Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

mood at Alexander Platz, the brownstone police HQ in Berlin, was jubilant.Dr Weiss personally welcomed back his fellow socialist Grzesinski at a little policeceremony. ‘When we heard it was you,’ said the oily Dr Weiss, the real power behindthe scenes, ‘we all cheered.’5JOSEPH Goebbels has turned thirty-three. The newspaper saleswomen on NollendorfPlatz toss him a birthday bouquet.6 That month he records his first radio broadcast,debating international art with the renowned left-wing stage director Erwin Piscator.A new friend, Arnolt Bronner, has arranged both this interview and one two dayslater on neutrality in broadcasting and the cowardice of governments.7 Once he visitsAnka; he finds her mortally depressed but reflects that she did wrong by him too.Fritz Prang, his old schoolfriend, has given him a splendid radio and he sits up latemarvelling at the sounds coming from Rome or Copenhagen. Home-hunting withXenia, he has found a comfortable apartment at Steglitz—No.11 am Bäkequell.8Dispensing with the emotional problems that female secretaries still caused him,Goebbels now generally prefers the aristocracy to carry his bags for him. He hastaken on the upright young Count Karl-Hubert Schimmelmann as his private secretary.9 In the mirror he fancies he detects the first grey hairs.10 And he has yet to havefull sexual intercourse with a woman.HIS party HQ in Hedemann Strasse was like a fortress. From the reception area onedoor to the right led to the quarters of the increasingly ill-humoured S.A., the other208 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHto the left to his gau headquarters. Uniformed men stood guard on each door. Visitorswere taken through a locked and guarded doorway at the end of a short passage,past a long suite of rooms separated by shoulder-high glass partitions, to a side chamberoff which more locked doors concealed three large rooms; in the very last ofthese sat the gauleiter, Dr Goebbels, in an otherwise empty room at a desk a full tenyards from the door. He could reach this room via a side staircase directly from theyard door where his new Mercedes delivered him each day.He installed the editorial offices of Angriff on the first floor of this building. FromNovember 1, 1930 it appeared as a daily. Its mast-head now read, ‘Berlin’s Germanevening paper.’ Months of wearying negotiations with Max Amann had preceded thisinnovation. Goebbels mistrusted the party’s publisher, but in September a deal hadbeen worked out giving Franz Eher Verlag sixty percent of the stock in Angriff and thegau forty percent. Goebbels retained editorial control.11 The new rotary presses hadbeen assembled at the printers, Süsserott & Co. That afternoon, November 1, DrGoebbels found the printers’ yard crowded with his Angriff salesmen all wearingsmart uniforms with the newspaper’s name picked out in silver on their red capbands.The presses glistened with chrome and oil like a locomotive at a station. Hesignalled to start the presses rolling. Everybody saluted, and Horst Wessel’s anthemechoed until drowned by the whirring and clanking machinery.Now a daily, the newspaper differed little from its predecessor except in topicality.Goebbels demanded relentless personal attacks on Dr Weiss, and the editor Dr Lippertcomplied. On November 3 the robust headline read BERNHARD WEISS ALLOCATES NIGHTCLUBCONCESSIONS: HIS BROTHER GETS THE BRIBES. The story dealt with Weiss’s murkydealings with his criminal brother Conrad and an unrelated Jewish night-club ownercalled Taube Weiss. On the fifth the headline was WEISS IN THE STOCKS! DEVASTATINGPHOTOS (‘even the Jewish Ullstein press has had to confirm the facts that we publish’).On the sixth,as his headlines rhetorically asked BERNHARD WEISS TO RESIGN?,Goebbels privately rejoiced in his diary: ‘Isidor is being destroyed.’ On November 8Angriff reported that a communist had punched Zörgiebel in the face: ‘Sometimes,’the newspaper editorialized, ‘though not often, the acts of the communists are notGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 209entirely unwelcome to us.’12 For this licentious remark Grzesinski banned Angriff forone week.13 Goebbels was livid; his newspaper would be banned on fifteen moreoccasions before August 1932, for periods ranging from three days to six weeks.Conferences [summarised Goebbels], agonizing money worries, embarrassingletters, Angriff editorial meeting, ill-will from Munich, surrounded by peoplefilled with envy; that’s my day.14Grzesinski, bolder than his predecessor, banned several Goebbels meetings too.Rumours circulated that he would soon ban the party as well. Goebbels doubted thepolice would really try that now.Later in November the Sport Palace audience was treated to a double bill as he andGöring harangued them. ‘I make short work of the Social Democrats,’ recordedGoebbels. ‘The giant arena thunders with rage, hatred, and screams of revenge…How much further can this be pushed?’15 He envied Göring his easy access to wealthand high society. Already however a perceptible frost was settling over their relations.On October 9 he had written of Göring, ‘He is a true comrade—but notdevoid of ambition.’ The day after the Reichstag had reconvened Goebbels commentedprivately, ‘I rather fear that Fatso Gregor [Strasser] and Fatso Göring mayshortly hit it off together.’16 Admittedly the aviator had introduced him to severaluseful contacts like Fritz Thyssen, the steel baron; the former airman Erich Niemann,head of Mannesmann Steel, and Wilhelm Tengelmann (Ruhr Coal). They would injectbadly needed funds into the party in Berlin.17 But Hitler had now appointedGöring his personal viceroy in Berlin. This was bound to lead to friction with thegauleiter. As a Reichsleiter Goebbels in fact ranked somewhat higher than Göring inthe party. But he noticed that Göring did not invite him along when he met thecommander-in-chief of the army, General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord (‘He probablyfears his sun won’t shine quite so brightly next to mine’), and a hardier tone ofmordant criticism crept into the diary entries.18 He noted Göring’s corruption, andhis mysterious hobnobbing with political generals like Kurt von Schleicher; toGoebbels’ irritation he even visited the exiled Kaiser in Holland.19 Viktoria von Dirksen210 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHrevealed confidentially to him that Göring was still having problems beating the recurringmorphine addiction inflicted on him by Austrian doctors in 1923. He madea note to keep an eye on him.20ENTERING his HQ one day in November 1930 Goebbels sees a platinum blonde comingdown the steps.‘Donnerwetter, Schimmel!’ he exclaims to his private secretary. ‘Who was that?’The blonde is