Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

working in his press-clippings section. The next day he sends for her,to work on his confidential archives. She turns out to be wealthy, married, and twentynine—much older than his usual preference. She rates another diary mention on thefourteenth, helping to sort out early photographs.21Thus he has finally met the woman he will marry. Other females will flit across hisstage as, aged thirty-three, he belatedly approaches manhood. There is his formersecretary the ‘wondrous, goodly, attractive, and affectionate’ Ilse Stahl who staysover one evening until six A.M.; ‘and,’ he writes, ‘wholly sexually innocent, at that.’22She blushes the next day and he scribbles her a note, ‘Phone me at seven.’ But thatevening he has a visit from another, the blonde actress Hella Koch, who is alreadymarried.23 His roaming eye alights on Arnolt Bronner’s fiancée Olga Förster. Olga,another petite actress, visits him alone a few days later and tries a much-worn femaleploy—she is engaged, she sighs, but does not really love her Arnolt. ‘But me,’ recordsGoebbels smugly, ‘she likes a lot.’ He thinks of her that evening as he addresses thegau’s Women’s Order—the women all ‘well behaved’ and the girls all ‘spotless’.24 Heinvites Bronner and his Olga to the movies and she visits him again the next day. Shewheels out every available weapon in the arsenal of female seduction.25He is a sitting duck. He is nest-building for his new apartment. He browses thefurnitures stores, determined to create a drawing room to rival Carin Göring’s.26 Hisfemale admirers often come to see his performance in the Reichstag. And perform atlast he does: on December 6 the ‘touching’ and ‘devoted’ Olga comes round. ‘Sheloves me madly,’ he resumés afterwards, to which he adds a nonchalant parenthesis:‘(1, 2).’ Five days later Olga comes again—as indeed does Goebbels, not once, twice,GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 211but thrice: ‘(3, 4, 5).’27 A week later she marries her Arnolt Bronner and that is that.‘No regrets,’ writes Goebbels; not once, but twice28—although it does pain himwhen a gossip columnist gets hold of the story and phones him about rumours thatOlga’s new husband has Jewish blood; Bronner assures Goebbels it is not so.29For two months after his seduction Goebbels’ private life is a flurry of formergirlfriends. He has some catching up to do. He treats them, one hopes, more kindlythan in his diary. Helping move to Steglitz, Ilse is crowned by a falling equestrianbronze and her head bleeds profusely. ‘She yammers on all evening,’ he writes heartlessly.On the phone to Charlotte he lets fly about an arrogant letter she has written.When both ladies turn up for housemoving duties the next day Goebbels writes,‘I’m going to put more distance between myself and women.’ The year ends with ahysterical scene from Olga and another abrasive letter from Charlotte. Charlotte isworking in his new ‘wigwam,’ as he puts it one day, but that letter has ruined everything.30 Ilse is closer to his ideal squaw: she chats, cooks, cries a bit, and then brightens.‘I am quite reactionary,’ he confesses to the Bronners. ‘Having, and raising, childrenis a job for life. My mother is the woman I most revere … so close to life. Todaywomen want a say in everything, they just don’t want children any more. They call itemancipation.’31IN December 1930 Goebbels staged his most effective propaganda demonstrationyet, against the Ufa film version of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front.’ The film waspacifist and anti-German (its author had already emigrated). In one scene, Germansoldiers were depicted haggling with a dying comrade whose legs had been shotaway, over who should inherit his new boots. At its first public showing on the fifth,Goebbels’ S.A. men emptied the cinema with stink bombs and live mice.32 For oncethe Nazis found Berlin’s police, many of them ex-army officers, in broad sympathywith them. Angriff reported laconically that their Doctor had been present ‘for informationalpurposes,’ and planned to see the rest of the film for informational purposes‘on Sunday evening.’ His men took the hint and trashed the movie theatre whilethousands of cheering Berliners looked on. The management cancelled the next per-212 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHformance after that. Even the Mosse’s Berliner Tageblatt dared not to criticize, becausethis time he had the people behind him.33 On the seventh the movie theatre triedagain. Goebbels staged another ‘spontaneous’ riot. Afterwards his men smashedthrough police cordons to the sound of the Horst Wessel anthem and rampaged downKurfürstendamm, while Goebbels himself took the salute at Uhland Corner in theheart of the West End.34 He called for further protests the next night. The policecordoned off entire districts. This time, he estimated, forty thousand Berliners turnedout to protest against the film; opposing newspapers put the figure at six thousand.35Under pressure from Grzesinski the Prussian minister of the interior Severing bannedall open-air demonstrations.36 On the eleventh the Reichstag itself debated the situation.Goebbels was evicted from the building, but the victory was his. At four P.M.the Brüning government ordered the objectionable film withdrawn ‘because of thedanger to Germany’s image abroad,’ then adjourned until February 3, 1931.37‘WE are going to be on the verge of power soon,’ assessed Goebbels on December 2,1930. ‘But what then? A tricky question.’ He mistrusted the alliance that Hitler wasforming. Strasser warned the Nazi Reichstag bloc that they were making too muchheadway in bourgeois circles and that this would taint the Party’s image (‘Bravo,Strasser,’ observed Goebbels to himself.) At a function at the Görings afterwards hehad a long talk with Strasser, trying to find common ground with this impressivepolitician. ‘I want to bury the hatchet,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘and I think he does too.’38He celebrated a pagan Christmas with the S.A. around a Yuletide bonfire atSchönerlinde. But he spent Christmas Eve with the Görings, who had less time forsuch pagan rites. Carin gave him a fine porcelain bowl, decorated with white mice.Her husband’s morphine addition caused him real concern, and he mentioned it toHitler. Hitler said he would take Göring under his wing.39Turning to grand strategy Goebbels warned that their party was in danger of losingmomentum—it was approaching freezing point, as he put it. ‘We must start