Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

mocked.29A few days later the government revoked the immunity of three hundred deputiesincluding all the Nazis. Goebbels alone had eight criminal cases pending. He recommendedto his colleagues that rather than just becoming ‘poorly paid extras’ theyshould walk out en masse. Their salaries would stop, but the tactics were undeniablysound. The move would demonstrate to voters that the Nazis dissociated themselvesfrom the government’s rule by emergency decree.222 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHOn February 10 the Nazis marched in, remained standing while their bloc leaderFranz Stöhr read out the tough declaration which Goebbels had formulated, thenmarched out again. After that, one hundred police officers raided Hedemann Strasseand searched the building. Goebbels’ Lustgarten rally of the fifteenth was banned onthe usual pretext (‘danger to peace and quiet’).‘Your peace and quiet,’ swore Goebbels in his diary, ‘will be endangered soonenough.’30IT has been a tense and angry week for Dr Goebbels in the Reichstag. At its endMagda Quandt comes round to see him in his new, luxurious Steglitz apartment. Hefinds himself captivated by this woman. Her dress is subtle, her whole posture is thatof a person who now knows where she is going.31 It is a Saturday—February 14,1931—and Goebbels enters certain code phrases, circumlocutions, into his diarywhich show that this visit is not for mere archival gossip: ‘And stays for a very longtime,’ he carefully records. And, ‘How are you, my queen?’ The answer follows: ‘(1)’.Magda has seduced him, after Olga only the second girl in his life to do so. Sundayfinds him in a trance, or ‘replete with satiated happiness,’ as he writes. Magda writeshim a fond note the next day.32Magda Quandt returns to her elegant leased apartment and servants, and DrGoebbels goes over to Dortmund where twenty-thousand people are waiting to hearhim. In Hamburg he speaks to twelve thousand.33 His mind is on her. When he speaksat Weimar, Anka’s Weimar, he takes Magda with him. He phones Anka, speaks terselywith her, and decides that he can’t stand her whining and her ‘lack of discipline’ anylonger. Now that he has Magda he can afford to be stand-offish.He takes Magda to the automobile show in Berlin. She wants to buy a new car, butcan’t make up her mind. Does she buy him one? Suddenly he has a new Opel (it hasbeen stolen already by March 9).34 They have the usual rows. Magda writes a farewellnote. Goebbels has seen it all before—‘the same old melody!’, he writes, amused.He can handle it. She comes round for a ‘very formal’ talk and flounces out as thoughto leave. Goebbels holds the door open for her. ‘You are so hard,’ she murmurs, andGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 223relents.35 She visits several times during March 1931, chats, laughs, makes musicwith him, meals for him, and—occasionally-love. On the ninth he adds ‘(2, 3)’ to hisscore, and five days later ‘(4, 5)’.36But mysteries abound. She is often sick; she does not yet invite him back to herown fine apartment in Reichskanzler Platz. Sometimes she is inexplicably away, ordoes not answer her phone. Jealousy wells up within him. He tries hard to please: hetakes her to Carl Zuckmayer’s ‘Captain of Köpenick,’ and decides that soon theywould get on just fine. At this time time the adventure probably means very little toher; but not to him.37 Goebbels has drawn a historic line under his philanderings.‘I’m going to stop the womanizing,’ he writes secretly on March 15, ‘and favour justthe one.’IN Hamburg the gauleiter Karl Kaufmann had once remarked to Goebbels that Brüningfor one considered Göring mad.38 Göring had certainly been unbalanced by Carin’snear fatal illness during January 1931. After visiting her sickbed Goebbels wrote thathe revered her, a word he had used before only for his mother.39 He was alarmed atGöring’s character regression, probably a result of his addiction. ‘We’ve got to gethim into a mental clinic in time,’ he despaired. ‘He mustn’t go to the dogs like this.’40Hitler promised to tackle Göring about the morphine. Göring’s behaviour worsenedto outright megalomania. ‘He alternates,’ observed Goebbels in February 1931, ‘betweenimagining he’s Reich Chancellor and defence minister… Today he’s just ludicrous.’41After both spoke at Essen to an audience of sixteen thousand including both Kruppand Thyssen. Göring accompanied him back to Berlin but refused to discuss his drugproblem. The gauleiter’s remarks about him took on a bitter edge. After they bothaddressed some twenty-five thousand people in Frankfurt, Goebbels wrote thatGöring had spoken the ‘usual crap.’42 One Sunday he again tackled Göring about theaddiction; the aviator spluttered denials that were too thin to be plausible toGoebbels.43224 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHGöring counter-attacked, accusing him of being over tolerant of the still-mutinousCaptain Stennes, and mocking his self-aggrandisement in Angriff. Goebbels said thatpeople were just envious. They separated that evening ‘half friends again,’ as Goebbelsnoted, in which was implicit that they were now half enemies.44ON March 6, 1931 the gauleiter addressed another huge meeting at the Sport Palace.His audience greeted Grzesinski’s two police observers with roars of ‘Out!’ lastingseveral minutes, and Goebbels heaped his own special kind of ridicule on them. Onthe following day Angriff repeated his words verbatim.45 Currying public sympathy,on the thirteenth he staged a stupid bomb plot: having ordered the S.A. man EduardWeiss to open all mail addressed to him at HQ he arranged for a crude home-madedevice to be delivered to him there.46 Although there is no doubt as to Goebbels’authorship of the attack, he lied to his own diary about it.47 More court actionscrowded in on him—eight altogether during March.48 On March 14 the Reichstagdecided that he could be arrested after all. Severing’s ban on the brown shirt uniformin Prussia was declared unconstitutional.49 On the fifteenth however Grzesinskirepeated the ban, and he imposed a speaking prohibition on Goebbels in Berlin, inrevenge for the Sport Palace episode. He instructed his police to prevent Goebbelsfrom speaking to transport workers in Hasenheide the next night.50 Hitting back,Angriff instructed Berlin’s Nazis to wear their uniforms and to sue Grzesinski if heordered any arrests. The next day, two Nazis gunned down a communist deputy inHamburg. The press called