Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

ultimatum to Strasser todrop either his newspaper in Berlin or the Organisation Department in Munich.Since everybody now had their eyes on Reichstag seats, Hitler had regained hisinfluence. ‘Thank goodness,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘Everybody is right behind him. Strasser… sits there like guilt personified. Hitler has strung him up—polite to the last rungof the scaffold.’ Then came the moment that Goebbels had badgered Hitler for. Hitlerannounced—‘amid,’ if Goebbels is to be believed, ‘a breathless hush,’—his appointmentas the party’s national chief of propaganda.58 With it went the rank ofReichsleiter, making him one of a very select body indeed. Goebbels saw Strasser gopale. Afterwards, the whole bunch except for Himmler flip-flopped to Goebbels’side.The Berlin gau HQ now had about thirty on its payroll including Muchow, in chargeof perfecting the factory cell-system. Goebbels had twice been able to raise theirpay.59 Since the previous autumn Goebbels had been looking for larger premises,GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 185perhaps even an entire building.60 In this building Rathenau himself had worked duringthe war. Six outsized swastika banners draped the facade of the building.Cleverly mollifying Goebbels, the party’s national HQ had purchased for him abrand new open Mercedes with a supercharged engine. Goebbels was a big-car enthusiastlike all the top Nazis.61 His modest budget was quite strained. His brotherKonrad’s business had folded, leaving Hans and Joseph as providers for their mother.‘I want to look after Mother as best I can,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘Good old Mum, shedeserves an old age free of worries.’62 The glittering Mercedes soaked up his incomehowever. It was an essential mobile display of might and rank, with some of theattributes of a tank as well. One night after his S.A. men killed three communists hewas driving with six Brownshirts to a parade when he was recognized by his enemies—‘My heart missed a beat,’ he recorded, ‘but our magnificent Superchargerrampaged triumphantly through the howling mob.’63His disenchantment with his Führer continued. Horst Wessel’s mother complainedthat Hitler had not written even one line of sympathy. Privately Goebbels blamedHitler’s waywardness on his ‘womanizing.’64 Two days after the new Mercedes arrived,Hitler came back to Berlin to speak at the Sport Palace. He again brought hisyoung niece Geli. Goebbels again pleaded with him to kill off the rival newspaperNational Sozialist. From Goebbels’ new offices Hitler phoned Otto Strasser and forbadehim to sell the newspaper that evening.65 But Otto proved more slippery thanthat. True, he undertook to sell off the newspaper to Hitler’s publisher Max Amannand to cease publication from the twentieth; but he broke both promises. On May 21Hitler returned to Berlin for a showdown. This time even Gregor disowned his brotherOtto. Hitler threatened open war against them.66Goebbels returned to the fold. In Munich Hitler enthusiastically showed him hisplans for the Brown House, the party’s new national HQ. It seemed rather overopulenteven to Goebbels.67WHEREAS the departed Social Democatic chancellor Heinrich Müller—unlovinglydescribed by Goebbels as having ‘a badly rusted voice well oiled by slime’—had186 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHruled by the truncheon, Brüning’s two years in office would be marked by emergencylaws and prohibitions. On April 1 Hanover banned the activities of the HitlerYouth. On June 5 Bavaria banned political uniforms—in theory those of all parties,in practice only of the Nazis. On June 11, as Goebbels had anticipated, Prussia’s newminister of the interior Dr Heinrich Waentig banned the S.A.’s brown shirts, andtwo weeks later Prussia forbade its civil servants to join the Hitler party. Attired inwhite shirts with beer-bottle rings as badges, one thousand of Stennes’ S.A. menmarched through Charlottenburg that evening and Friedrichshain two days later.The police had to adopt ludicrous tactics to enforce the bans.68 Goebbels no longerfeared them. He had their measure. ‘The real enemy,’ he recognized, ‘is at our rear’—meaning the Strasser faction.69Their newspaper continued to appear, spiced with cruel remarks about Goebbelsand his cult of personality. Several section heads (Kreisleiter) declared for OttoStrasser. Goebbels blamed Hitler and his procrastination, and meeting him in Leipzighe told him so. Hitler again promised to act against him.70 Sick with worry,Goebbels wrote: ‘Hitler’s got to act—he’s got to. Or there’ll be a catastrophe.’ Hefound out which of his men were traitors, and lodged complaints with the Party’spowerful arbitration committee, particularly about Eugen Mossakowsky, editor ofthe N.S. Pressekonferenz and two section heads. Mossakowsky had done theunforgiveable: at gauleiter conferences in Berlin and Brandenburg he had accusedGoebbels of lying about his heroism during the Ruhr struggle and of forging documentsto make his entry into the party earlier than it was. These were sore points forGoebbels. Hitler told Göring that he would authorise their expulsion on Monday thetwenty-third, and personally confirmed this to Goebbels while electioneering atPlauen in Saxony on June 21.71Again however he did not act. When Goebbels phoned him he said he preferred towait. ‘Typical Hitler,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘Rampant at Plauen, and procrastinating here.’72With Hitler’s permission however he expelled the mutinous small fry likeMossakowsky. Mossakowsky pre-empted his expulsion by issuing a statement throughGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 187the wire services repeating all the lies, and several cruel truths, about Goebbelsbefore resigning.73Gregor Strasser saw the storm signals and assured Goebbels he had broken withhis brother Otto. Goebbels trusted none of them. ‘If only we had acted in February!’he wailed. The entropy inside his organisation increased. There were disturbing reportsfrom Neukölln of scuffles between rival S.A. fractions. Hitler (‘the familiar oldHitler .Ê .Ê . the eternal procrastinator!’) kept a low profile. Göring told Goebbelsthat he too was shattered by Hitler’s disloyalty. But the very next day, June 30, hephoned Goebbels: victory was theirs. Hitler had now written a powerful open letterexcoriating both Strasser brothers. Gregor laid down the editorship of his newspaperand survived; Otto was expelled from the party. As Hitler’s bluntly phrasedletter was read out in Berlin party meeting there were shouts from the floor of‘string ’em up!’ Three disgruntled Angriff employees left the hall, but that was all.The meeting ended with a spectacular vote of confidence in Hitler and Goebbels.Goebbels persuaded Hitler to decree defining Kampf Verlag as an enemy of the party.With that, Otto Strasser’s goose was cooked.74ONE problem which