Doctor Goebbels: His Life & Death

the twelfth he had returned to gau HQ for the first time since the putsch. Everybodywas very kind to him and the S.A. stood smartly to attention. But there wereproblems. The account books showed that Angriff was deep in debt.4 He instructedHans Hinkel, Weissauer’s successor, to cut back its size from twelve to eight pages.5His deputy Mainshausen warned that Göring was double-crossing them. Goebbelsneeded few warnings on that score.6The next morning he was back in court, charged with having said in a speech at theVeterans’ Building in 1929, ‘We don’t speak of corruption in Berlin or bolshevism atCity Hall. No! We just say Isidor Weiss, and that says it all.’7 He was fined two hundredmarks on one count, fifteen hundred marks for having picked on Weiss ‘becauseof his Jewish origins’; still running a high fever, he limped out. He suspected traitorseverywhere. ‘Keep on marching’ he penned into his diary. ‘Don’t look back!’8 Thereseemed no end to the court actions. On the seventeenth he was fined two thousandmarks, then five hundred, and finally one hundred more for contempt of court. Moresummonses were heaped onto his desk.9 He resolved to take revenge on all the Isidorsof this world when the time came.A severe depression seized him, a mental crisis which he acknowledged only whenhe deemed that it had passed.10 Magda’s shenanigans had triggered it. There was a‘shadow’ still lurking around her apartment. Apparently she had had a stormier pastthan the comparatively innocent Dr Goebbels suspected. Insane with jealousy, hetrusted nobody. The word spies surfaced more often in his diary. He searched forthem at his HQ, he even suspected Hinkel; his political life seemed more arduousthan ever, a constant round of strange hotel beds briefly sighted at three A.M., of sixA.M. railroad platforms for the return to Berlin, of persecution, court hearings, prohibitions,and the constant fear of violence or even assassination.11Grzesinski enforced a new three-month ban on Goebbels speaking—which sometimesmeant listening to the pompous and vapid Hermann Göring standing in forGOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICH 237him. Hitler now entrusted Göring with important missions abroad. In May 1931Göring visited Rome and returned with a signed photograph of Mussolini for theFührer. ‘Jack of all trades,’ sniffed Goebbels, meaning: master of none.12Eight more court appearances faced him late that April. ‘Maddening,’ he recorded.‘But I’m not going to lose my nerve.’13 At Itzehoe near Hamburg he faced a fourmonthprison sentence but was acquitted.14 Squirming under Grzesinski’s speakingban, on April 25 Goebbels reluctantly signed an undertaking not to make fun of thepolice observers assigned to his meetings any more.15 Another hearing was scheduledat Moabit for April 27. He notified the court however that he could not miss animportant Nazi meeting in Munich. Gregor Strasser would be there, and he hopedto repair his fraught relationship with the burly politician. Strasser was warmly receivedat the Munich conference. Afterwards Hitler proudly showed them both overhis splendid new Brown House headquarters. ‘His big hour,’ mocked Goebbels in hisdiary, but conceded that the Senate Chamber was really remarkable.16While ‘the Chief’ was nice enough in Munich, Goebbels detected a wider hostilityto him. ‘Nobody likes me,’ he realised, and he wondered why. Before travelling downhere he had jotted his thoughts down in his diary: ‘first I act as a backstop for these fatlumps and then they’d like to send me packing to the wilderness.’ He had toyed withoffering Hitler his resignation. ‘I’m just the sewer cleanser for the party.’17 But whenhe raised the question of his future, Hitler reassured him: ‘Berlin belongs to you andthat’s how things must stay.’18That made him happy; but suddenly his cup of happiness in Munich ran sour. TheBerlin courts had issued a bench warrant after his non-appearance. As he was eatingat the Rose Garden hotel three detectives arrested him and escorted him to the nighttrain to Berlin. ‘So much for immunity!’ he fumed. ‘With a Barmat, a Sklarek and aKutisker,’ declared Angriff that morning, referring to the Jewish racketeers, ‘theydidn’t go to such lengths. But then they weren’t the elected representatives of sixtythousand Germans —just major embezzlers!’19 Press photographers crowded the platformas the train arrived back in Berlin. ‘The Judenpresse is howling with joy,’Goebbels saw. In Room 664 at the Moabit courthouse (Angriff helpfully told its read-238 GOEBBELS. MASTERMIND OF THE THIRD REICHers where the eight new cases were to be heard) the world’s press awaited him.20 Hetold the judges what he thought of them, then sat down and refused to speak anotherword. He was given a month’s suspended jail sentence, and heavy fines. Chokingwith rage he lodged an appeal.21 To his lawyer he snarled, indicating the prosecutorStenig, ‘Let’s make a note of that man for later.’22May brought still more cases. ‘Yesterday,’ he wrote with a martyred air on thetwelfth, ‘sentenced to two months on Isidor’s account.’23 His lawyer Otto Kameckelodged an immediate appeal.24 On June 5 there were two more hearings. In the firsthe was acquitted, in the second— ‘the police officers uttered perjuries so rotten youcould hear them creak’—fined two hundred marks. ‘They’re trying to wear me out,’he once again concluded.25 But daylight was filtering into this long dark tunnel ofpolice harassment. On June 12 he was again acquitted. ‘The courts,’ he gloated, ‘aregetting to whiff of things to come’—a reference to the growing likelihood thatBrüning’s days in office were numbered. ‘Then it’s our turn.’26KEEPING a tryst with Magda at the five star Kaiserhof hotel, he recognizes that theother man, the ‘shadow’, is still coming between them.27 Fretting, he spends hisevenings alone at Steglitz fingering his piano keyboard, leafing idly through a book orfitfully dozing. He phones countless times without reaching her. After one colossalSport Palace gathering she invites him back to her own luxurious apartment for thefirst time. The Shadow has gone. Her elegant suite of seven rooms includes a musicroom, and quarters for her guests and servants. He decides that the worst is overbetween them. His diary soon finds him making plans for the future with her: and heis no longer keeping score.28Shadows flit in and out from his own past. Magda remains a vexatious