Goebbels1: Eros AwakesTHE OTHER boys at the Gymnasium in Rheydt’s Augusta Strasse, which heentered at Easter 1908, regarded him as a sneak and know-all.1 He ingratiated himself with teachers, particularly with the scripture teacherFather Johannes Mollen, by telling on his truant comrades. ‘My comrades,’ he wouldconfess, ‘never liked me, except for Richard Flisges.’2 He would find Flisges in theupper fifth (Obersekunda) in 1916. His closest friends were three ‘Herberts’—Hompesch, Beines, and Lennartz.3 Herbert Lennartz, son of his father’s boss, diedafter a minor operation leaving Goebbels grieved and shocked. It moved him tocompose his first poem (‘Why did you have to part from me so soon?’)4At first he was lazy and apathetic, numbed by the realization of his physical deformity.Then he overcompensated, and later he was never far from the top of theclass. His love of Latin came falteringly at first, then in full flood. With biting ironyand sarcasm Christian Voss tutored him in German literature—and in sarcasm andirony as well. While brothers Hans and Konrad had to leave school early, Josephexcelled.5 His agile brain enabled him to tackle everything, his essays attracted scowlsof envy from his fellow pupils. With clenched fists and gleaming eyes young Goebbelslistened as history teacher Dr. Gerhard Bartels taught his class about Germany’schequered past.6 His father and mother wanted him to become a priest—not justbecause the church would then pay for his higher education; they were a deeplyreligious family. When Joseph’s little sister Elisabeth died in 1915 they all knelt around24 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHher death-bed and held hands and prayed as a family together for her soul.7 Josephcomposed another poem for her, ‘Sleep, baby, sleep.’When the Great War came in August 1914 his friends all rallied excitedly to theKaiser’s colours; he too went to the local recruiting office, but the officer dismissedhim with barely a glance. Back at school he wrote a thoughtful essay, ‘How can a noncombattanthelp the fatherland in these times?’ He argued in it that ‘even those whoare denied the right to shed their blood for the honour of the nation’ could be ofservice, ‘even if not in such a creditable way.’ His teacher marked it ‘Good’.8The classroom emptied as the war dragged on. His pals Hubert Hompesch andWilly Zilles wrote him exciting letters as fusiliers from the western front.9 His brotherKonrad was a gunner and Hans was soon in French captivity.10 In one exercise bookJoseph, now in the Upper Sixth (Oberprima) , wrote in 1917, ‘We have already witnessedgreat and terrible events. Greater still and even more terrible is what lies instore for us. May the German people persevere, because if we do then victory cannotbe long in abeyance.’ Again his teacher red-inked gut onto the essay.11 As authorof the best essay, Goebbels had the honour of delivering the valedictory speech whenschool ended on March 21, 1917. He implored his listeners that they were the veryelements of a Germany on which the entire world now gazed with fear and admiration;he spoke of Germany’s ‘global mission,’ not merely as a nation of poets andthinkers, but one entitled to become ‘the political and spiritual leader of the world.’12‘Very good,’ the headmaster Dr Gruber told him. ‘But mark my words, you’ll nevermake a good orator!’13Goebbels passed the school-certificate examination at Easter 1917. In the mainqualities—conduct, attentiveness, behaviour, diligence, and handwriting—he gaineda string of “very goods,’ as he did in religion, German and Latin; in Greek, French,history, geography, physics and even in mathematics he was gut. He again tried toenlist, but was accepted only for a few weeks’ service as a penpusher at the Reichsbank.His painful deformity had thus given him at least one advantage, a headstart on hislater comrades in the political battle. He would already be at university while AdolfHitler, Hermann Göring, and Rudolf Hess were fighting under the skies of Flanders.GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 25His intellectual horizon was expanding. In 1909 his father had purchased secondhanda piano, that symbol of the solid middle class; the family and neighbours clusteredround as four furniture-men manhandled the piano indoors. Joseph rapidly masteredthe instrument. He also developed a talent for play-acting and mime. At agethirteen he saw Richard Wagner’s majestic opera ‘Tannhäuser’ and was inspired bythe romantic dive and sweep of the master’s music.14 But what was to become of himnow? The priesthood? Goebbels inclined briefly toward medicine, but Voss, his teacher,persuaded him that his real talents lay in literature. Whichever the subject, the universityat Bonn it would be.JOSEPH Goebbels reaches puberty at about thirteen. But given his later reputation is itworth emphasising that he will be thirty-three before he first has sexual intercoursewith a woman.15 For the intervening twenty years this brilliant but celibate cripple’slife will be a trail of temptations, near-seductions, and sexual rebuffs etched into hismemory. At thirteen he and his pal Herbert Beines have a grubby mudlark of a friend,Herbert Harperscheidt, whose stepmother Therese always wears crisp, clean skirts;so Joseph Goebbels recalls fourteen years later. The sexual arousal that he first detectstowards this mature female returns when he is fifteen. He harbours secret crusheson women like Frau Lennartz, the factory owner’s wife. Evidently another passionobject,his
