now… She buries her head in my chest andweeps.’ He misses two trains in his distraction.50 A letter comes, returning the play:she is enthusiastic about it. ‘I send you the same affectionate greetings,’ she closes, ‘asall those many years ago.’ ‘She loves me,’ swoons Goebbels in his notes, ‘and I her.’There can only be, he reflects, one great, all-fulfilling love in any one man’s lifetime.51 ‘I had awaited your letter with trepidation,’ he replies, asking to see her again.He suggests Halle on Wednesday (‘at 10:20 A.M.’) or Erfurt (‘at 11:51’). Somethingabout these deliberately Brief Encounters pleases him: perhaps it is the reassuringknowledge that any demands she makes on him will perforce be limited to the briefjourney between two stations. ‘I would like to talk things over with you,’ he writesher alluringly. ‘I have got to do something about rearranging my life now that I haveput much of the past behind me with “Michael”.’52No sooner has he lit this fresh candle for Anka in his heart than it is snuffed out bythe breezy debut of a young Berlin girl on his staff, Jutta Lehmann. She claims she’seighteen—a slender, gracious, rococo little doll who chatters and giggles all afternoon.She pretends to be engaged to another, but folds into the little gauleiter’s armsnonetheless and allows herself to be kissed before agreeing that she is not engaged atall. ‘So that’s Jutta Lehmann,’ he muses, captivated: ‘This spotless, gracious girl.’53He wallows in feelings of spurious guilt, knowing that sooner or later he must sacrifice146 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHher too on the altar of his Mission.54 He lies awake, thinking of her tiny hand wavingas he drives away, the tears in her eyes when he leaves for his own family fold atChristmas. She is silent on his return and he sees her as ‘a child, a lover, a comrade.’He is lucky to possess her, he decides. ‘She’s a good listener. She sits as quiet as amouse just listening.’55 One day she comes in floods of tears because she thinks he’sleaving; the next she turns up with a basket of things for his apartment like a coffeemachine and silverware, so that he can stay home of an evening: thus early does thefemale begin to scheme. But he realizes that she is ‘pure’ and must stay that way. Bymid January 1929 he is back, in soul and body, in Weimar with Anka.56Her husband Mumme is now ingratiating and servile to the gauleiter; Goebbelsdespises him. She comes on January 19 to his Weimar hotel and they sit talking untiltwo-thirty A.M. on upturned crates at the railroad station. He decides that Anka loveshim. ‘And I?’ his asks his diary: ‘I love her, uh, quite differently.’57The Nazi Party nationwide now numbered over one hundred thousand members. Itsleaders met here at Weimar on January 20, 1929 to discuss the coming year. YoungHeinrich Himmler, Hitler’s bespectacled deputy propaganda chief, reported on hisefforts to develop their film and press propaganda.58 The only decisions which Goebbelsrecorded in Weimar were that the S.A. was to be more firmly anchored to the politicalleadership, and that the Nazi Party was to adhere henceforth slavishly to the legalpaths to power. ‘Take note, Berlin!’ noted Goebbels.59Hitler had every reason to counsel restraint. Confronted with the growing Naziand communist lawlessness in Prussia, Albert Grzesinski had appealed to the Reichminister of the interior, Severing, for a permanent nationwide ban on these partiesand their paramilitary formations. The Peace Treaty of 1921 provided adequate legalgrounds.60Goebbels reluctantly bowed to Hitler’s dictate. Issue No.32 of Angriff portrayed acommunist Red Front streetfighter and his Nazi counterpart, both bandaged andbleeding, shaking hands over the crumpled body of a Jew. ‘The Day of Realization,’Schweitzer’s prophetic caricature was captioned: ‘The Dawn of the Third Reich.’61 AGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 147similar caricature showed an S.A. man being detained by a Berlin policeman, bothfine Germanic figures: ‘Brother,’ the puzzled Nazi is asking, ‘wherefore art thoughpersecuting me?’ Darkly discernible behind the policeman was a shifty Jew, egginghim on.Since January 5, 1929 Goebbels’ newspaper had